People of Walmart

If I ever wonder what I'm missing by not shopping at Walmart I can check out this blog. Political opinions aside, these photos ensure that I will never take my trade there.


A collection of all the creatures that grace us with their presence at Walmart.
Via

Just Because It's Legal Doesn't Mean It's Right

"Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits." More

Via Cynical-C Blog

Yet Another Reason Not To Shop At Walmart

Toxic Flip Flops

Hi all! For those of you who don't know, I used to work at Walmart for a short time, but quit.
Before I quit though I did buy a pair of cheepie flip flops to wear over a weekend trip to the beach, Long Boat Key April 20th to be exact.

Boy, was she sorry! . I'm sure there's at least one real wuss out there who'll complain if I post stomach-churning photos so I am showing you an early picture of this woman's chemical burns - it gets much worse. The positive part of ths story is that she paid only $2.44 for the toxic Chinese-manufactured flip flops.
Via Reddit

Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of US Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association

Think human rights abuses are a third world issue? Think again. Human Rights Watch has published this report on Wal-mart's egregious and illegal union busting tactics: Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of US Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association.
View the audio slide show.

I've Been To Hell and Back

(Don't read this, Maureen)
Today I broke a taboo. I entered that cornice of hell to which I vowed I'd never go. I was told that a piece of hardware I needed was available at Wal-Mart (yes- Wal-Mart). Since I was unable to find it elsewhere and needed it before I went on vacation, I decided to check it out. It was Easter Monday and the hoi polloi were frothing at the mouth for half price hollow imitation chocolate bunnies. The parking lot was a precursor of what was to come. Unspeakably ugly people who should have had their drivers' licences yanked were performing a strange vehicular ballet in the overcrowded lot complete with honking and hand gestures. I slunk past the greeter, half expecting the hypocrite alarm to sound. I found the gardening department right away. It had an awful odour about it and a clerk who, seemingly overwhelmed by the customer he was serving, hollered for help. When back-up arrived he pointed at me and said (very, very loudly), "She needs help." I denied needing assistance (realizing how false I sounded) and fled the department, not wanting anything to do with these denizens of Hades (to describe them would only give rise to accusations of discrimination of one sort or another - name your prejudice). I wandered briefly around the store and, honestly, I have never seen such a pile of cheap crap in my whole life - kid's clothes made of a fabric that made one hope their parents were nonsmokers, others that looked like Halloween costumes (hey, maybe they're on sale from last October?), packaged food with enough carcinogens to guarantee that customers who eat it will probably die after only a few visits (that sounds like bad business, doesn't it?), all of them made by cheap slave labour. If Wal-Mart is giving us what we want, God help us. I slunk out as empty handed as I arrived.

More Nag rants on Wal-Mart here, here, here, here, etc.

Unchain Your Heart

Give fair trade and organic chocolate and flowers on Valentine's Day. While you're at it Send a message to the "Anti-Valentine's Five": Nestle Dole Wal-Mart M&M-Mars Inc. Hersheys

What if Halliburton's CEO came clean?

Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

Andrew Young's Undiplomatic Gaffe

ooops....

"The sheer satisfaction generated by a good gripe-fest can often be reason enough to gather folks in the spirit of anti-corporate activism. Wal-Mart Stores, for one, has seen myriad organizations and Websites dedicated to criticizing it.

But one group, 'Working Families for Wal-Mart' has been different.

An unlikely assortment of clergymen, businesswomen, and the singer Pat Boone, it has sought to exhort the 'good things' about the retail giant and spread the message of its positive contributions to society at large. (No guesses as to who was funding it, of course)

The big coup for Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) came when civil rights leader and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, 74, agreed to head the group.

Since February he has lobbied minority groups and communities to accept the retail chain in their neighborhoods. Till now, that is.

Following what he later called 'racist shorthand,' Young has quit his post as the head of 'Working Families for Wal-Mart.' In an interview with Thursday's Los Angeles Sentinel, he defended the charge that Wal-Mart runs mom-and-pop stores out of business saying 'those are the people who have been overcharging us.'

The rub came in his elucidation: 'I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs, very few black people own these stores.' "

Via Metafilter

Wal-Mart backs down and allows Chinese workers to join union

Too bad they won't allow their North American workers to do the same.
Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retail company, conceded defeat yesterday in a two-year battle against the world's largest labour federation, by offering to support the formation of labour unions at its 60 stores in China. The American supermarket giant - which is notoriously reluctant to support workers' organisations throughout its global empire - said it would cooperate with the government-controlled labour federation to establish unions for its 28,000 Chinese employees.

Judge strikes down law singling out Wal-Mart

In a victory for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a U.S. judge struck down a new Maryland law that required the giant retailer to provide health insurance for its employees in the state.
Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore ruled that a 1974 federal law trumped the Maryland state law, which had been backed by labour groups.
The law required companies with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 per cent of their payroll on health benefits. Alternatively, big employers could pay the balance into a state low-income health insurance fund. Wal-Mart was the only employer affected by the law.

Does Wal-Mart Increase Poverty Rates?

A study published in the latest issue of Social Science Quarterly is the first to examine the effect of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates. The study found that nationwide an estimated 20,000 families have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion. During the last decade, dependence on the food stamp program nationwide increased by 8
percent, while in counties with Wal-Mart stores the increase was almost twice as large at 15.3 percent. 'After controlling for other factors determining changes in the poverty rate over time, we find that both counties with more initial Wal-Mart stores and with more additions of stores between 1987 and 1998 experienced greater increases (or smaller decreases) in family poverty rates during the 1990s economic boom period,' Stephan Goetz a Professor of Agricultural and Regional Economics at The Pennsylvania State University states. Although Wal-Mart employs many people living in its communities, for most, the hours worked and the wages paid do not help these families transition out of poverty.

via Cynical-C Blog

The Wal-Mart Biennale

"It isn't that, when Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton purchased Asher B. Durand's 1849 painting Kindred Spirits last year, she got the state of Arkansas to pass legislation specifically to save her taxes -- in this case, about $3 million on a purchase price of $35 million. It isn't that the world's second richest woman and ninth richest person (according to a Forbes magazine 2005 estimate) scooped the painting out from under the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had banded together to try to keep it in a public collection when the New York Public Library decided to sell it off. It isn't that Walton will eventually stick this talisman of New England cultural life and a lot of other old American paintings in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Walton family museum she's building in Bentonville, Arkansas, the site of Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters -- after all people in the middle of the country should get to see some good art too. It might not even be, as Wal-MartWatch.com points out, that the price of the painting equals what the state of Arkansas spends every two years providing for Wal-Mart's 3,971 employees on public assistance; or that the average Wal-Mart cashier makes $7.92 an hour and, since Wal Mart likes to keep people on less than full-time schedules, works only 29 hours a week for an annual income of $11,948--so a Wal-Mart cashier would have to work a little under 3,000 years to earn the price of the painting without taking any salary out for food, housing, or other expenses (and a few hundred more years to pay the taxes, if the state legislature didn't exempt our semi-immortal worker).
The trouble lies in what the painting means and what Alice Walton and her $18 billion mean. Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering"
Read More

Another Reason Not To Shop At Walmart

(Although, after watching this, I don't really need another reason.)

Changing Diapers At Wal-Mart:
"I brought my 2 year old daughter with me, and sure enough, a diaper change was needed. So I go into the bathroom and the Diaper Changing Station has a lock on it. I was unable to lower the table. Then I see a sign that reads...
'INSERT THREE QUARTERS TO OPEN CHANGING STATION'
75 CENTS to change a diaper?"

More Reasons Not To Shop At Walmart

"CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Mich. A woman was stepped on by several people after she fell when dozens of shoppers rushed into a Grand Rapids area Wal-Mart store around 5 o'clock this morning. When the rush ended, the woman and a 13-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. In nearby Grandville, two shoppers were hurt when they slipped on a wet floor as they entered a Wal-Mart. Officials say one of the injured was after a bargain notebook computer. Neither was hurt seriously. The same computer discount was the catalyst for trouble at a Wal-Mart in Orlando, Florida, where a man allegedly cut in line to buy one. He was wrestled to the ground. A Wal-Mart spokesman says the chain will continue to use early specials because they are popular with customers and went off without incident at most of Wal-Mart's 38-hundred stores nationwide."

Looks Like It's Open Season on American Big Box Stores Today at NOTL - Target This

This article is a response to Target's decision to let its pharmacists refuse to fill your order for emergency contraceptive pills simply because they find your prescription immoral. Bear in mind that the legal drug known as "Plan B" is emergency contraception, not abortion. EC prevents conception —just like other contraceptives.What's next?

-Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a 'Satanic counterfeit' (read: 'The Pope,' in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to 'innocent victims' of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't 'deserve it.'
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?

And it's not only Target that's made this decision. It's also Rite-Aid, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Winn Dixie. Could it happen here? I hope not.

I Don't Shop At Walmart

When I was a young labour activist I was confronted everywhere I went (the grocery store, the library, etc.) by people, mostly old guys, who took exception to my "I Don't Shop at Eaton's" button. For some reason it made them foam at the mouth. Here's something else they won't like:WAL-MART: The High Price of Low Cost trailer - click the link to take a gander (I'm using this expression ironically.)

Wal-Mart Urges Congress to Raise Minimum Wage

Of course there's a method to their madness:
"The proposal to lift minimum wage is particularly likely to raise eyebrows. Though Wal-Mart pays above the current $5.15 an hour minimum wage -- the average hourly wage among its 1.3 million U.S. workers is just under $10 an hour -- some of its smaller competitors don't pay as much. As a result, a boost in the minimum wage could pressure the profitability of Wal-Mart competitors."

Don't Shoplift at Wal-Mart

HoustonChronicle.com - Answers sought in death outside Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart - streamlining capital punishment: why put money into some fatcat lawyer's pocket when a couple of minimum wage security guards will do the job for next to nothing?