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Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We all Pay for Wal-Mart |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sascha Meinrath
Email: sascha (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified!) |
17 Mar 2004
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I've been watching the community-wide discussion on Wal-Mart and have been hoping to find a document that adequately represents my own serious concerns with facilitating the entry of Wal-Mart to Urbana. Whether you agree or disagree with the Urbana City Council decision, I believe that having access to well-documented information will help facilitate constructive debate. |
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I've been watching the community-wide discussion on Wal-Mart and have been hoping to find a document that adequately represents my own serious concerns with facilitating the entry of Wal-Mart to Urbana. Whether you agree or disagree with the Urbana City Council decision, I believe that having access to well-documented information will help facilitate constructive debate.
The hidden costs of Wal-Mart's low wages (just one of the reasons that I believe makes that company an extremely bad investment for our community) are enormous. As explained in the congressional report below, "One 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year -- about $2,103 per employee."
From a moral and ethical standpoint (as opposed to pure economics), Walmart has an egregious record of disregarding organizing rights,
discriminating in pay, requiring off-the-clock work, utilizing child labor, ignoring work-break laws, illegally utilizing undocumented workers, discriminating against those with disabilities, and numerous worker safety violations. The link below provides documentation for all of these assertions.
This report also provides an in-depth critique the economic impact studies often provided to communities (like Urbana) by Wal-Mart (and which are both funded and disseminated by Wal-Mart itself). I think this report is an enlightening read; because it provides extensive documentation, it
allows for readers to investigate its claims and draw their own conclusions:
http://na4lc.org/studies/millerwalmartreport.pdf |
This work is in the public domain. |
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Re: Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We all Pay for Wal-Mart |
by David Garcia
streamer31 (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
18 Mar 2004
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Talk about living in the belly of the beast- every June, Wal-Mart takes over the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville for a week long gala around their annual shareholders' meeting. Well this year, for the very first time, activists in Northwest Arkansas are calling for anti-Wal Mart demonstrations in Fayetteville that week.
It's not going to be an easy thing for activists here to pull off, since Wal-Mart and Tyson own and control the university and the local politicians. Should you be interested in joining the fun, check out the Arkansas IMC story at: http://arkansas.indymedia.org/feature/display/2757/index.php which gives some contact info. |
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Wal Mart's Plans for Public Education |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Apr 2004
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"The [Walton] family’s immediate personal ambitions are more modest: to destroy public education in the United States. To that end the Waltons, through their Walton Family Foundation and in close collaboration with Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation, literally invented the national school “choice” network and its wedge issue-weapon, vouchers.
"Public education’s defenders, already outgunned by the combined resources of the right-wing political funding network plus the full weight of the Republican executive branch, now await the deluge: an infusion of $20 billion into the Walton’s private philanthropy, most of it earmarked for education “reform”—the euphemism for school privatization. At the usual rate of foundation disbursement, this would translate as $1 billion a year—a tidal wave of money, enough to reinvent the voucher “movement” many times over."
See the whole article at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=672_0_1_0_C |
