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News :: Protest Activity |
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Locals greet Urbana Wal-Mart with protest |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ricky Baldwin
Email: baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (verified)
Phone: 328-3037 |
03 Feb 2006
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At the new Urbana Wal-Mart, pickets sponsored by the local Jobs With Justice Organizing Committee. Low wages and other poor working conditions were the focus. Wal-Mart management called the police, who spoke politely with pickets and left them to their task. |
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(Urbana) Roughly three dozen area residents turned out on a cold and windy Tuesday afternoon at the inconvenient hour of 3pm on the last day of January, 2006, to picket outside the brand new Urbana Wal-Mart superstore on its Grand Opening.
“Your taxes subsidize Wal-Mart wages,” read one sign.
“Wal-Mart discriminates against women,” another.
“Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the world with over $10 billion in profits,” noted the flyer handed out to passers-by. “Yet, Wal-Mart lowers our wages, causes more of our jobs to be shipped overseas, and shifts its health care costs onto us, the American taxpayers. It’s time for Wal-Mart to wake up.”
The informational picket, sponsored by the local Jobs With Justice Organizing Committee (JWJOC), aims to get the multinational mega-corporation to “wake up” and be the community-minded business its advertising portrays.
The picketers say Wal-Mart treats its own employees poorly enough, but the impact on the wider community is also a net loss.
Currently government subsidies for the average 200-employee Wal-Mart store add up to $420,750 a year. That’s $2,103 per employee.
Even with this public assistance to the employer, Wal-Mart still offers wages and benefits typically so low that employees must rely on welfare themselves to pay bills and seek medical care.
Recent studies also show that the impact of a Wal-Mart store coming to town is that wages in the surrounding community decline by several percentage points.
So why do people shop there? Why do people work there? For one thing, Wal-Mart often drives other businesses under by offering cheaper items, and more of them concentrated in one location, than most small businesses can afford, thereby limiting other options for employment or shopping.
The corporate giant is able to offer this because it saves money by a variety of means: low wages; poor benefits (which most Wal-Mart employees cannot afford); importing cheap goods assembled in sweatshops abroad (Haiti, China, etc.) and wantonly cutting corners in violation of environmental, child labor, immigration and other labor laws.
One Iowa study showed that in the decade after Wal-Mart arrived, the state lost 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women’s apparel stores, 153 shoe stores, 166 drug stores and 111 men’s and boys’ apparel stores.
Wal-Mart is also a viciously anti-union employer willing to pay millions in fines for violating laws to protect the rights of employees to join and form a union if they so choose.
The chain is currently facing the largest gender discrimination case in US history, involving 1.6 million women. During the proceedings of this suit Wal-Mart was forced to reveal that although 72 percent of its hourly employees are women, only 15 percent of its store managers are women.
Numerous other lawsuits are pending against the corporate giant.
Though the local JWJOC campaign against these practices is just getting started, it is part of a national effort by Jobs With Justice and others called “Wake Up Wal-Mart.” Jobs With Justice is a national network of local coalitions dedicated to struggles for economic justice. JWJ chapters now exist in over 40 cities around the country and consist of labor unions, churches and other community groups.
The local JWJOC hopes to start an official chapter here in Champaign-Urbana as soon as possible. But they aren’t waiting for the chapter charter before diving into the work with both feet.
To get involved locally, email cu_jwj_forming (at) mail.com or phone 344-3354. |
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See also:
http://www.wakeupwalmart.com
http://www.jwj.org
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This work is in the public domain |
