Taking Their Ball and Going Home

I actually do understand why people shop at Wal-Mart. For a growing segment of lower-class America, that's what they can afford. The worsening economy directly impacts Wal-Mart positively. One could argue that paying their workers a pittance gives Wal-Mart a larger market share in their communities, because that's all their workers can afford.

But once you know the facts, I don't know how you could possibly shop there. Case in point: A Canadian Wal-Mart was days away from becoming the first store to win a union contract. So what did Wal-Mart do? They shut it down!

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators, which would make it impossible for the store to sustain its business. The United Food & Commercial Workers Canada last week asked Quebec labor officials to appoint a mediator, saying that negotiations had reached an impasse.

"We were hoping it wouldn't come to this," said Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. "Despite nine days of meetings over three months, we've been unable to reach an agreement with the union that in our view will allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably."

Operating "efficiently and profitably" means gouging the workers, not paying them a dime, locking nighttime workers in the building so they have to work overtime, offering health care that costs about 1/3 of their paycheck (so they won't opt for it), and taking their profits. By the way, this is the first time Wal-Mart has closed a whole store in reaction to union activity, though there was a similar situation in Texas a few years ago:

The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in Jacksonville, Texas. In that store, 11 workers -- all members of the store's meatpacking department -- voted to join and be represented by the UFCW.

That effort failed when WalMart eliminated the job of meatcutter companywide, and moved away from in-store meatcutting to stocking only prewrapped meat.

They'd rather shut stores down than unionize. This is a company that made so much money last year that they devoted $2.2 BILLION dollars to stock buybacks. They offered their CEO Sam Walton and his family dividend payouts of $900 MILLION dollars. But they can't afford unionizing. They know that just one union store will have the effect of lighting up the cave of darkness for all of their workers. They'd realize that they're entitled to a living wage, that they have a choice in their lives.

Maybe that's the way to get rid of all these Wal-Marts, then; unionize every single one of them! Unionization of Big Box stores should be (and, I believe, is) the greatest priority of Big Labor.