This may be one of the more interesting social developments in the US in recent years, after Occupy. jz
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Walmart's Exploitation Is Nothing New, So What Made Workers Finally Fight Back?
The nation's largest employer has long been the Holy Grail for labor organizers, seemingly impossible to organize -- until now.
November 26, 2012 |
Photo Credit: OUR Walmart
The following is reprinted with permission from Religion Dispatches. You can sign up for their free daily newsletter here.
Last month, when strikers from Southern California arrived in Bentonville, Ark., to protest Walmart’s labor practices with reggae beats, pots and pans, and a Latin American-inflected protest culture, it became clear to onlookers that America’s superstore was no longer the small family business that Sam Walton had founded and grown in the cradle of the anti-labor culture of Southern evangelicaldom. But it’s also become clear that Walmart’s own ambitions to become a global empire -- expanding beyond southern suburbs to new regions, and continuing to erode protections for its workers -- have brought the “family values” behemoth into confrontation with another kind of religious and labor rights tradition.
Walmart has long been the Holy Grail for labor organizers. The nation’s largest retailer, it is notorious for its low wages, lack of benefits,
abusive labor practices, and for leaving its workers dependent on public assistance while making the Walton family rich beyond imagination. And it has been nearly impossible to organize.
Until now.
READ MORE:
http://www.alternet.org/labor/walmarts-exploitation-nothing-new-so-what-made-workers-finally-fight-back?akid=9747.1117888.-mcu2J&rd=1&src=newsletter754638&t=16&paging=off
