Wal-Mart Caused Black Friday Tragedy

The NY Times report below attempts to place an ethical question onto this tragedy, but misses the point.
Americans have been brainwashed into believing they are only as good, successful, and worthy as the things they own.
Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales present the facts with clarity as well as compassion. Their interview with Patrick Purcell of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 and Savriti D, Director of Rev. Billy's Church of Stop Shopping, discusses the conditions which were created by a corporate giant. Wal-Mart saved money and murdered a man who went to his job one morning but will never go home again.
Wal-Mart Worker Crushed to Death in Early Morning Stampede of Shoppers on Black Friday
A Wal-Mart employee in Long Island, New York died after being trampled to death by a mob of shoppers on Friday, the traditional first day of the holiday shopping season. The 34-year-old worker Jdimytai Damour was killed after a crowd of 2,000 broke down store doors and ran over him shortly before the store"s schedule 5 a.m. opening. Four shoppers were injured in the stampede. Nassau County police were trying to determine what happened during the stampede, but said it was unclear if there would be any criminal charges.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/1/wal_mart_worker_crushed_to_death
A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: November 29, 2008
From the Great Depression, we remember the bread lines. From the oil shocks of the 1970s, we recall lines of cars snaking from gas stations. And from our current moment, we may come to remember scenes like the one at a Long Island Wal-Mart in the dawn after Thanksgiving, when 2,000 frantic shoppers trampled to death an employee who stood between them and the bargains within.
It was a tragedy, yet it did not feel like an accident. All those people were there, lined up in the cold and darkness, because of sophisticated marketing forces that have produced this day now called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.
Americans demonstrate acceptable behavior learned during the Reagan-BushCo. years
[…] After 9/11, President Bush dispatched Americans to the malls as a patriotic act. When the economy faltered early this year, the government gave out tax rebate checks and told people to spend. In a sense, those Chinese-made flat-screen televisions sitting inside Wal-Mart have become American comfort food.
And yet the ability to spend is cnstricting rapidly. Credit card limits are getting cut. Millions of Americans now owe the bank more than the value of their homes, making further borrowing impossible. The banks themselves are hunkered down, just hoping to survive.
[…] Wages for most Americans have fallen in real terms over the last eight years. Pensions have been turned into 401(k) plans that have just relinquished half their value to an angry market. Health benefits have been downgraded or eliminated altogether. Working hours are being slashed, and full-time workers are having to settle for jobs through temp agencies.
Indeed, this was the situation for the unfortunate man who found himself working at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. Friday, a temp at a company emblematic of low wages and weak benefits, earning his dollars by trying to police an unruly crowd worried about missing out. […]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/weekinreview/30goodman.html?_r=2&hp

Wal-Mart's Ideological Indoctrination

Tell the FEC: Investigate Wal-Mart!
Well, today Change to Win, along with many other labor groups, delivered a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission asking them to stop Wal-Mart’s pressure program:
http://www.changetowin.org/connect/2008/08/tell_the_fec_investigate_walma.html
Ideological Indoctrination at Walmart?
Tell The FEC to Investigate Walmart's Mandatory Political Meetings
Help us hold Walmart accountable for the tasteless, possibly illegal political meetings held nation wide
Mandatory political indoctrination, Democrat-bashing, voter intimidation. Yes, it's business as usual at Wal-Mart.
This summer, Wal-Mart has organized mandatory meetings across the country, all with one purpose: to intimidate rank-and-file employees into voting Republican. The company's workers have been forced to attend ideologically-charged, Wal-Mart-sponsored rants against Democrats, Barack Obama, and landmark legislation that would make it easier for workers to vote for or against representation.
We have received several calls from workers, their stories are very similar and similarly unsettling. As one worker put it, "they were telling me how to vote." Another Wal-Mart worker, Beth from Alabama, was told by Wal-Mart management that if she "voted for John McCain, then everything would be okay."
We believe that ideological indoctrination and political scare tactics are completely inappropriate for the workplace. Yet again, Wal-Mart's management has crossed the line, possibly breaking the law in the process. In light of these developments, we are calling for an immediate FEC investigation into Wal-Mart's political bullying at work, but we need your help to make a real impact.
Please tell the FEC to investigate Wal-Mart's mandatory political meetings today. Sign the petition on this page [link below] to send a complaint to the FEC in your name.
Outright political intimidation may seem too risqué for a global corporation. Not for Wal-Mart. Stories like the above are actually an emerging part of Bentonville's corporate culture.
Take 2006, when Wal-Mart organized a "voter education program" for employees. The company placed Terry Nelson at the helm: formerly George W. Bush's political director, and later fired for making racist ads about a Democratic politician. Unsurprisingly, Wal-Mart's "education" program amounted to a thin veneer over strident attacks against Democratic candidates nation wide.
Why has Wal-Mart made such an effort to control its workers' voting habits? For one, The company is terrified that Democratic gains will ensure passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. For Wal-Mart, an organized workforce could spell higher wages and better benefits—two things the company has fought tirelessly to avoid.
In the end, Wal-Mart's motives are a moot point. The company has crossed the line, again, and it's time to hold them accountable. You can help us end Wal-Mart's sleazy political schemes by taking a moment to write the FEC today.
Please use the form on this page [link below] to write the FEC and demand an investigation into Wal-Mart's mandatory employee meetings
http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/feature/scaretactics/

Vote Repuglican or Get Fired

Please spread the word that Wal-Mart and other corporate pigs are lecturing (and probably intimidating) workers on the cons, cons and cons of joining unions. Wrap that up in a nice big “Democrats will make you pay” scary theme bag, and you’re ready for a gigantic baloney sandwich. Here are excerpts from the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of how Wal-Mart coerces their workers to vote repuglican:
Unions Seek Probe of Wal-Mart Over Election Law At Issue Is Talk With Employees On Vote Impact
By Kris Maher and Ann Zimmerman
August 14, 2008
Prominent labor groups are seeking an investigation into whether Wal-Mart Stores Inc. violated federal election laws by telling employees that electing Democrats would lead to passage of legislation making it easier to unionize companies.
In a letter to be delivered as early as Thursday, the labor groups are asking the Federal Election Commission to determine whether the company "made prohibited corporate expenditures" by organizing meetings across the country to warn employees that a Democratic president would back legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, which the company opposes. The groups say such statements amount to advocating the defeat of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in the November election.
Companies aren't permitted under federal election law to expressly advocate to hourly employees the election or defeat of specific candidates. The complaint cites as its source an Aug. 1 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal [here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121755649066303381.html] that reported the Bentonville, Ark., retailer held meetings with thousands of store managers and department supervisors across the country to discuss the legislation.
The labor groups are also expected to submit petitions with 60,000 signatures requesting an investigation. American Rights at Work, a worker advocacy group, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations and WakeUpWalMart.com, a labor-backed group, are filing the complaint.
Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, said Wal-Mart "adapted their unionbusting tactics to influence our federal election system."
Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar said the company's policies are clear and that anyone representing the company and telling associates how to vote were "wrong and acting without approval."
[...] Legal experts said election-law complaints against employers are rare but that the complaint against Wal-Mart merits consideration. "I think it's going to be a case that the FEC is going to have to take seriously," said Joseph M. Birkenstock, a Washington attorney specializing in election law. The key to the case will be "exactly what was said" at meetings, he said.
Meanwhile, new details are emerging that show Wal-Mart managers leading the meetings are spreading inaccurate information about the Employee Free Choice Act, according to a digital recording of a Wal-Mart meeting made by a Wal-Mart employee and reviewed by the Journal.
In the hour-and-a-half meeting, held for managers in a Southern state, the leader tells employees that their wages may be reduced to minimum wage for up to three months before a contract is negotiated, that union authorization cards violate workers' right to privacy by including their Social Security numbers on them and that if a small unit within a store votes to unionize, the entire store will be unionized.
"If you have 10 associates in a photo lab and six sign union authorization cars, now the store is unionized," the meeting leader told employees. "Six people can make a decision for 350 people," which is about the average number of workers in a Walmart supercenter.
Labor lawyers say these are inaccurate interpretations of labor law in general and the Employee Free Choice Act specifically, and that could be a violation of labor law. "The statements are not correct representations of what the law would require even under the current law," said Jeffrey Hirsch, a labor lawyer in Boston. "It would be a violation of the national labor relations act to say those things."
[...] According to the recording, the meeting leader, a human-resources manager, began by saying she was going to talk about the company and unions and "a little bit of politics," specifically the Employee Free Choice Act. The leader said that the bill almost passed last year. "If Democrats get the votes they need and elect a Democratic president, they said it will be the first bill presented and that's scary," she said.
Wal-Mart's Mr. Tovar said the meeting leader's use of the word scary was "unauthorized."
The managers and supervisors were told that they could not threaten, intimidate, make promises to or spy on workers interested in a union. They could, however, give facts, opinions and share experiences. During the meeting, employees were shown a video enactment of a union steward telling a manager that the manager could be fined for cleaning up a spill on a store floor because of the union contract. In another clip, a role-playing manager says, "When I was little my dad belonged to the United Auto Workers union. They went out on strike and he had to walk the picket line for six months."
At one point, the meeting leader mentioned that union representatives are already asking Wal-Mart workers to sign cards, which would be valid for a year. Mr. Tovar confirmed that unions are "actively collecting signatures for authorization cards now at our stores."
Jill Cashen, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers, said the union hasn't started an organizing campaign, but locals could be doing organizing on their own.
The battle between business and labor over the Employee Free Choice Act has made the legislation a campaign issue. Sen. Obama co-sponsored the legislation, which also is known as "card check," and has said he would sign it into law if elected president. Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and voted against it last year. Both labor and business agree the legislation would make it easier for the labor movement to organize more workers.
Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com and Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121867433681738991.html