Wal-Mart gets it right

By Carter Bundy

I said it: Wal-Mart got it right. And the Wall Street Journal got it right. The Journal reported last week that Wal-Mart is actively encouraging their employees to vote against Democrats, particularly Barack Obama, to keep out unions.

The Journal undoubtedly got it right. Wal-Mart is arguably the most aggressive union-busting company in recent history, shutting down the few stores where employees have bravely started organizing drives and firing many others for union activity.

It’s highly unlikely that a traditional business ally like the Journal would fabricate a story that shows Wal-Mart dancing on the edge of illegal political activity.

Wal-Mart on the money

Wal-Mart, for all the terrible things they’ve done and continue to do to workers here and abroad, is right about one thing: Electing Democrats in federal races, including Barack Obama, is likely to result in more workers having the choice to join unions.

The splashy debate is over the Employee Free Choice Act (“card check”), whose premise is this: You can join the NRA by signing a card. You can join the Republican, Democratic or Green party by signing a card. Why on earth can’t you join a union by signing a card?

Employers trot out the “secret ballot” argument, which would maybe have some resonance were it not for the fact that during union-election campaigns, employers like Wal-Mart pull out all the stops to make the elections as expensive, divisive, long and tough on workers as possible.

Justice delayed — at best

The Journal cited a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision finding that Wal-Mart had terminated a worker in Kingman, Ariz., for trying to organize (that’s illegal, by the way). Of course, it’s now a full eight years after the incident and four years after the case was heard.

It’s great to be vindicated, but after eight years? An old legal axiom holds that justice delayed is justice denied. You think anyone else in Kingman has dared to lose his or her job by organizing in the last eight years? Bring in card check, and you largely eliminate those Wal-Mart abuses.

This goes to a broader problem with the Bush Administration that I wrote about a few weeks ago with respect to wage laws: It doesn’t do much good to have laws on the books if they’re not enforced.

Sadly, with the Bush Republican NLRB, an eight-year delay in justice is about the best result one could hope for. This board has consistently ruled in favor of business and against employees.

It’s not the Department of Management

Under Barack Obama, the NLRB would be much more balanced, as would courts and the Department of Labor. Obama gave a great line about this in a speech to AFSCME’s national convention last week: “it’s the Department of Labor, not the Department of Management.”

Even if the Employee Free Choice Act were filibustered by the minority Republicans in the Senate, just having a leader who believes in enforcing current laws would be a quantum leap forward for employee rights after eight years of malignant neglect.

Conservatives are fond of saying, “We don’t need more laws, we just need to enforce the existing ones we have.” Well, until the existing ones are enforced, we need to balance the near-total lack of employee rights in non-union shops with the Employee Free Choice Act.

Wal-Mart got it right: If their employees want a choice about whether to form a union, or even want to ensure that they’re fairly given overtime, not discriminated against, and have workplace health and safety protection, there’s only one way to vote.

The China connection

As the Olympics start this week, we’ll all marvel at the massive new athletic structures and spending in Beijing. The Chinese ought to name the entire event the Wal-Mart Olympics.

Wal-Mart is largely responsible for moving American jobs and dollars over to China by forcing its suppliers to outsource to countries with no standards and regulations to speak of.

We like the rules we have in America — that’s why we’ve voted in elected officials who support things like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts (signed by Richard Nixon, of all people). Before unregulated trade with China, dog food and kids’ toys weren’t toxic.

But largely thanks to Wal-Mart and an administration that doesn’t believe in enforcing even the most basic of trade, labor, consumer and environmental laws, we do have to worry about dog food and toys. Further, the workers who produce our consumer products don’t have fundamental guarantees of coming home alive from work.

Most experts think that 5,000-10,000 Chinese coal miners die each year in fires, collapses and other on-site tragedies. That’s to say nothing of the lung and other diseases that accrue at much higher rates in unregulated China than in, say, the United States.

We make a big deal when six miners die in Utah. How wrong is it that China-based industry is getting cheaper energy and undermining America’s economy because Wal-Mart and their Chinese robber barons don’t blink at thousands of dead miners?

It’s well past time to develop trade policies that guarantee basic worker, consumer and environmental safety. In the course of leveling the playing field between China and the United States, we’ll also be helping our own economy. That’s a core value for Senator Obama.

By contrast, Wal-Mart is pushing its employees to support the candidate who will freeze the trade status quo, preserving Wal-Mart’s massive profits while killing Chinese workers, poisoning our dogs and kids, destroying the environment and driving jobs and money away from America.

Even if you don’t work for Wal-Mart or care about unions, that’s plenty of incentive to vote against Wal-Mart’s — and China’s industrial barons’ — choice for president.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.