cormacobear
19th May 2005, 23:54
WAL-MART, WORKERS AND THE WEB
The world's largest private employer, Wal-Mart has a reputation for also being no friend of trade unions. The company is notorious for its union busting efforts. Most recently, it closed down the one Canadian Wal-Mart store whose workers had voted to have a union. Wal-Mart clearly does not like unions. That seems bad enough. But a few days ago, they showed their true face.
In an advertisement published in the USA, Wal-Mart compared its opponents (us) to Nazis. It did this by showing one of the famous photos of book-burning in Nazi Germany. Wal-Mart was claiming that its critics were undermining the fundamental human right of all people to -- shop at Wal-Mart. Coming close on the heels of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the ad revealed Wal-Mart's true colors. The right of workers to form a union, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- that's not a human right. But the "right" to shop at Wal-Mart -- that's a human right. And anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi. The stupidity, the insensitivity, leaves one speechless.
Meanwhile, a number of North American and global union websites focussing on Wal-Mart have sprung up in recent weeks and we've published a short review of them here:
http://www.ericlee.me.uk/archive/000116.html
LabourStart remains the best source of updated Wal-Mart news on the web, with its special page at:
http://www.labourstart.org/wal-mart
We also have two newswires which allow your union's website to have updated news about Wal-Mart every 15 minutes throughout the day, absolutely free of charge. (One is in JavaScript and the other is an RSS feed.) You can read more about this here:
http://www.labourstart.org/wal-mart/newswire.shtml
[B]And If you haven't already send off the form letter at the link below, 2seconds of you time could save several lives.
[SIZE=1]
ERITREA: KEEP UP THE PRESSURE
The three trade unionists we told you about last week are still locked up in Eritrean jails. But your response has been fantastic. We need only 83 more of you to send off messages and we will break all our records -- this will be the largest campaign LabourStart has ever waged in support of workers' rights. We know that over 21,000 of those reading this message have not yet sent off a message to the Eritrean authorities. Please do so now:
http://www.labourstart.org/eritrea
The world's largest private employer, Wal-Mart has a reputation for also being no friend of trade unions. The company is notorious for its union busting efforts. Most recently, it closed down the one Canadian Wal-Mart store whose workers had voted to have a union. Wal-Mart clearly does not like unions. That seems bad enough. But a few days ago, they showed their true face.
In an advertisement published in the USA, Wal-Mart compared its opponents (us) to Nazis. It did this by showing one of the famous photos of book-burning in Nazi Germany. Wal-Mart was claiming that its critics were undermining the fundamental human right of all people to -- shop at Wal-Mart. Coming close on the heels of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the ad revealed Wal-Mart's true colors. The right of workers to form a union, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- that's not a human right. But the "right" to shop at Wal-Mart -- that's a human right. And anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi. The stupidity, the insensitivity, leaves one speechless.
Meanwhile, a number of North American and global union websites focussing on Wal-Mart have sprung up in recent weeks and we've published a short review of them here:
http://www.ericlee.me.uk/archive/000116.html
LabourStart remains the best source of updated Wal-Mart news on the web, with its special page at:
http://www.labourstart.org/wal-mart
We also have two newswires which allow your union's website to have updated news about Wal-Mart every 15 minutes throughout the day, absolutely free of charge. (One is in JavaScript and the other is an RSS feed.) You can read more about this here:
http://www.labourstart.org/wal-mart/newswire.shtml
[B]And If you haven't already send off the form letter at the link below, 2seconds of you time could save several lives.
[SIZE=1]
ERITREA: KEEP UP THE PRESSURE
The three trade unionists we told you about last week are still locked up in Eritrean jails. But your response has been fantastic. We need only 83 more of you to send off messages and we will break all our records -- this will be the largest campaign LabourStart has ever waged in support of workers' rights. We know that over 21,000 of those reading this message have not yet sent off a message to the Eritrean authorities. Please do so now:
http://www.labourstart.org/eritrea