Today Walmart representatives were receognized at the White House for their effort to sell fresh food in underserved areas.
Yup, the White House.
Just a few miles away in Landover, Md., a flash mob demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T inside a Walmart store. The AFL-CIO blog tells us what it's like to work for Wal-Mart:
Girshreila Green ... is a Wal-Mart associate at the inner-city Crenshaw store in Los Angeles. She is a model employee who has never been disciplined and has received three promotions and raises. Yet Green says, she and
Here's what Teamsters President Jim Hoffa had to say about the White House event:the majority of people in our jobs carry three cards. That’s our Wal-Mart associate card, a discount card and a welfare card.According to the campaign, Making Change at Wal-Mart, even with the company’s self-touted health care plan, many workers–whose average hourly wage is $8.81 an hour—can’t afford it and a significant number of Wal-Mart workers rely on taxpayer-subsidized health care. In Massachusetts for example, 42 percent of Wal-Mart associates in 2009 relied on public health care.
Wal-Mart’s CEO recently commented that the company’s shoppers are “running out of money.” That’s a big clue that the problem with our economy is the lack of good jobs.
I urge the White House to reconsider its involvement with Wal-Mart unless Wal-Mart agrees to create the kind of good jobs that can provide its employees with a decent standard of living. In these hard times, we desperately need the White House to recognize employers that pay living wages, provide adequate health care and make positive contributions to the communities they serve. Wal-Mart does not fit any of those categories. Only by creating good jobs in America will our economy recover.The Teamsters weren't the only ones to pile on the Walmart reception.
