Who Does Wal-mart Help Most? Those Who Most Need Help!


by Michael McNesby - Date: 2007-04-11 - Word Count: 620 Share This!

The positives of Wal-Mart are overwhelming!

Do ordinary citizens buy into the strong-arm tactics of the powerful unions behind the Wal-Mart campaign? Could anyone favor union imposed work rules, and forced dues payments, at the expense of the millions of hard working Americans trying to get the most for their dollar?

Ford and General Motors are great examples of declining companies and massive job losses due to excessive labor costs.

In 2006 the Maryland Legislature and Chicago City Council sought legislation mandating higher labor costs on Wal-Mart.

The Maryland effort was struck down by the courts and Mayor Daley vetoed the Chicago measure.

In his veto message, Mayor Daley, a pro-union Democrat, declared that the wage law would "drive jobs and businesses from our city, penalizing neighborhoods that need additional economic activity the most."

Of course many left-wingers, despise profits. They prefer government redistribution schemes, such as the food stamp program, which instead of paying for itself, takes $33 billion dollars from struggling, hard working people, including some who make less than $10,000 a year and redistributes it to others, to say nothing of fraud and abuse in the system and the soaring costs of the bureaucracy that runs the program.

Federal civilian workers now receive an average of $106,000 in salaries and benefits, more than double what workers average in the private sector. Federal workers are also represented by a very powerful union.
The Unions Behind The Attacks On Wal-Mart

Two powerful unions, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), have pumped millions into groups they've fronted.

The groups are Wake-Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch.
Two other leftist groups are involved, Five Stones a 501(c)3 organization, and Acorn.

Acorn is a liberal activist group which registered millions of voters for the 2004 election. In November, four of its workers were indicted for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, Election Board.

Likewise, there have been convictions of Acorn workers in Colorado and Wisconsin, but it doesn't stop there. Workers from the group are also being investigated in Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Wal-Mart's Contribution To America

Wal-Mart pays salaries in billions to its employees and pays billions in taxes, to each of, federal, state and local governments.

Wal-Mart saves American households an average of $2,300 a year through lower prices, according to a study by the economic consulting firm Global Insight. In 2004, that per family savings, added up to a total savings of $263 billion.

That study also concluded that Wal-Mart's expansion has lowered inflation in an amount totaling 3.1% from 1985 through 2004.

Wal-Mart has 127 million customers who receive high quality goods at very reasonable prices.

Unions like to deride Wal-Mart's hourly wage of $7 to $12 an hour, referring to those wages as poverty wages, but the 1.3 million Wal-Mart workers, most of whom are unlikely to have a college degree or advanced skills, know that a little persistence can lead to a great career. That's why Wal-Mart jobs are in high demand. Each time Wal-Mart opens a store, there are thousands of applicants for just several hundred jobs.

A great irony of all this is that Wal-Mart, which pays an average of about $10.75 an hour, pays a higher wage than many of these unions with whom it competes.

What Unions Want and Why They Want It

Unions represent grocers, like Safeway, in big cities. These unions want that turf protected, they do not want competition from Wal-Mart. They also would love to get their hands on about $300 million dollars in dues.

Besides adding to the enormous compensation packages some union leaders receive, all that dues money could make the Democratic Party even more beholden to unions than they are already.

So Senator Clinton and others who are attacking Wal-Mart, how about going after real problems.

Related Tags: wal-mart, workers, unions

Michael McNesby is a former tax advisor, consultant and negotiator. He was a frequent guest on political talk shows in Atlantic City, N.J., discussing the benefits of the lower cost of government. He can be visited at Conservative-Politics-Infofind.com

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