337 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 55 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 11/21/12

Thanksgiving at Walmart: Strikers Plan a Nationwide Celebration for Black Friday

By       (Page 1 of 1 pages)   19 comments
Author 38833
Editor

Tim McGettigan
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Tim McGettigan
Become a Fan
  (15 fans)
Black Friday Strike at Walmart
Black Friday Strike at Walmart
(Image by New York City General Assembly)
  Details   DMCA
>Black Friday Strike at Walmart by New York City General Assembly

Ah, Black Friday. It's typically the biggest shopping day of the year and, for that reason, the happiest date on the calendar for retailers. On Black Friday, retailers who have been languishing in the red can count on raking in a whole lot of black. Profits galore!  

As usual, Walmart, the world's largest and most profitable retailer, has big plans for Black Friday. In an effort to attract the lion's share of Black Friday shoppers Walmart is planning to roll out even more low, Low, LOW! prices than usual. The secret to Walmart's staggering success is volume . Walmart can afford to sell its merchandise at a steeper discount than any other store because Walmart deals in much greater volume than any other retailer. Droves of shoppers pack Walmart stores in every corner of the globe because shoppers know that they are going to find more and bigger bargains at Walmart than at any other store.

It's like a magical feedback loop: Walmart finds a way to cut prices and, rather than driving itself to bankruptcy, Walmart profits go through the roof. Lower prices guarantee ever-increasing numbers of bargain-hungry shoppers. It's like the world's greatest a win-win strategy. Shoppers get their bargains, Walmart gets it profits, and everybody ends up better off in the end.

Or do they?

There is a tragic chink in Walmart's "populist" armor. While there is no doubt that Walmart loves to deliver severely discounted products to its customers, in order to maximize discounts, Walmart is infamously stingy with its employees. Actually, stingy is too generous a term: when it comes to caring for its employees, Walmart is like Ebeneezer Scrooge on steroids. Walmart's legendary miserliness includes such things as:

You've gotta be kidding me!?! That takes the cake: Overworked and underpaid Walmart employees have got to apply for welfare to supplement their pitiful Walmart earnings, while Walmart executives rake in record profits. Something is seriously wrong with that equation. Walmart execs might think that they have discovered the golden goose, but I'll bet that more than a few of them are in line for ghostly visits from Jacob Marley. 

One may well wonder why the world's most profitable company should be so tightfisted with its employees. I mean, if Walmart is raking in bigger profits than any other company, can't it at least afford to pay its employees a living wage?

Here's where we can draw another lesson from Charles Dickens: Scrooge had plenty of money. He could easily have given poor old Bob Cratchit a raise and still slept on a mattress stuffed with cash. It's just that the bad old, unenlightened Scrooge didn't want to share. The evil Scrooge only cares about one thing: he wants all the profits to end up in his pocket. Scrooge doesn't care about the misery that his profiteering causes. So long as Scrooge ends up with more money in his pockets, the needy can rot and die for all he cares.   

Are there no prisons ? Are there no workhouses?

Walmart has succeeded in maximizing profits for its Scroogey executives by waging a perennial battle against labor unions. The trick to exploiting labor is to keep workers poor and disorganized. Unions, however, have the opposite influence on workers. With the help of unions, workers become better organized and, thereby, improve their negotiating power. Thus, the last thing that Walmart Executives want is unionized employees. If Walmart's workforce unionizes, the next thing you know employees will be asking for living wages, an end to working off-the-clock, health benefits, etc.

How are Walmart executives supposed to afford their vacation homes in The Caymans if Walmart employees demand a fair day's wages for a fair day's work?

Trade unions have been in retreat ever since the US began deindustrializing in the 1970s. Many have predicted a final end to trade unions as the postindustrial society has increasingly come to dominate the US economy. And with the demise of trade unions, profiteering service sector corporations have gleefully hammered one nail after another in the coffin of workers rights. Yet, against all odds, out of the ashes if the industrial trade union movement, a new spectre is emerging. The same spirit that emboldened industrial trade unionists in the first half of the twentieth century has returned to infuse new life into the fledgling activism of postindustrial workers. While that populist spirit has succeeded in sparking new hope among a new era of downtrodden wage laborers, the spectre remains frightening and loathsome to the Scrooges who still lust after every penny of profit that they can squeeze out of their bedraggled employees.

Will the Scrooges ever realize that they, in fact, have more to gain from the return of this spirit than anyone? (Hint: There's more to life than amplifying the misery of the poor.)

God bless the courageous Walmart employees who will risk their jobs when they join the Black Friday strike on Walmart. God bless the Walmart executives who value profit over every other "immaterial" value: health, happiness, generosity, fraternity.

God bless us everyone.


Thanks to the New York General Assembly for the image.
http://www.nycga.net/events/black-friday-strike-against-walmart/

Well Said 3   Valuable 2   Must Read 1  
Rate It | View Ratings

Tim McGettigan Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Prof Tim teaches sociology at CSU-Pueblo and he writes books about social change, such as... A Formula for Eradicating Racism, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/113759974X

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Follow Me on Twitter     Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter

Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Stephen Hawking's God: A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion

Elementary My Dear Watson! The Beauty (and Baloney) of Being Right about Everything

Many Worlds, but only One Reality: Stephen Hawking and the Determinist Fallacy

It's Alive!! Ray Kurzweil, AI, and Frankentelligence

Feynman's Cosmic Onion

Einstein's God is Irrelevant

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend