{"id":51525,"date":"2013-07-19T08:19:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T07:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/dont-fall-for-wal-marts-latest-hypocrisy\/51525\/"},"modified":"2013-07-19T14:29:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T13:29:34","slug":"dont-fall-for-wal-marts-latest-hypocrisy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/dont-fall-for-wal-marts-latest-hypocrisy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Fall for Wal-Mart\u2019s Latest Hypocrisy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, amid the flap enveloping disgraced celebrity chef Paula Deen, Wal-Mart put on a face of corporate responsibility. \u201cWe are ending our relationship with Paula Deen Enterprises and we will not place new orders beyond those already committed,\u201d its official statement<\/a>\u00a0read.<\/p>\n

Yet, behind the appearances of zero tolerance for the kind of hostile work environment \u2013 rife with racial slurs, discrimination and harassment \u2014 that Deen allegedly<\/a>\u00a0fostered, was a deep irony. Wal-Mart, like Deen, was engaging in its own bullying right around the same time.<\/p>\n

Just days before ditching the TV personality, Wal-Mart was busy entering into a standoff with the Washington, D.C., City Council over its proposal for a living wage law. In a Washington Post Op-Ed titled \u201c The D.C. Council Has Forced Our Hand<\/a>,\u201d Wal-Mart regional manager Alex Barron penned the corporation\u2019s intention to close three of six planned superstores if the council voted and passed<\/a>\u00a0the bill that would raise D.C.\u2019s minimum wage to $12.50 per hour.<\/p>\n

The move to intimidate the D.C. Council should come as no surprise as the nation\u2019s largest retailer refuses to allow its workers to unionize, hindering their rights to fair wages. Wal-Mart\u2019s promise to bring \u201ceveryday low prices\u201d and jobs to cities across the nation comes at a high price. Studies show approximately 80 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Wal-Mart employees are forced to use food stamps and cost taxpayers an average of $1.02 billion<\/a>\u00a0in healthcare costs annually.<\/p>\n

While Wal-Mart claims the hike in minimum wage would compromise its ability to create 1,200 D.C. jobs, its competitor Costco<\/a>\u00a0disproves the theory that corporations cannot pay livable wages and earn profits. Wal-Mart workers typically earn $8.81 per hour in contrast to the average Costco worker\u2019s $21.96 an hour and most are eligible for benefits.<\/p>\n

D.C. Council approved<\/a>\u00a0the proposal for six superstores under the condition that it would not drain government resources, a commitment to D.C. residents that Wal-Mart does not seem to fully respect.<\/p>\n

\n

A predominantly African-American city, affectionately nicknamed \u201cChocolate City,\u201d Washington may potentially have more to risk than the acquisition of 1,000 low-paying Wal-Mart jobs. The retail giant possesses a long history of workplace discrimination and support for conservative advocacy groups that produce model legislation, which undercuts the rights of black and brown communities.<\/p>\n

Since the mid-1990s, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed about 60 employment discrimination lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0against Wal-Mart. As recently as 2009, a federal judge awarded a $17.5 million settlement<\/a>\u00a0to African-American truck drivers who sued the company, claiming racial bias in its hiring practices from 2001 to 2008. And in 2011 the Supreme Court dismissed a class action suit of gender discrimination originated by former African-American Wal-Mart employee Betty Dukes, deciding Dukes v. Wal-Mart<\/a>\u00a05-to-4 and leaving advocates to fear that the corporate powerhouse was \u201ctoo big to sue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until May 2012, Wal-Mart was one of the American Legislative Executive Council\u2019s (ALEC) wealthiest corporate members. ALEC<\/a>\u00a0emerged at the forefront of American politics in recent years as its support for stringent laws that negatively impact communities of color. Restrictive voter registration laws crafted by ALEC became a focal point of the 2012 campaign as millions of Democratic-leaning African-American, Latino and elderly voters without state identification were in danger of voter disenfranchisement.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the gun retailer championed ALEC\u2019s introduction of \u201c Stand Your Ground<\/a>\u201d legislation that was used to acquit Trayvon Martin\u2019s killer, George Zimmerman, and convict<\/a>domestic violence survivor Marissa Alexander.<\/p>\n

In fact, if Paula Deen wants to follow a blueprint of how to rebuild a tarnished reputation, she can simply follow the distributor that cut ties with her. Wal-Mart has undergone rigorous image rehabilitation in the face of numerous discrimination suits. For the past decade it has covered its transgressions by promoting diversity trainings, purchasing from minority-owned businesses and awarding corporate bonuses to the hires of people of color. Yet in spite of its efforts, discrimination suits continue, along with labor strikes and calls for mass boycotts from groups such as the Wal-Mart Strikers, Our Wal-Mart<\/a>\u00a0and the Global Union Wal-Mart Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Republished with permission from: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, amid the flap enveloping disgraced celebrity chef Paula Deen, Wal-Mart put on a face of corporate responsibility. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are ending our relationship with Paula Deen Enterprises and we will not place new orders beyond those already committed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d its official statement read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-51525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}