Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, can’t seem to catch a break.
There is a nagging trend towards treating workers humanly, including paying them a living wage, that has the Walmart Public Relations department working overtime to alter the public perception that the company is not a blood sucking tick on the face of humanity.
Think of it this way: If corporations truly are people, then Walmart is Ebenezer Scrooge. OK, so Scrooge is a work of fiction, you got me – but I want this to be a story filled with hope. Perhaps the Walton heirs will receive visitation from a trio of ghosts and emerge from their paranormal experience with a world-view where they are so repulsed by the fact that their obscene wealth is built and predicated on the suffering and poverty of the people they call Associates. – and the corporate welfare they receive to the tune of $900,000 a year per Wal-Mart super store in the form of government assistance to the Wal-Mart Associates whose wages are so low that qualify for these programs.
The straw that could break the camels back, however, is the story emerging from Ohio, which many websites are qualifying with the disclaimer: NOT AN ONION STORY where containers at a Walmart store are marked with signs asking for donations for employees .Jen Steer, writing at Cleveland.com notes: “These bins in an employee-only area of the Atlantic Boulevard store are labeled “Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner.” A worker at the store took photos of the setup and sent them to OUR Walmart, a group that pushes for higher wages and respectful conditions for Walmart employees.”
Associates soliciting donations for other associates so that those who have a job at the Company that generates more revenue that any other company in the world can have a Thanksgiving meal before they report to their shift on black Friday, which actually begins at 6PMon Thanksgiving day– this has to be the final straw, yes?
When you add this latest flack to the already well documented illegal anti-union tactics, violation of child labor laws, forcing workers to work off the clock without pay, forcing suppliers to deliver goods at a price point that incentivizes factory conditions with no emergency exits where brown people living in a far off lands get burnt alive while sewing clothes that we can then wrap so daintily in tissue paper and boxes and festive holiday wrapping papers and ribbons and bows all tucked under the Christmas tree with sugar plums and cheer in a never ending cycle of consumption that has delivered wealth to the six Walton heirs that exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40% of Americans – all of this can no longer be called living better, can it?