Saturday morning you could find these RAGING GRANNIES outside the Wal*Mart in Mountain View. The songs they were singing say a lot about why they were there. Click the picture on the left above to check them out!

The "all one people" button was on one of the Grannies, a reminder that we can't solve the problem here, it needs a global solution.

A lot of people stopped to listen for a song or two and then wandered on and went about their business. I remember talking to one guy (not shown) that wanted to know where to shop if not at Wal*Mart. I told him about getting underwear from a woman who made the stuff and sold it at craft fairs. He thought one little old lady just couldn't make as much as Wal*Mart sells. I replied that if she could make a good business that way, other people would get into the market.

Sara got the "BEST T SHIRT TO WEAR TO A WAL*MART PROTEST" Award! The fine print says it's from northernsun.com

What follows is the text of the flier they were handing out to give people a sense of the scale of the worker abuse problems Wal*Mart is guilty of:

WALLY WORLD What every shopper should know about Wal*Mart:

EMPIRE

• Wal*mart is the nation's largest company and the world's largest retailer (walmart.com)
• Because of its size, Wal*mart can practice "predatory pricing". For example, it sells gasoline at prices below what it pays to get into the pumps at 700 stores and (thereby) kills competition. (Hightower, Thieves in High Places, Viking Press, New York, 2003, p175).

WAGES

• Union officials claim Wal*mart typically pays its workers $2 an hour less than unionized supermarkets (Christian Science Monitor 2//19/2002)
• For unpaid overtime, Wal*mart paid $400,000 to settle a case in New Mexico and about $50million to settle a class action brought by employees (Hightower, p 190)
• Wal*mart's CEO made $11.5 million in personal pay last year (Hightower, p170)
• Of the 10 richest Americans, 5 are founder Sam Walton's heirs (Hightower, p170 and 193)

HEALTH INSURANCE

• Nearly 2/3 of Wal*Mart's workers don't participate in the company's health plan because of high insurance premiums and huge deductibles. (Christian Science Monitor 2/19/2002)

UNION ORGANIZING

• The National Labor Relations Board has charged the company with threatening employees, questioning them about union sympathies and firing pro-union workers at the Jacksonville location (Christian Science Monitor 2/19/2002)
• CEO Tom Coughlin "interferred with, restrained, or coerced" employees before a union election at the Kingman, AZ store (UFCW.org)
• The "Manager's Tool Box to Remaining Union Free" is a document given to every manager ( Hightower, p172)
• The NLRB has issued more than 40 formal complaints in 25 states against Wal*mart for using illegal tactics (such as threats, firings) to deny its workers the right to have a union (Hightower, p 189)

SEX DISCRIMINATION

• Women make up more than 2/3 of hourly employees but less than 15% of store managers, and they fill only 33% of overall managerial positions (assistants, department supervisors, etc) (Hightower, p 189)
• The few women who have become store managers are paid an average of $16,400 less a year than men. (Hightower, p 189)
• Women in every job category have been paid less than men with the same seniority in every year since 1997 (walmartclass.com)
• Class certification of a lawsuit on behalf of over 1.5 million current and former Wal*mart female workers has been filed in San Francisco. The motion is supported by 110 sworn statements from women who worked in 184 Wal*Mart stores in 30 states and 1.2 million pages of documents from corporate files. The suit seeks to award women lost wages and punitive damages and reform employment policies and practices. (www.walmartclass.com)

SWEATSHOP RETAILER 2003

• Wal*Mart was given the Sweatshop Retailer of the Year award three of of the last 4 years by the Maquila Solidarity Network for its treatment of workers in its retail stores and supply factories around the world.(maquilasolidarity.net) MSN is a Canadian network promoting needs of workers in third world countries.
• In Malawi, Africa, Wal*Mart workers toil 60 hours a week for as little as $14 US dollars a month. In Nicaragua, workers earn as little as 69 cents an hour (maquilasolidarity.net)
• Wal*Mart buys $10billion each year in goods from China and in 2001 moved its world-wide purchasing headquarters to China. (Hightower, p.175)

WILPF, PO Box 60851, Palo Alto, CA 94306-0851

I think these stickers were on one of the GrannieMobiles, but I'm not sure. 4239