A New Low for Labor
By Pat Cleary Posted in User Blogs — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
On the eve of Labor Day 2005, organized labor has sunk to a new low. Last week, two workers were shot in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Arizona, a tragedy well chronicled on the national news, a tragedy to which Wal-Mart responded swiftly and compassionately.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union runs a site called "Wake Up Wal-Mart", one of the many anti-Wal-Mart sites run by unions now both in and outside the AFL-CIO committed to organize Wal-Mart (as you'll see) at any cost. The day after the shooting, they posted an item on their blog about the shootings entitled, "Tragedy at a Wal-Mart Store" that is as darkly cynical as any we have ever seen. It begins respectfully enough: "Yesterday, two young Wal-Mart workers were tragically shot dead in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Glendale, Arizona", it says, continuing, " We would like to express our deepest sympathy to those workers and their families." So far, so good.
But then there's this, on the site clearly intent on marshalling all the negative information they can about Wal-Mart, a very grim punch line: "Have any of you experienced any problems in Wal-Mart parking lots?" The AP story appears and is followed by a comment box. In other words, we are very sorry for these people who were shot -- but hey, if it helps further our own ends, what the hey?
The UFCW should remove this post and condemn whoever wrote it. Decent union members across the nation should demand that it be removed. It is -- even for a group desperate to reverse a decades-old decline -- a new low.
It's unions doing what they do best. I've had similar things happen to me personally at places like UPS, as I've talked about before (many, many months ago.) In the prestrike days at UPS I was a hazmat responder and one day had to clean up a spill of industrial bleach that had been "accidentally" knocked off the back of a delivery truck. I cleaned up the spill and then had to deal with the Union shop foreman who tried to get me to fudge the OSHA report and file a grievance. Big guy. Very intimidating.
A soldier in my battalion had his skull caved in by some thugs in a Wal-Mart parking lot in DeRidder, Louisiana, in 1999. Not that that's here nor there.
Why is this stuff going front-page? Granted, we're not particular friends of particular unions. That being said, Wal-Mart treats its workers fairly poorly in comparison with its competitors like Costco -- something that we, as conservatives, are supposedly against. I have no particular beef with Wal-Mart (although I'll rarely go there, as I can get stuff of equal quality in more amenable environments); but I do have a problem with staking out a position firmly on its side in this particular dispute.
And posts like this -- eh. Making hay over this blog post is a bit silly. Looks to me like it was a Diary for a reason.
I like the stuff Pat Cleary has been posting, by the bye. It's always been top-quality. My concern here is limited strictly to this one post and its front-paging.
But this doesn't sound so bad. I can understand that it's moderately bad taste, but if it truly represents a "new low", they're in pretty good shape.
Given the rather checkered pasts of a lot of large unions, it probably wouldn't be an all-time low even if the unions in question actually hired the thugs in question. Of course, pointing this out doesn't exactly cover the unions in glory.
Unions are doing what the do best. No accountablilty and wanting everthing for nothing! They are truly the Anti America!!!
I hate unions. I particularly hate SEIU. As a civil service worker, I have all the job protection I need, but I am forced to pay $1100 a year to SEIU to "administer my contract". Sure. Uh huh. Right. I support without reservation efforts currently underway in Congress to make the entire country a "right to work" jurisdiction.
I went there in the 80s to visit family a few times. The Wal-Mart was the only thing worth seeing back then. That, and the paper mill.
and nobody will get shot in the parking lot?
Give me a break-exactly what is a union going to do to prevent this. Wal-mart already has security cameras in their parking lots, I am not sure what the union thinks they can do to stop shootings.