Jay Greene Sings “Amen, Amen” To Wal-Mart Management

Jay Greene, denizen of the ultra-right on educational issues, is singing the praises of Wal-Mart on his blog. Greene attended Wal-Mart Week — what David Nassar described on the Huffington Post as Wal-Mart’s Dog and Pony Show, designed “to distract shareholders from Wal-Mart’s failure to address the chronic problems that negatively affect their image and result in obstacles to growth into new geographic and demographic markets” — and he thinks the world of Wal-Mart’s canines and equines. Nowhere in Greene’s blog do you find mention of the shareholder resolutions, reported by Nassar, which called upon Wal-Mart to address the effect of the company’s policies on human rights, to expand its equal employment opportunity policy, to report on its non-compliance with the conventions of the International Labor Organization regarding working conditions and workers’ rights, and to provide transparency on its contributions to political campaigns. Wal-Mart management opposed them all, of course, and Greene’s song is one long “Amen, Amen” to the Wal-Mart management tune. He even enthusiastically adopts their marketing slogan: “Save Money. Live Better.”

Taking a page out of the playbook of his friends in the Bush administration, Greene’s post concludes with a preemptive strike against those who would point to a conflict of interest he has on this issue: the position he holds at the University of Arkansas, head of the Department of Education Reform, was established by and is financed with funds from a consortium of right wing foundations, including the Wal-Mart Walton Family Foundation. [Greene's explanation is somewhat convoluted, but the Arkansas Times has published a straightforward report on this connection.] We actually agree that this financial relationship is not determinative: knowing Greene, he would support Wal-Mart on general principles, such as its fervent opposition to unions, financial relationship or not. The real problem is not his conflict of interest on this subject, but his mindless endorsement of Wal-Mart management with empty platitudes of laissez-faire market ideology. Inconvenient facts about Wal-Mart? Just ignore them.

Wal-Mart is a serious concern for educators and teacher unionists not simply because of its central role in the “race to the bottom” of working and living standards which has marked the expansion of the global economy over the last quarter century, but also because of its labor practices here in the United States. It is the leading corporate violator of U.S. child labor laws: it has been cited for having young people under eighteen work during the school day and work longer hours than the law allows, and for having young people under eighteen use dangerous and hazardous machinery prohibited by law. In 2000, Wal-Mart had to pay $205,650 to resolve a case involving 1,436 violations of Maine state child labor law — the largest such fine in state history. In 2004, Wal-Mart’s own internal audit of 128 stores over a single week showed 1371 instances in which young people were working during school hours or longer hours than allowed by law. In 2005, even the Bush Department of Labor had to find Wal-Mart guilty of child labor law violations in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire, although it went on to broker a widely criticized secret deal in which Wal-Mart paid a minimal fine of $135,540. Those are our students working during the school day and working for so long they can not do homework or stay awake in class.

Nor is child labor the only area in which Wal-Mart flouts the law: there is an extraordinary string of violations of civil rights laws prohibiting racial and sexual discrimination, of the Americans with Disability Act, of labor law, and more.

Greene makes a big point [it's really his only substantive point] of how Wal-Mart saves its customers money by using its large market share to force big pharmaceutical companies to provide it with lower cost generic drugs, going on at some length about how government regulation could never force such savings. Sure, Jay, that’s why we hallucinated all of the news accounts of Americans going to Canada to buy drugs, where government regulation does precisely that and the very same drugs can cost almost one-half of what they do in the U.S. — better than what Wal-Mart provides. And that’s why a panicked pharmaceutical industry put maximum political pressure on both the Canadian and American governments to cut down the across the border drug trade. Would that the American government had some of the fortitude of the Canadian government when it came to regulating and controlling runaway corporate power, among pharmaceuticals and at Wal-Mart.

But since Greene has broached the topic of health care and Wal-Mart, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the vastly inadequate health insurance plan of Wal-Mart that forces the great majority of its employees — almost 60% — to use the health insurance of their spouses or to go on government assistance such as Medicaid at taxpayer expense. That means that ordinary working people are paying for the health care costs of Wal-Mart employees, while Wal-Mart spends 40% less on health care than other American corporations, and 30% less than other corporations in the retail industry — a little fact that Greene managed to overlook when he was shouting the hosannahs on how Wal-Mart’s compensation is better than the retail industry average. [He also forget to mention that the most common job at Wal-Mart -- sales associate -- earns a salary below the poverty line for a family of three.]

But what we do we know? After all, we think that Wal-Mart workers, here and around the world, should have rights and chance at a decent life.

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