Unions Plan Big Drive for Better Pay at Nonunion Wal-Mart
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: December 11, 2004
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. and more than a half dozen unions are planning an unusual - and unusually expensive - campaign intended to pressure Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, to improve its wages and benefits.
The campaign will be highly unusual because it will not, at least at first, focus on unionizing Wal-Mart workers, but will instead focus on telling Americans that Wal-Mart - with wages averaging between $9 and $10 an hour - is pulling down wages and benefits at companies across the nation.
The unions are talking of spending $25 million a year on the effort, more than has ever been spent before in a union campaign against a single company....
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Wal-Mart executives say that its wages are competitive with those of other retailers. But critics assert that now that it has become the nation's largest company, Wal-Mart, like General Motors of old, has a responsibility to be a model on wages and benefits....
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"We're also concerned about the 20,000 workers at Wal-Mart stores in China and about the 6 million Chinese workers who produce goods sold at Wal-Marts," (AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney) said....
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/national/11walmart.html