This Labor Day, Wake Up Walmart, along with a large coalition of labor, environmental and community groups, are challenging Walmart to live up to their PR promises and join us in supporting the American Values Agenda for Change at Walmart.
To help with the effort, Wake Up Wal-Mart is airing two TV ads in major cities. Check out the first here and the second below the fold:
The coalition includes: AFL-CIO, Change to Win, Sierra Club, Campaign for America’s Future, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, National Consumers League, AFSCME, American Rights at Work, Communications Workers of America, Interfaith Worker Justice, LIUNA, National Labor Coordinating Committee, Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Auto Workers, United Farmer Workers and United Steel Workers.
The American Values Agenda for Change at Walmart issues a direct challenge to Walmart in five key areas: worker rights, quality jobs, equal opportunity, corporate responsibility and a healthy environment and lays out the next steps for how the coalition, led by the UFCW, will hold Walmart accountable for those challenges.
It will be interesting to see what kind of valentine CNBC does in their second “documentary” film about Walmart that is being shown for the first time on September 23. The first one never said a word about all of the issues of off-shoring and sweat-shop practices, and barely acknowledged the fact that a lot of people have issues with Walmart’s corporate practices! Still it represented itself as “balanced.” No one ever pondered on why CNBC suddenly chose to make a “documentary.” They haven’t made one before or since…that is, until now with “Age of Walmart Part II.” Honestly, why isn’t the media doing their job by asking the obvious questions about who paid for these so-called “documentaries.” It’s no excuse to claim that “everyone knows Walmart has bought and paid for the ‘documentaries'” because a huge segment of the country will never come to that conclusion. Sadly, that same segment of the country, the one with neither the time nor the resources to check on the authenticity of any report, will time and again be manipulated by Walmart into supporting it’s very unhealthy agenda for the country that includes the elimination of public education, labor unions and federal regulation of corporate behaviors.