[lbo-talk] Re: RE: WMT goes orgo

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Aug 28 11:56:50 PDT 2006


On Aug 28, 2006, at 2:12 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


> [WS:] Not according to BLS http://www.bls.gov/news.release/
> union2.t03.htm, whose data show that union membership in retail
> industry is 5.7% - BELOW, the private sector average of 7.9%.

He said supermarkets, not all of retail. Food and beverage stores are about 18% of retail employment.


> I think that singling out retailers like Whole Foods has more to do
> with blue collar anti-intellectualism (your use of vernacular seems
> symptomatic) and silly resentment and kulturkampf against “yuppies”
> than any serious effort to advance the cause of labor in this country.
I doubt that. Whole Food trades on its crunchy image, but it's furiously anti-union. I wouldn't be surprised if Wal-Mart isn't trying a similar strategy - buy off the crunchies and isolate labor as a special interest (see Liza's blog post on that subject on the Nation website).

Doug



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