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