The writing is on the Wal-Mart–or Mao-Mart, as some of my friends like to call it, thus slandering a certain Chinese chairman of yore.
Retail giant Wal-Mart is “bad for America”, according to a poll carried out on behalf of a group campaigning against the store.
The poll, conducted by Zogby for a union-led group called WakeUpWalMart, asked 1,012 people across the US about their attitudes to Wal-Mart.
Of the respondents, 59% said they agreed with the statement that “Wal-Mart is bad for America”.
And why do I say it’s slander to the chairman to refer to this retail sweatshop as Mao-Mart? Well,
Wal-Mart retorted that its opponents were clutching at straws.
“This poll is another way for them to reach out for something to try to validate their efforts, because they don’t have anything else to hang their hat on,” a spokeswoman told Reuters.
Brrrrrr. That’s cold–colder than Heilongjiang Province at this time of year. After all, at least Mao Zedong was able to mouth positive-sounding rhetoric about all the workers his policies killed.
Meanwhile, Mall-Wart is facing a slew of other problems: they just lost a class-action suit by workers forced to work during breaktime; female workers are suing for sexual discrimination; undocumented immigrants were used and abused; and of course, there’s the inescapable fact that many workers also need food stamps and other welfare measures to make ends meet, even when working full-time. This company is sucking the taxpayers dry. I bet they don’t pay into the system they’re taking such shameless advantage of, either.
If this is “good for America”, I’d hate to see what they call bad.
