AUGUST 8, 2019
Meyerson on TAP
Walmart and Guns, Part II. In my Tuesday On Tap, I noted that a number of Walmart employees, in the wake of the mass murder at an El Paso mega-store, had begun expressing concern about the company’s policy of selling guns (Walmart is the nation’s leading gun retailer) and allowing open carry in stores in the states that permit it.
That discontent is now ballooning.
In Walmart’s Silicon Valley e-commerce office, 40 white-collar employees walked off the jobyesterday to urge their employer to stop selling guns. Actions were also held at e-commerce offices in Portland, Oregon, and Brooklyn, and organizers also initiated a Change.org petition calling on Walmart to cease selling firearms. By Wednesday night, 38,000 people had signed it.
Ever eager to stomp on any workers voicing discontent, Walmart suspended the email and Slack accounts of the two Silicon Valley employees who initiated the action, but then thought better of it and reinstated those accounts. Perhaps Bentonville calculated that it had to deal with its tech workers a bit less brutally than it customarily does with its blue- and pink-collar employees.
The Walmart rising comes on the heels of mass employee walkouts at Google, Amazon, and other tech giants over such issues as the sale of facial recognition technology to China and the failure to clamp down on sexual harassment. Considered alongside the strike wave of teachers and hotel workers that began last year, we’re clearly entering the Era of Worker Walkouts, most of which pose demands about the employees’ own situations but also about the greater social good. Our dysfunctional labor law makes it nearly impossible for non-union workers to gain a legally recognized collective voice, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring actual American workers, who for all manner of good reasons are plain fed up. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON
|
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I now think that there are powerful wealthy people, mostly extremist billionaires, conservative and libertarian, that think making the United States Great Again means returning to the 19th century and the wild, wild west where there was no law and what we know as the greedy, brutal, autocratic Robber Barons ruled the country with a weak federal government.
In 1900, FORTY PERCENT of the population lived in poverty, 7 percent graduated from high school and only 3 percent went to college.
This is what Trump means by Make American Great Again – not for the people but for the few who will become the new robber barons.
LikeLike
I hope all he means is a booming economy with jobs available for everyone within a capitalist framework so that crypto communists won’t have an argument. The gilded age did require worker protections and finally got them with T. Roosevelt and Wilson. Worker protests should be protected, and extend to all, not just liberal protest.
LikeLike
Sorry. I am not sure what you are saying here.
LikeLike
The Robber Baron’s were stopped. But Lioyd may be right. After all, Trump named his kid Baron. Significant, no?
LikeLike
Harlan, I’m surprised that Trump called his last kid “Baron” instead of “Prince” or “King”.
LikeLike
Oops. Barons it should be, a plural, not possessive..
LikeLike
Interesting Opinion piece today that reinforces some of my deepest concerns about this issue.
LikeLike
I am not sure that the powers that be want to re-enact the early labor movement. It was very messy for everyone. Labor unions have a tradition that goes back to the halcyon days of the New Deal. Supported by a government that acted as referee between interests, they were used to getting something out of a deal for so long that they went to sleep. Is there an awakening? How will it look?
LikeLike