Wally World

Last week it came to light that Wal-Mart was persuading their employees to vote Republican in order to keep them from forming a workers union. This situation puts me between a rock and a hard place. On the one side I am not a big fan of Wal-Mart, but on the other side I think unions are the cause for many of the world's ills.

In the late 1800's and the ealry 1900's unions had a purpose, end child labor practices, improve worker safety, increase wages, reduce the hours in a work week and bring other benefits to the working class family in general. Now they are all about getting more for doing less. The highest percentage of "profit" for a company goes towards paying employees, really only about 5% at the end of the day is actual real "line your pockets" profit, leaving very little room for raising employees wages. Raising wages is kind of a circle of life situation; profit made should be used by a company to invest on increasing capital thus increasing value of labor and thus raising wages. Supply and demand control wages, as demand increases so do wages and vice versa. If unions affect wages to the point that they are above market rates it will cause lasting unemployment because suppliers won't be able to afford labor production.

On the other side Wal-Mart has the lower class by the short hairs, they cripple them (as the cartoon illustrates). No matter what anyone says Wal-Mart is a monopoly, you can't say that Target is a true competitor just because both of them sell shower caps.

Could Wal-Mart employees benefit from a union to increase wages and benefits? Absolutely, but unions don't tend to come riding in on a white horse to save the day only when they are needed. They stick around like the crazy aunt that wants to talk about her corns after everyone else has left the family reunion, eventually they would wear out their welcome.