Teachers Union vs. Wal-Mart

In this match-up, my money is on Wal-Mart.

hat Tip: Joanne Jacobs

Yesterday, Teachers Unions in California and across the country started a campaign calling on consumers to boycott Wal-Mart citing the retailing giant:

for allegedly paying low wages, failing to provide affordable health care, discriminating against women, violating child labor laws and shifting more than $2.5 billion a year in health care and welfare costs for its underpaid and underinsured workers to U.S. taxpayers.

But if you read further in the San Jose Mercury story you will find these little tidbits:

Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, said the Walton Family Foundation -- run by the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart -- has spent about $250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.

Public education advocates staunchly oppose such changes, saying they will drain funds from public schools that, in California, already rank near the bottom in per-pupil funding.

``You don't solve problems in public education by taking money away,'' Dawson said. ``We can't afford to go backward.''

It is comments like these that you find the real impetus behind the animosity of the teacher's unions against Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart supports education programs and initiatives that will challenge the stranglehold teachers' unions have on education. Wal-Mart has "$250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools." Meaning they have spent a quarter of a billion dollars trying to provide parents choices in education, just like the many choices Wal-Mart provides to its customers. Heaven forbid!!

Unions in general object to Wal-Mart because they have proven uniformly unseccessful in organizing Wal-Mart employees. This attack on Wal-Mart is more about the support for charter schools and vouchers, programs that will strip the power away from the unions. So in reality this is just a power play.

joannejacobs.com: Union vs. Wal-Mart

This post in the Beltway Traffic Jam