If you're a teacher in Washington State and you buy supplies from Wal-Mart don't expect to be reimbursed for the purchase. The
Washington Education Association (WEA) believes Wal-Mart uses exploitative labor practices and so won't be getting their cash.
The WEA Children's Fund has $50,000 available to teachers for such items as "......warm coats, new shoes and basic school supplies to thousands of students who otherwise would go without." When a need is identified teachers can access the fund with a phone call. However the union has put it's foot down declaring the fund off-limits to Wal-Mart purchases. Union President Charles Hasse writing on the WEA's
website:
A great many of the receipts members submit for reimbursement are for purchases from Wal-Mart, whose exploitative labor practices have added to public assistance burdens in our state and across the nation.
Wal-Mart is the nation's largest employer, and none of its 1.3 million U.S. employees, or associates as they are called by Wal-Mart, is a union member. (Though meat cutters at a Jacksonville, Texas Wal-Mart established a union in February 2000, Wal-Mart responded two weeks later by closing its meat-cutting departments nationwide.) And Wal-Mart's anti-union, low-wage, low-benefit policies have left its associates in need of hundreds of millions of dollars in public aid for various health-care and social safety net programs.
The
Seattle PI reports
Hasse said he's received more than 200 responses from teachers around the state, who were 20-1 in favor of eliminating Wal-Mart reimbursements. "It was interesting to see the intensity of feeling around this," he said.
Wal-Mart of course whined about their commitment...ah,you know the usual bullshit.
$50K doesn't mean very much to Wal-Mart's bottom line, but a boot to the head by Washington State's Teachers union has to be annoying. Congratulations to the WEA for standing on principal and calling BS on Wal-Mart.