Labor & Economic News Blog

Monday, July 17, 2006

Wal-Mart sends employees to search for bomb rather than evacuating them

Wal-Mart sends employees to search for bomb rather than evacuating them
source: Union-Network Org

Wal-Mart has scored new low points when it sent some forty Canadian employees to look for a bomb in a store instead of evacuating the premises. This followed a bomb threat received at a Wal-Mart store some 60 km from Montreal, in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

According to the Canada.com network, the story came out as a young employee, shaken by the incident, told her mother about it. She then complained both to Wal-Mart, and to the media.

Canadian newspapers reported yesterday that many store workers were indeed traumatised by having to stay behind, searching for a bomb, together with police, rather than leaving their workplace together with the evacuated customers. The store manager's comments that any worker who wanted could have left is a poor defence. Who would really have dared to do this in Wal-Mart, with its track record of brutal employer behaviour?

This latest incident is of course incredible, but not really surprising. We remember how Wal-Mart used to lock in workers in their store overnight, in an apparent attempt to make sure that merchandise is not lost. Also here, the Bentonville multinational acted differently: Normally, a retailer gives absolute priority to the safety of its workers, not to defending its property.

Luckily, there was no bomb in the Canadian Wal-Mart store. But there could have been one.

 



<< Blog Home

 

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?