Labor Unions: Employment at Wal-Mart Like Slavery

The public relations campaign to expand the presence of the nation’s largest discount department store into two of Chicago’s most depressed neighborhoods took a decidedly nasty turn Saturday, when a prominent Democratic operative compared employment at Wal-Mart to slavery in 18th-century America.

With a coalition of local labor unions promising to withdraw support for any alderman who votes for the measure, Chicago’s City Council has for months been locked in a statement on the issue of the company’s expansion.

But Alderman Anthony Beale, who lobbied his colleagues on Wal-Mart’s proposal, claims he now has the votes to approve the new development, a measure which he argues will inject new money and jobs into struggling black communities on Chicago’s depressed South Side. The Council is slated to vote for the expansion this week.

Though the areas in which Beale has proposed Wal-Mart expand have high and sustained unemployment, union organizers say the retail giant’s wages are inadequate.

“The notion that black people should be happy to get any job, I think, is an insult to the black community,” said Delmarie Cobb, a veteran political activist and spokeswoman for Good Jobs Chicago. “As I said to Anthony Beale, slavery was a job.”

February unemployment in the broader Chicago area reached a staggering 11.3 percent, up from 9.1 percent in the previous year and well above the national average of 10.4 percent. A report released by Crain’s Chicago Business last month revealed Illinois would collect an additional $2.1 billion in annual tax revenue were it not for the state’s chronic unemployment, for which many say unions are showing a blind eye in their unyielding quest to defeat Wal-Mart’s expansion.

Despite the threats of primary challenges from union organizers, Beale said he has assembled his own coalition — one comprised of 150 African-American ministers who favor the retailer’s expansion.

Rev. Larry Roberts, whose campaign to bring Wal-Mart to dilapidated Chicago communities desperate for new jobs was recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal, told the Chicago Tribune he is organizing a picket of City Hall and prepared to campaign against those aldermen who plan to vote against the measure.

It has the making of a battle royal: Pastors versus the unions, with each group threatening the reelection of city officials who vote against their interests. Unlike unions, Cobb stressed, ministers have not shown an ability to influence elections.

“The idea that [these minsters] are going to go after the alderman, and ‘pull a page from the unions,’ … that’s almost laughable,” Cobb said. “I can tell you that in 20 years, I haven’t seen these ministers get anyone elected.”

“There are two cardinal rules of politics,” remarked a senior political operative with whom Capitol Confidential spoke Monday. “Those being: don’t anger the Church, and never, but never for the sake of everything that is everything holy, compare anything to slavery. Cobb willfully broke both.”