Dear Editor:
Kristine Dillon’s otherwise excellent Dec. 26 letter, supporting
efforts to make any future Wal-Mart Supercenter more responsive to
the needs of the community, has only one real error.
Dear Editor:

Kristine Dillon’s otherwise excellent Dec. 26 letter, supporting efforts to make any future Wal-Mart Supercenter more responsive to the needs of the community, has only one real error. Ms. Dillon states that “only the workers of Wal-Mart can organize and attempt to unionize. If, and only when, the workers of Wal-Mart determine their working environment needs to change, can any change begin.”

I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, our experience around the country has been that any time its employees try to unionize, or otherwise try to improve their working environment, Wal-Mart retaliates with overwhelming force. We have ample first-hand accounts of retaliation and even termination directed against any “agitators” within the Wal-Mart workforce. Locally, one of our members – a former Wal-Mart employee – recently wrote to The Dispatch that the Gilroy Wal-Mart store manager “threatened us that we would be fired if we supported the union. ‘You are a dime a dozen,’ he said, ‘and we can always replace you.’ ”

Wal-Mart has been repeatedly, and successfully, brought up on charges for its failure to obey that the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees workers the right to join a union if they wish without such retaliation. Unfortunately, the law is enforced so poorly that employers like Wal-Mart would prefer to take the slap on the wrist than learn to live with their employees in a mutually respectful way.

We therefore respectfully suggest that any conversation between the City Council and Wal-Mart about their proposed store should cover such issues as labor relations and whether or not the company expects to respect the constitutional rights of its employees.

Thanks to Ms. Dillon for her calm rationality. It is certainly refreshing in comparison to the right-wing, anti-worker hyperbole that other Gilroy writers have repeatedly expressed on this issue.

Ron Lind, San Jose

Secretary-Treasurer, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 428

Submitted Friday, Jan. 2, to ed****@****ic.com

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