So a lot of you know that I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. Some of you may not know this. I make noises about Chinese labor laws and children suffering and the poor here and there. But I realized today the real reason why I don’t shop there. It’s personal for me. They union bust. The corporate heads at Wal-Mart hates unions. And for me, that’s personal. You see, my grandfather was a Teamster. Not only was he a Teamster, but he was framed for his union building activities in the 1930’s (when my father was just a small boy) and put in jail for a year. My father spent that year in an orphanage. Eventually the fact that he was framed became public knowledge, my grandfather was pardoned by the governor of Massachusetts, and my father’s family was reunited. People who bust unions do all sorts of evil things and I will not support them in any way. It’s that personal.
P.S. For some reason I feel compelled to add this … that because I’m against union busting, does not (in a weird way) make me pro union. I’m in favor of people organizing themselves to protect their interests, but I think that the time when unions were able to be effective at the national level has passed.