How Walmart got government support, despite union pleas

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/23/white_house_rebuffed_union_pleas_to_ditch_walmart/

Monday, Sep 23, 2013 09:55 AM CST

Labor leader says allies in the Administration tried to persuade First Lady to dump retail giant -- but were denied
By Josh Eidelson




The White House disregarded union pleas not to hold public events promoting Walmart, according to the main union backing protests against the retail giant.

Since President Obama’s first term, administration officials have joined Walmart executives for events devoted to issues ranging from boosting U.S. manufacturing to hiring returning veterans, including a series of appearances by First Lady Michelle Obama touting Walmart’s role in providing healthy and affordable food. A Walmart press release following a February 28 event at a Springfield, Missouri store quoted the First Lady saying that while before “the conventional wisdom said that healthy products simply didn’t sell…Thanks to Walmart and so many other great American businesses, we are proving the conventional wisdom wrong.”

“It irritates me,” Joe Hansen, the president of the 1.3 million-member United Food & Commercial Workers union, told Salon in a recent interview.

Hansen said that a few years ago, when the UFCW first received word that the First Lady planned to do a Walmart event, “We thought we could ask them not to do it, and we had allies in the administration at the time – we still do, I think, but the ones we had then – and they could not persuade her.” Hansen said the First Lady had “decided that it was more important [to promote] what she considers this healthy food, which really irritates me because you can get just as healthy food in Safeway and Kroger and other places.”

FULL story at link.