When you think Wal-Mart couldn't stoop any lower in they way it uses its employer clout to bully employees, a recent story in The Wall Street Journal reports that the smiling giant is pressing its employees to vote for McCain, because he doesn't support a measure The Employee Free Choice Act, which provides avenues for employees to unionize. Tampering with employee sentiment, as in this case, is not uncommon, but in an age when people fear for their jobs, Wal-Mart should be investigated by the Justice Department.
Smails had a similar experience when I worked for a CEO in 2000 who, during a staff meeting just prior to the November elections, told the employees to vote for Bush. He also placed a Bush-Cheney campaign sign on the front desk of the organization. As an HR manager, I would have pulled that shorty aside and explained the legalities of such action, but I am certain that didn't happen. Why?
In early 2001 I learned through the Washington grape vine that under Bush's new budget, which threw billions of dollars into the defense budget (See something happening here?), the industry which our organization served was due to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding to help with testing and developing state-of-the-art equipment. Not only did our organization completely ignore the issue, but when I wrote an editorial about the matter for a trade magazine, the CEO told me to cut the editorial or at least the information about Bush because he is a Bush man.
Are you kidding me? That action should have been reported to the board, but alas it wasn't.
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