Walmart is taking out ads in Quebec.
They should have done this sooner. This type of negative press can only hurt Walmart.
However, will it affect Walmart's bottom line? I doubt it. The truth is that the reason why Walmart can offer products at such low prices is because they have lower costs. If wages were to rise the competitive advantage Walmart has would disappear and likely it would loose a significant amount of business to competitors as they increased prices. That would lead to store closures and the loss of jobs for Walmart employees.
The fact just simply is that unions have become a competitive disadvantage in today's economy. Unions increase wages and so increase the costs a company has to incur. As Robert Heinlein once wrote "TANSTAAFL" (There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch).
If it costs more to make a product, the prices will increase, and since people are cheap buggers, they'll buy less. It don't take a Rocket Scientist.
Unions should take a hint. Look at the automakers. The big three are no longer the big three. It used to be Ford, GM, Chrysler. Soon enough it'll be Ford, GM, and Toyota. And every year the foreign auto makers seem to be gaining ground at the expense of the big three. Coincidence that Toyota doesn't have a union and the big three do? I don't think so.
Unions had a good purpose originaly, to provide a counterbalance against artificial (sometimes government supported) monopolies in the market. They can help workers in those situations from explotations that would never have had occured in a true free market system. But I think we can agree that Airline Pilots that get paid $250,000 a year, don't exactly qualify as the proletariat anymore.
The reason that walmart is competitive is that much of the goods they sell are manufactured in Communist China.
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