Neither of your links work. One goes nowhere, the other you must create an account and become a member.. So, here's the story dug up from elsewhere:
<i> Posted on Wed, Aug. 10, 2005
M O R E N E W S F R O M topix.net
Education
Retail
School Vouchers
Wal Mart Stores
Teachers unions target Wal-Mart
COMPANY ALLEGEDLY UNDERMINES PUBLIC EDUCATION
By Chuck Carroll
Mercury News
Members of teachers' unions from San Jose and across the country launched a campaign today urging consumers not to buy their back-to-school supplies at Wal-Mart, accusing the country's biggest retailer of anti-education policies.
In San Jose, members of the National Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association were joined by Democratic state Assembly members Joe Coto and Sally Lieber at Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School -- just down the road from a Wal-Mart on Story Road.
<b>About 20 teachers handed out ``report cards'' to reporters that gave Arkansas-based Wal-Mart failing grades for allegedly paying low wages, failing to provide affordable health care, discriminating against women, violating child labor laws and shifting more than $2.5 billion a year in health care and welfare costs for its underpaid and underinsured workers to U.S. taxpayers.</b>
Coto, D-San Jose, said if enough people heed the call to buy their back-to-school supplies elsewhere in the next few weeks, Wal-Mart will feel the pinch.
``It's important for us to let them know the damage that they do,'' he said.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin responded today that its customers would see through the campaign's ``publicity stunt,'' and recognize it as a ``smear campaign'' against a company with an ``unshakable commitment to education.''
Wal-Mart is the largest publicly traded company in the world.
Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, said the Walton Family Foundation -- run by the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart -- has spent about $250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.
Public education advocates are staunchly oppose such changes, saying they will drain funds from public schools that, in California, already rank near the bottom in per-pupil funding.
``You don't solve problems in public education by taking money away,'' Dawson said. ``We can't afford to go backward.''
To Coto, the former superintendent of the East Side Union High School District, Wal-Mart's wage and benefits policies mean too many kids are going to school hungry and with undiagnosed or untreated health problems that make it more difficult to for them learn.
Similar news conferences were scheduled in 33 other cities and in 24 states. Consumers were urged to log onto
www.wakeupwalmart.com to find out more about the campaign. The ``Send Wal-Mart Back to School'' campaign was started by the United Food and Commercial Workers union and is backed by the teachers unions, which claim about 3 million members.
Wal-Mart strongly denied being anti-education. ''This year alone in the state of California, we have given over $200,000 to honor teachers of the year in our communities, and we have given scholarships to 347 high school seniors, for a total of over $350,000,'' said spokeswoman Lin.
''Through low prices -- like 25-cent crayons -- and substantial support for local education, students are our priority, not politics. Isn't it time the teachers' unions do the same?''
Wal-Mart said it gave more than $45 million to education initiatives last year, including scholarships and grants to public school teachers. ``We continue to be one of the nation's largest supporters of teachers and education.''
Wal-Mart said interested teachers and customers should go to
www.walmartfacts.com to see how it supports education.
At the nearest Wal-Mart to the San Jose school, the store on Story Road, two customers said they hadn't heard the complaints about Wal-Mart's policies before today.
Marycruz Villagomez, a mother with children in public school, said she had been planning to do her back-to-school shopping at Wal-Mart because the price is right. After she heard about the numbers behind the anywhere-but-Wal-Mart campaign, she wavered. ``I'm thinking here,'' she said, pointing to Wal-Mart, ``but maybe I'm going to change my mind.''
Villagomez said she might go to an office supply store that's offering a percentage of its profits on school supplies to a school of the customer's choice.
Frances Delgado, a mother of four school-age children, was more skeptical. ``I don't believe everything I hear," she said, adding that she had no intention of shopping somewhere else.
``Sometimes whoever has the lowest prices is what's best, and right now, Wal-Mart has the best prices.''</i>
Sounds like nothing more than the tripe that was posted by you against Wal-Mart last time.. Low benefits, bad healthcare..
Again, WTH do you want for someone doing a job that requires no skills, social, or otherwise?
