About 65 people representing more than a dozen unions and community groups gathered outside a Troy, N.Y., Wal-Mart on Oct. 19 to protest the mega-retailer's impact on communities and working families, as well as to support the rights of Wal-Mart employees to unionize. The protest, part of the AFL-CIO's National Day of Action campaign, was sponsored by New York's Capital District Area Labor Federation (CDALF).

Members of the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF), an affiliate of AFT Public Employees, and the New York State United Teachers/AFT (NYSUT), were among the protesters.

The CDALF selected Wal-Mart as the site of its event because of the retailer's history of paying poverty wages and driving away its competition by reducing prices, says CDALF president and PEF vice president Joe Fox. Protesters, including PEF member Mike Keenan, Troy area labor council president, rallied around a 13-foot inflatable "corporate rat" that they said symbolizes Wal-Mart's greed.

"S. Robson Walton of the Wal-Mart empire is ranked by London's Rich List 2001 as the wealthiest human on the planet--with more than $65 billion in personal wealth," says Fox, a member of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council. "[Yet] the majority of Wal-Mart employees, both full and part time, qualify for food stamps."

For every 100 jobs Wal-Mart generates in a community, 150 jobs disappear, says Kathleen Scales, CDALF coordinator, citing a study conducted by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which continues to persevere in its campaign to organize Wal-Mart employees across the nation, despite the retailer's efforts to suppress employee support for unionization.

Last summer, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney designated Oct. 19 as a National Day of Action to educate and energize workers about the corporate greed that has cost more than 2 million workers their jobs and has drained $1.5 trillion from worker retirement and savings funds since the collapse of Enron in late 2001.