perfidy

Wal-Mart is making changes to its employee policies, starting with a half-assed attempt to hire a few women in management roles. The article is sketchy on details, but this seems like Wal-Mart are pursuing pretty much half a solution to one part of their many problems.

These small concessions nothing compared to what a wildcat strike would accomplish (to the barricades! *sings* "Arise ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want!") Except, of course, that hourly retail employees aren't unionized and the labor movement of the 20th century has done its job and is now guarding its gains, at least where it's not run by crooks.
Even if that weren't the case the old-school labor movement cannot address the needs of today's service workers, who are more replaceable, economically marginal, and diffuse than ever before.

Well, it's good to know that in the absence of a labor advocacy group working on behalf of retail and service employees, a good old publicly humiliating corporate auto-da-fe can make things happen.