Someone has to take up for poor old picked on, downtrodden Walton family and protect them from all of those dirty hippie union thugs and others out there protesting on Black Friday, right? And of course the usual suspects over on Faux "news" were more than happy to help them out this Saturday morning.
From this weekend's Bulls & Bears, host Brenda Buttner opened the segment by framing the debate as the "war on Walmart" and asking if shoppers even care about the protesters out there if those evil selfish unions are the ones pushing for the higher wages and uses the fact that people are still shopping as proof of that.
Of course regular John Layfield agrees and does his best to gloss over Walmart's low wages by comparing them to other low-wage retail jobs and bragging that their average pay is above (barely) minimum wage and says "this is all about the unions' survival."
After playing a clip of a Walmart manager who is happy with her job, Buttner asks guest David Mercer, what he thinks of her comments and some reality is finally injected into the conversation:
MERCER: Well, I'm happy to hear from that worker. I think equally you'll find other workers that are not making, contrary to what John had mentioned, who are not making a livable wage and when you don't have workers making a livable wage that provides for an insecurity among the middle class and American workers and affects American prosperity.
And I might say that unions and labor are made up of workers and they're working in their interests to make sure they're receiving a decent and livable wage. And I don't think it's in America's interest to be paying tax dollars for food stamps to supplement the lack of wages or decent wages that Walmart is not willing to pay its employees that make Walmart what it is today, productive and successful.
Which of course was met by crickets from the rest of the panel members, who pretended they didn't hear a thing Mercer said about the corporate welfare Walmart receives and just went onto attack labor unions, pretend that there's no way to figure out what a living wage is, and that labor unions have no role in a capitalistic society.
I'd like to see John Layfield or any of the rest of these talking heads from Faux "news" try to make it for a year on that $11 an hour that Layfield was touting here as so wonderful and see how long it would take them to decide the minimum wage needs to be raised.
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