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Wal-Mart Workers On Pistol Patrol As Law Lets Texans Tote Guns

Wal-Mart Workers On Pistol Patrol As Law Lets Texans Tote Guns

By Lauren Etter and Shannon Pettypiece, Bloomberg News (TNS)

AUSTIN, Texas — Managers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Texas have a new task to add to their list of duties: asking customers if they have a permit to carry a handgun.

To comply with state liquor rules, the world’s biggest retailer sent a written notice last month to stores that sell alcohol, telling managers to ensure that customers who openly carry firearms under a new law have licenses. Cashiers or door greeters who see someone with a gun are to alert the highest- ranking employee, who is to approach the customer and ask to see the paperwork.

“We do try to ensure that people have a licensed firearm,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Brian Nick. “We are giving direction to our store employees to ask for a license as our management sees appropriate.”

The notice was sent out in anticipation of the Lone Star State’s open-carry law, which went into effect Jan. 1. It made Texas the nation’s most populous state to allow citizens with a permit to carry handguns openly in a holster.

The measure has put retailers in a quandary, forcing them to take sides in one of the nation’s most fraught debates. Gun- rights activists are boycotting stores that forbid firearms, saying people shouldn’t be punished for exercising their rights. Gun-control advocates, meanwhile, are shunning stores that allow customers to bear arms, saying no one should have to shop where they feel unsafe.

Stuck in the middle are retailers loath to risk losing business from either side. Dozens of stores and restaurants across Texas, including San Antonio-based HEB Grocery Co., one of the state’s largest food retailers, have banned openly carried guns. That’s incurred the ire of activists who have vowed to shop elsewhere. Others, such as Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., have chosen not to ban firearms carried legally, inviting the scorn of gun-control advocates promising a boycott of their own.

Wal-Mart’s position is unusual because many of its stores sell beer and wine. That’s put the company in the cross-hairs of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which prohibits unlicensed handguns in establishments that sell such products for off-premises consumption. An establishment can lose its liquor license if it “knowingly allows” a person to bring an illegal firearm on the premises, said Chris Porter, spokesman for the agency.

Previously a shopper could have been walking the aisles with a concealed weapon — legal in Texas for two decades — and store clerks wouldn’t have known. Under the new law, the only way to ensure compliance is to ask a customer with a gun for a permit.

“Now that it’s open carry, that creates a new space that you have to cover,” said George Kelemen, chief executive officer of the Texas Retailers Association. Stores like Wal-Mart want “to make absolutely sure that the message they convey is, ‘We welcome your patronage, but we sell alcohol and we don’t want to risk losing the ability to do that.”’

Some companies are trying to walk a fine line by publicly opposing guns in their Texas stores, while stopping short of posting state-issued signs that serve as a legal notice that firearms are prohibited. The coffee giant Starbucks Corp. has requested that customers who aren’t law-enforcement personnel refrain from bringing firearms of any kind into stores, but hasn’t issued a ban, according to spokeswoman Jaime Riley. Target Corp. has also asked customers not to carry guns openly, even though it hasn’t displayed the signs prohibiting the practice, said spokeswoman Molly Snyder.

That balancing act isn’t sitting well with gun-control advocates. The Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America has begun targeting stores that have publicly opposed the open-carry law but haven’t displayed the official signs prohibiting it. The group is affiliated with Everytown for Gun Safety, a group backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that advocates for stricter laws. The ex-mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent company Bloomberg LP.

“The strongest statement businesses can make for their customers’ safety and care is getting that sign up,” said Alexandra Chasse, a spokeswoman for the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action.

Wal-Mart, which itself sells rifles and shotguns, says it’s asking customers to show a pistol permit only in Texas stores that sell alcohol. When it comes to allowing guns in stores nationwide, the company says its policy is to follow all local, state and federal laws, said Nick.

Still, its stance has begun to trouble gun-rights activists as they walk into their local Supercenter with pistols on their hips.

“I find it offensive,” said C.J. Grisham, president of gun- rights group Open Carry Texas, who has heard from members who shop at Wal-Mart that they have been asked for permits. “I don’t want to be treated suspect by a place that I’m shopping at.”

(Etter reported from Austin and Pettypiece from New York)

©2016 Bloomberg News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Walmart via Wikimedia Commons

 

Wal-Mart To Stop Selling AR-15, Other Semi-Automatic Rifles

Wal-Mart To Stop Selling AR-15, Other Semi-Automatic Rifles

Ed.’s note: This post has been updated as of 6:12 p.m.

By Nathan Layne

(Reuters) – Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the United States’ top seller of guns and ammunition, said on Wednesday it would stop selling the AR-15 and other semi-automatic rifles stores because of sluggish demand and focus instead on “hunting and sportsman firearms”.

Company spokesman Kory Lundberg said the decision was not related to high-profile incidents involving the rifles, including the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

“This is done solely on what customer demand was,” said Lundberg, confirming a report by business news website Quartz. “We are instead focusing on hunting and sportsman firearms.”

Lundberg said Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, would stop selling a class of rifle called the modern sports rifle (MSR), which includes the semi-automatic AR-15. He said that class of rifle was sold in fewer than a third of its roughly 4,500 U.S. stores.

The decision is part of a regular “reset” of its sporting goods department for the fall, Lundberg said.

The announcement came on the same day two television journalists were shot and killed in Virginia in an incident that is likely to stoke the debate about gun ownership in the United States and heighten scrutiny of retailers selling guns.

Other large retailers of rifles include Dick’s Sporting Goods and Cabela’s. No one at either company could be reached for comment regarding Wal-Mart’s decision.

Wal-Mart recently came under pressure from New York City’s Trinity Church, an investor that was pushing for tighter oversight of its sale of guns with high-capacity magazines.

In April a federal court ruled in Wal-Mart’s favor and vacated an injunction that would have required a vote on the issue at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in June.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation said demand for sporting rifles is strong.

“Modern Sporting Rifles are extremely popular with an estimated 10 million of them in the hands of Americans since 1990. Walmart’s decision was based on what its management sees as best for their business,” Michael Bazinet, a spokesman for the trade association, said in an email.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing Bill Rigby, Toni Reinhold)

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Photo: An AR-15 style rifle is displayed at the 7th annual Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, in this file photo taken March 12, 2013. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott/Files)

Stand With Postal Workers This Thursday In A National Day of Action

Stand With Postal Workers This Thursday In A National Day of Action

When a big-name retailer finds its sales in a slow downward spiral, the geniuses in the executive suite often try to keep their profits up by cheapening their product and delivering less to customers.

To see how well this poorly thought-out strategy works, look no further than the declining sales at Walmart and McDonald’s. When the geniuses in charge of these behemoths applied the cutback strategy, their slow decline turned into a perilous nosedive. You’d think their experience would keep other executives from making the same mistake, but here comes an even bigger — and much more important — retail behemoth saying, “We have to cut to survive.”

That was the pronouncement last year by the head honcho of the U.S. Postal Service, which has been eliminating employees, closing facilities, and reducing services for years. Each new round of reductions drives away more customers, which causes clueless executives to prescribe more cuts. In a January decree, USPS virtually eliminated overnight delivery of first-class mail, and it’s now planning to close or consolidate 82 regional mail-processing plants. This means fewer workers handling the nation’s growing load of mail, creating further delays in delivery. The answer to this, say the slaphappy executives, is — guess what? — to cut even more “service” out of postal service. They want to close hundreds of our local post offices and eliminate Saturday mail delivery (which is one of USPS’s major competitive advantages).

And speaking of competitive advantages, we can now buy rolls of “Forever” stamps from our local post offices, protecting us from future price increases (and mailing a letter from Texas to Alaska for 49 cents is a great deal — FedEx and UPS can’t offer us anything remotely close to that). But We The People now need to put a “Forever” stamp on the post office itself, protecting it from a cabal of privatizers and the Postal Service’s own executives.

This cabal of corporate predators, congressional anti-government ideologues, and pusillanimous postal officials is dismantling this invaluable public service, piece by piece — an agency that literally has delivered for America from the very start of our country. Yet in the name of “saving” the U.S. Postal Service, they’ve been gutting its services, intentionally driving away business. Having fewer customers will give the cabal an excuse to make more cuts … and ultimately to kill it as a public entity. This is like a boss telling workers: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

Post office workers, letter carriers, and mail handlers are tired of the beatings, so they’ve launched a nationwide campaign with dozens of other grassroots organizations to rally public support to Save Our Public Postal Service by revitalizing and expanding the services that this venerable American institution can and should provide. Under the uplifting banner of “I Stand with Postal Workers,” the American Postal Workers Union is coordinating a National Day of Action this Thursday, May 14. Workers are fed up with the deliberate degradation of this vital public service, so they themselves are putting forth a bold vision and innovative plan not merely for USPS to survive, but thrive. With more than 70 other national groups, they’ve forged “A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service.” To be part of its actions, go to: AGrandAlliance.org.

Some 70 public demonstrations and rallies will take place Thursday at post offices in 30 states — from Alaska to Florida, Maine to California. Join me this Thursday in standing with postal workers — for the benefit of all the people. Each of us can be a symbolic “Forever” stamp to protect our public post offices from the privatizers. To join this spirited stand for restoring the common good in America, you can find the exact location, timem and contact number for each local event at www.apwu.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. 

Photo: Kevin Dooley via Flickr

Scurrilous Corporate Thieves Are Stealing Workers’ Comp

Scurrilous Corporate Thieves Are Stealing Workers’ Comp

They say there’s honor among thieves, but I say: That depends on the thieves.

Your common street thief, yes — but not those princely CEOs of corporate larceny. America’s working families have learned the elites in the top suites are rewarded for being pickpockets, swindlers, thugs, and scoundrels, routinely committing mass economic violence against the majority of America’s working people to further enrich and empower themselves.

But now comes a cabal of about two-dozen corporate chieftains pushing a vicious new campaign of physical violence against workers. The infamous anti-labor bully, Walmart, is among the leaders, but so are such prestigious chains as Macy’s and Nordstrom, along with Lowe’s, Kohl’s, and Safeway. Their goal is to gut our nation’s workers’ compensation program, freeing corporate giants to injure or even kill employees in the workplace without having to cover all (or, in many cases, any) of the lost wages, medical care, or burial expenses of those harmed.

Started more than 100 years ago, workers’ comp insurance is one of our society’s most fundamental contracts between injured employees who give up the right to sue their companies for negligence when injured on the job and employers who pay for insurance to cover a basic level of medical benefits and wages for those harmed. Administered by state governments, benefits vary, and they usually fall far short of meeting the full needs of the injured people. But the program has at least provided an important measure of help and a bit of fairness to assuage the suffering of millions.

But even that’s too much for the avaricious thieves atop these multi-billion-dollar corporations. Why pay for insuring employees when it’s much cheaper just to buy state legislators who are willing to privatize workers’ comp? This lets corporations write their own rules of compensation to slash benefits, cut safety costs — and earn thieving CEOs bigger bonuses.

But who, you might ask, would help these corporate crooks in their callous and calculating scheme to rob workers of their hard-earned benefits? Why, that would be the work of ARAWC — the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation.

When you come across a corporate lobbying group claiming to be pushing “Responsible Alternatives to Such-and-Such,” you can rightly assume that it’s really pushing something totally irresponsible, as well as malicious, shameless, self-serving and even disgusting. Mother Jones magazine reports that ARAWC is a front group funded by these hugely profitable retail chains and corporate behemoths that want to weasel out of compensating employees who suffer injuries at work. By law, corporations in nearly every state must carry workers’ comp insurance, but the ARAWC lobbying combine is pressuring legislators to allow the giants to opt out of the state benefit plans and instead substitute their own, highly restrictive set of benefits.

What a deal! But it’s a raw deal for injured workers. In Texas, which already has this write-it-yourself loophole, more than half of the corporate plans — get this — pay nothing to the families of workers who’re killed in job accidents! Similarly, under an ARAWC-written opt-out provision that a Tennessee senator sponsored this year, employers wouldn’t have to cover artificial limbs, home care or even funeral expenses of on-the-job accident victims.

Also, the Tennessee bill lets a company simply walk away from maimed workers after just three years or after paying only $300,000 in expenses. Corporations always claim to “value” their employees — and this tells us exactly how little that value is.

By the way, the CEO of ARAWC also happens to be the head of “risk management” at the mingiest of workplaces: Walmart. And that’s what this opt-out scam amounts to — corporate profiteers hoping they can manage to escape paying for risking the lives of America’s workforce. Yes, this shifty move is a scurrilous crime, but it’s a crime that pays richly for those at the top. And the money can fill the hole in their souls where their honor used to be.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Webpageatwww.creators.com.