Wal-Mart Faces a New Round of Historic Strikes…But Why Now?

Sarah Jaffe of Religion Dispatches discusses the damage to Wal-Mart’s image as a result of this week’s protest. Jaffe believes that the declining importance of Christianity in the company has been a major cause of angry sentiment towards it: “The company embedded itself in a particular brand of free-enterprise-friendly Southern evangelical Christianity that … helped win the loyalty of its massive corps of service workers,” writes Jaffe. “But the combination of longtime workers feeling betrayed by the company, newer workers who never felt that loyalty to begin with, and the fact that for so many years the company paid lip service to Christian values in lieu of fair wages, is leaving Wal-Mart vulnerable to labor uprisings.”

Read at Religion Dispatches

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