The building is due to be demolished quite soon. Asda/Walmart plan to have heir supermarket built by January 2005.

Dis-asda on the Old Kent Road has a colourful history of succcessful resistance from Authorities/Walmart. Since a group of proestors first moved onto the site in October 2002, the building on Ossory Road has been boarded up, evicted, damaged by bailiffs and re-squatted several times. The Reclaim the Future party was held there on 01/02/03. The site has also been host to an urban graffiti project, and in another building on site at Malt Street, was host a further multirig party.

Plans by Walmart/Asda for final eviction/demolition was foiled by campaigners and supporters on Monday the 19th when bailiffs arrived to find barricades, overturned car, boobey traps, etc and a group of protestors who refused them entry. Later Walmart representatives and the police were refused entry as well. As of now Walmart/Asda have placed permanent security just outside the building. But the resistance is continuing.

Background:
Asda already has planning permission to build a superstore on the Old Kent Road, Southwark, South London between Ossory Road and Malt Street with over 500 car parking spaces. The Old Kent Road already has Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, McDonalds, PC World, B&Q, Halfords and Toys R Us, but what the 100,000 people who live within a one mile radius of this site do not have are decent community facilities. Traffic, pollution and respiratory disease are at an all time high along this most polluted stretch of road in London, which also, ironically, has the lowest car ownership in London.

Please visit and support if you believe in the campaign.
For more info please visit www.ossoryroad.org.uk


Why resist Walmart? Because the military economics of their continued market expansion has been achieved on the back-of driving down labour standards

70,000 grocery workers in California went on strike last October, fighting their employers’ demands for wage cuts and other contract concessions. The workers, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), were employed by the Vons, Pavilions, Ralph’s and Albertson’s chains. The union called a strike and set up picket lines each Saturday night against Vons and Pavilions, both of which are owned by the Safeway supermarket giant. Walmart workers did not take part in any strike because their workers are ununionised. Wal-Mart's policy includes forbidding its workers from unionizing, bringing in workers illegally from abroad, and allegedly employing workers on wages below the minimum wage. At the core of its policy, Wal-Mart demands of its suppliers that they sell goods to Wal-Mart at such a low price, that they can only do so by outsourcing their work to low-wage factories overseas.

The drive by the supermarket chains to cut costs is fuelled by fierce competition and consolidation in the industry. Wal-Mart mega stores, for instance, are able to undersell the national chains by as much as 27%, largely because of their lower labour costs. Wal-Mart wages for grocery clerks average $8.50 an hour, with sharply reduced health and pension benefits relative to the company’s competitors. Profit margins have declined as Wal-Mart, Target and other nonunion entrants have captured market share at the expense of unionized chains.

The supermarket chains are using Wal-Mart as a pretext to slash their workers’ wages and benefits. Throughout the 1990s, the UFCW repeatedly bowed to the employers’ demands for wage and work rule concessions that have resulted in cuts in real wages and benefits and the slashing of jobs nationwide.

The grocery store employees are among the lowest paid and most oppressed sections of the working class in California. Most are forced to work part-time and never approach the top pay rates in their job classifications. Work rule changes which are being resisted include the permitting of outsourcing of stocking duties and allowing the operation of nonunion stores in some areas. Split shifts would be introduced for part-time workers and night shift premiums would be cut for all workers.

While the top hourly wage for a checkout clerk is $17.90, few workers reach that level and baggers earn as little as $6.75 an hour. The weekly pay for many grocery workers in California is not sufficient to rent a modest apartment, let alone raise a family.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is operating slave-labor camps overseas. It does this through its suppliers and, increasingly, in its own name. One of the most infamous slave-labor camps is that in American Somoa—the Daewoosa Factory, where 230 workers, mostly young women from Vietnam and China, worked under conditions of indentured servitude. According to records, they were cheated of their meager wages, beaten, starved, sexually harassed, and threatened with deportation if they complained. On Feb. 21, 2003, in a court in Hawaii, the proprietor of the factory, Kil Soo Lee, was found guilty of 14 of 18 counts brought against him for indentured servitude. This factory sewed clothing for Wal-Mart, under Wal-Mart's "Beach Cabana" label (as well as producing for other retailers).

“In the name of free trade and globalization, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway, and many other national and multinational food retailers have, with their supply chain partners, Tyson, Cargill, Smithfield,
and ConAgra, promoted and driven the unlawful, highly-concentrated, centrally-planned model of business that is steamrolling independent businesses and many economies around the world. These dictator merchants and processors are not only harvesting and processing the commodities off the land below the true cost, but are also destroying the independent businessmen, farm and ranch families, and their futures.” – taken from WAL-MARTIZATION REPRESENTS DESTRUCTION TO THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY by MIKE CALLICRATE.

Visit:  http://www.walmartwatch.com/
References:
The Wal-Martization of America (New York Times, 11/15/03)
Wal-Mart: An Equal Opportunity Exploiter, (UFCW, 11/5/03)
David Vs. Goliath(Forbes.com, 9/15/03)
Mad in the US, (AlterNet.org, 9/8/03)
Leslie 'Buzz' Davis: Wal-Mart threatens our way of life, must be unionized (Captial Times, 9/1/03)
Wal-Mart opens wallet in effort to fix its image (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/14/03)
Check out: www.walmartvswomen.com
Thousands of people challenged Wal-Mart to live up to its responsibility as the largest retailer, private employer and corporation on November 21, 2002. Find out more at:
www.walmartdayofaction.com