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   Hillary Clinton was on Wal-Mart’s board of directors

   WARD HARKAVY, VILLAGE VOICE, 2000 - Twice in three days last week, Hillary
   Rodham Clinton basked in the adulation of cheering union members. Her
   record
   of supporting collective bargaining, however, is considerably worse than
   wobbly. Pity the thousands of unionists at last Tuesday’s state Democratic
   convention who chanted her name, and the hundreds of retired Teamsters at
   Thursday’s luncheon in midtown who had interrupted their Founder’s Day meal

   to hear the corporate litigator turned union-loving Democrat deliver a
   campaign speech.

   They would have dropped their forks if they had heard that Hillary served
   for six years on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, a union-busting
   behemoth. If they had learned the details of her friendship with Wal-Mart,
   they might have lost their lunches. . . In 1986, when Hillary was first
   lady
   of Arkansas, she was put on the board of Wal-Mart. Officials at the time
   said she wasn’t filling a vacancy. In May 1992, as Hubby’s presidential
   campaign heated up, she resigned from the board of Wal-Mart. Company
   officials said at the time that they weren’t going to fill her vacancy.

   So what the hell was she doing on the Wal-Mart board? According to press
   accounts at the time, she was a show horse at the company’s annual meetings

   when founder Sam Walton bused in cheering throngs to celebrate his
   non-union
   empire, which is headquartered in Arkansas, one of the country’s poorest
   states. According to published reports, she was placed in charge of the
   company’s “green” program to protect the environment. But nobody got
   greener
   than Sam Walton and his family. For several years in the ’80s, he was
   judged
   the richest man in America by Forbes magazine. . .

   Was Hillary the voice of conscience on the board for American and foreign
   workers? Contemporary accounts make no mention of that. They do describe
   her
   as a “corporate litigator” in those days, and they mention, speaking of
   environmental matters, that she also served on the board of Lafarge, a
   company that, according to a press account, once burned hazardous fuels to
   run its cement plants. . .

   The Clintons depended on Wal-Mart’s largesse not only for Hillary’s regular

   payments as a board member but for travel expenses on Wal-Mart planes and
   for heavy campaign contributions to Bill’s campaigns there and nationally.

   Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s first lady, who also benefited from Wal-Mart stock,
   solicits support from union workers. Which makes her words to the elderly
   Teamsters last week especially poignant: “You can count on me to stand up
   for the right to collectively bargain!” Right on, sister!

   Comment by Curtis Johnson — 2/10/2006 @ 10:01 pm

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