You may remember the controversy sparked by a bought-and-paid-for poll conducted by John Zogby two weeks ago which concluded that a majority the US population thinks Wal-Mart is bad for America. Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released the results of a national poll which, amazingly enough, counters the findings by Zogby.

• 84% of Americans shop at Wal-Mart
• 69% have a favorable view of the company. (That’s thirteen points higher than what Zogby’s biased survey found.)
• 79% of union households shop at Wal-Mart.
• So do 86% percent of people with incomes less than $30,000 per year (53% do so regularly). And this group gives Wal-Mart the highest marks for favorability proving that those who value Wal-Mart most need Wal-Mart’s low prices the most.

Pew poll

There’s no mistaking it, Wal-Mart is Americas store, but they still have their detractors. At one store in Florida yesterday, a union-funded group called Wake Up Wal-Mart dressed up as Santa’s elves and conducted a protest which ended in the arrest of two union members and children of shoppers in tears.

“Unfortunately, this union leader campaign stunt went too far,” said Bob McAdam, vice president for Corporate Communications at Wal-Mart.  “Union demonstrators dressed as Santa and his elves entered a Wal-Mart and began presenting some of the children in the store with wrapped boxes.  The children became excited and started saying things like, ‘Let me have the big one.’  But when the children opened the boxes, they found that the boxes were empty. Needless to say, the children were upset and some began crying.

“When asked to leave, the demonstrators became argumentative.  They claimed that they had permission from the Wal-Mart home office to demonstrate, but, in fact, they did not.  Soon the demonstrators began pushing and shoving
Wal-Mart associates.  The Broward County Sheriff’s office was alerted and deputies arrested two demonstrators for battery and gave fifteen other demonstrators trespassing warnings.

“This just goes to show that the union leadership will stop at nothing -– even upsetting children with fake Christmas gifts and resorting to physical confrontation with our associates.  We have tolerated numerous union demonstrations and disruptions in our stores, but we cannot tolerate attacks that become physical.  We ask for the union leadership to publicly apologize to our associates, these children, their parents and the customers who were in our store and pledge that any future demonstrations will be peaceful and non-violent.

Somehow I don’t think a public apology is what the union has in mind.

Did any of the protesters stop and think about what effect their little demonstration would have on kids who saw their elf costumes and gifts being handed out? Obviously they didn’t.

In the end, the message sent by the union was received loud and clear – by the children. Some of Santa’s little helpers are really just inconsiderate people who do stupid things.