By Alyssa Rosenberg Four labor groups, the AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work, Change to Win, and WakeUpWalMart.com filed a complaint against the corporate giant with the FEC today, charging that the company's efforts to dissuade employees from voting for Barack Obama because he supports the Employee Free Choice Act constitute a prohibited campaign expenditure. Today, Reuters also reported that Wal-Mart's profits are up 17 percent in the last quarter, at least in part because lots of people spent their rebate checks on buying in bulk. The latter development means even if the FEC, back in action after months of disarray, does investigate and find that Wal-Mart violated election law, any resulting monetary fine is bound to be pocket change. Wal-Mart is able to tell its employees they shouldn't vote for Obama for the same reasons the company can work as hard as possible to keep its employees from organizing a union: the cost of getting caught is incredibly low. If Wal-Mart pays a price now, it will be in embarassment. The company probably assumed that because consumers haven't turned on it for union-busting, and the government hasn't really gone after such violations, the company won't lose face or face consequences for electoral bullying, either. It remains to be seen whether Wal-Mart actually feels any hurt from this incident, but it says something that the penalties for intimidating workers are so small and that it takes such blatant behavior to inspire outrage, or even chagrin.
