For those of us keeping score, 19 major corporations and 54 state legislators have cut their ties with the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Now pressure is mounting for other major corporations to join the exodus from ALEC and its agenda of voter suppression, union-busting and immigrant bashing.

Caroline O'Connor, communications director at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, sends us this. Carrying signs that read: “Wal-Mart: Everyday Low Wages,” “Wal-Mart: How the 1% Hurts the 99%” and “L.A. Won’t Be Bought Off,” more than 100 Los Angeles workers from “Hollywood to the Docks” flooded the sidewalk outside of the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in support of five Los Angeles Wal-Mart associates departing for the annual shareholders meeting in Bentonville, Ark.

This week’s reports from The New York Times that found “credible evidence that bribery played a persistent and significant role in Wal-Mart’s rapid growth in Mexico” are breathtaking, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a Huffington Post column. 

Nothing like this has happened since the collapse of Enron and Worldcom in 2002. And Wal-Mart is, of course, a more important company than either Enron or Worldcom. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the United States.

More and more families depend on a woman’s paycheck to put food on the table and a roof overhead. We need decent wages and flexible workplaces with paid sick days and family leave. While Equal Pay Day is still fresh in our minds, let’s commit to getting involved in raising the standard of living for working women everywhere. Let’s build the movement for workplaces that support caregivers. Let’s start with Wal-Mart.

The familiar world of the post-World War II South has been changing. The textile and garment industries are now in a free fall. Agricultural employment has shrunk. Urban hubs such as Houston; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; and Northern Virginia have expanded as centers of information and research-based employment. Meanwhile, the South has become increasingly diverse.

Charles Dickens's tales have nothing on New Hampshire lawmakers. According to American Progress, the Republican-controlled legislature is proposing to do away with a state regulation requiring employers to give workers time to eat lunch. After all, they argued, employers will do so anyway out of the goodness of their hearts.

He beat out some tough competition, but Rob Walton, chairman of Wal-Mart’s board of directors, is the top vote getter in the 11th annual Jobs with Justice (JWJ) Scrooge of the Year election.

Marvin Bing, a member of the AFL-CIO Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships, sends us this report.

Tens of thousands of labor and civil rights activists on Saturday marched from the New York offices of Koch Industries, whose owners have supported restrictive voting legislation modeled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing think tank funded by brothers David and Charles Koch. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who took part in the event, put it this way:

You can’t accomplish anything if you’re not prepared to fight.

The Americans for Financial Reform Conference on Executive Pay and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will discuss this afternoon a provision that would disclose the CEO-to-worker pay ratio to investors and the public for the first time. The AFL-CIO is hosting the conference.

Congratulations to author Barbara Ehrenreich for the 10th anniversary re-issuance of her classic study of the working poor, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.” Ehrenreich didn’t just write a theoretical study, she based the book on her experiences working as a waitress, a Wal-Mart “associate,” a nursing home aide and a maid employed by a cleaning service.