Owl Works – The Scribblings of M.T. Bass

PISTOL CREEK — The local Super Walmart was picketed yesterday by union members, protesting the retailer giant’s outsourcing of cremation services to China through kiosks in the store.

Cadaver Laborers and Afterlife Preparers local 19, representing funeral attendants, embalmers, cosmetologists, hearse drivers and casket makers in the tri-country area, marched in groups of six at both store entrances to call attention to the threat to American jobs.

“The dearly departed deserve a better send off than being scanned and shipped to some Asian sweatshop to be scorched by a profit sucking corporation,” said CLAP shop steward and mortician Wilbur Gladson. “Next they’ll be selling imported Wild West toe pinchers in the furniture department.”

To make their point, the group constructed a crude pine box coffin from lumber purchased across the street at Home Depot with a skeleton inside representing the death of the American worker.

Suspecting foul play, store management called local law enforcement to identify the corpse.

“Geeze, those guys are kind of creepy and zombie-like,” said shopper Alma Sue Wheelshimmy. “They’re all so pasty white they better send someone inside for sun screen, pronto.”

Gladson noted that the growing U.S. trade deficit with China, heavily influenced by Walmart imports, is estimated to have moved over 1.5 million jobs to China since 1989 that might otherwise be in America.

According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), “Walmart is the single largest importer of foreign-produced goods in the United States”, their biggest trading partner is China, and their trade with China alone constitutes approximately 10% of the total U.S. trade deficit with China.

A verbal commitment made recently by Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon to buy an additional $50 billion in U.S.-made products over the next 10 years has been met with skepticism.

“Just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to buy American,” said Gladson.

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