Who knows if the global economy is recovering, stagnating, or double-dipping? To most around the world, however, the state of the economy can be reduced to two simple metrics. Do you have a job or not? Is it a good job? With that in mind we’re looking today at some of the world’s largest employers, both public and private.

1. The People’s Liberation Army (over 2.2 million employees)
You don’t get to be a global superpower these days without having an enormous military. In most countries, government spending on armies and armaments is a major part of the domestic economy. Sad, yes. True, also yes. It used to be that there were no ranks in Mao’s army but, along with the rest of China, the military has opted for a more hierarchical structure. So, for a few, the pay is good; for most, it isn’t.

2. Walmart (approximately 1.8 million employees)
Walmart’s workforce is more than triple the size of the world’s next largest corporate employer (Deutsche Post, the formerly public German mail corporation). But that’s not because it entices workers with competitive pay or generous benefits. No, Walmart has pretty much written the book on how to maintain a huge workforce while spending as little as possible. Allowing unions and respecting workers’ rights–that’s not how.

3. Indian Ministry of Railways (approximately 1.6 million employees)
India’s iconic railways are romanticized by both Indian nationalists and colonial apologists as the arteries which hold the world’s largest democracy together. This is not the longest railway network in the world (the US has 200,000+ miles of track to India’s 60,000+), but the Indian government does hold a national monopoly, making it the world’s largest railway company in the same way that Ontario’s LCBO is one of the largest liquor retailers in the world.

4. National Health Service (over 1.7 million employees across the UK)
Pensions and other vital programs are being threatened as Europe’s haves borrow and steal from Europe’s have-nots. One of the sectors likely to be hit hard is the UK’s public healthcare system, the largest in the world. In a noisy session of Parliament, Labour MP Alan Johnson accused some in the Conservative caucus of cheering “the deepest cuts to public spending in living memory,” suggesting this is what they got into politics to do.

Compiled by Kevin Philipupillai and Simon Wallace

Wal-Mart: paving paradise and putting up parking lots since 1962.

In Salmon Arm, B.C., there’s been a long-standing fight over plans to build an enormous shopping centre directly on the floodplain of the Salmon River. Last fall, the city voted not to allow mall developer SmartCentres to build big box stores on this ecologically sensitive tract of land. Well, now we receive a report that a few days ago, SmartCentres started building anyway.

Warren Bell writes:

In essence, a giant developer (SmartCentres, based in Vaughan, ON, if you want to look them up) wants to build a giant Walmart-anchored shopping centre on a giant parking lot planned for the middle of the floodplain of the Salmon River, which enters Shuswap Lake within the boundaries of Salmon Arm, and supplies most of the water to the Salmon Arm of Shuswap Lake (which has 4 arms, like a giant chromosome), from which the town draws most of its water. The floodplain/wetland complex filters and cleans the water. And yes, there are several species of salmon slowly returning to the Salmon River, after nearly 20 years of local volunteer restoration work.

Last fall, SmartCentres came at this project, and were defeated narrowly by a vote of City Council. Now they’re back with a vengeance. Two days ago [on Friday, September 4], without waiting for government approval, they began dumping fill all over the floodplain.

I’m president of a small group of local citizens, called WA:TER (Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response) leading a resistance movement against this proposal — not against development, but against development there. We’re struggling along in more or less “David and Goliath” mode, and now have our backs to the wall, because the developer is moving ahead before Dept of Fisheries and Oceans has said they can.

You know the story: wreck the ecosystem, pay the fine (the “cost of doing business”), and carry on building.

Warren Bell
Past Founding President, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
President, WA:TER (Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response)

If this story weren’t so sad, it would almost be funny—it features so many clichés of real-estate development hell: the Wal-Mart rolls into town, dumps landfill all over a fragile wetland, and paves the whole thing with a parking lot. The only thing they’re missing here is a moustache to twirl while cackling in the shadows.

I’ve got a call in with SmartCentres to confirm that construction has started. I’ll update this post with their response if and when I hear back.

[Original creative-commons photo by Jadel Menard]

In August, the retail behemoth beat back the UFCW’s campaign to unionize the Wal-Mart in Thompson, Manitoba.

So why did so many minimum-wage slaves with zero benefits and job security vote against the union? Michael Forman of the UFCW’s national office points to a number of key factors. First, partway through the drive, a rumour spread that if workers unionized, Wal-Mart would close the store. In Thompson, a town of just 15,000, the loss of a big employer like Wal-Mart would be devastating. Given Wal-Mart’s record, the fears are justified. After the meat department of one U.S. store unionized, Wal-Mart shut it down (though it has since been forced to re-open it).

Forman also said that the vote was held in the store under the watchful eye of Wal-Mart security cameras. That might explain why 27 employees didn’t show up to cast their ballots. That, and the fact that UFCW had its strongest support from the younger Wal-Marters÷many of whom were away on holiday because the vote was held two days after the local community college’s graduation.

Robert Ziegler of Local 789 says he has no evidence workers were intimidated, which has been blamed for the failure of previous attempts to unionize Wal-Mart stores. Charges are pending against Wal-Mart in Quebec, and a B.C. court recently upheld UFCW complaints that the company had harassed workers during the drive.

Still, Ziegler dismisses the 54-61 loss as a temporary set-back. Now that workers know how strong support is for the union, he says, they won’t be afraid to vote for it. Under Manitoba labour law, the union must wait six months to re-apply for certification. He also says that Local 789 is pushing ahead with its campaign. A number of Manitoba Wal-Marts are close to certification. Ziegler says another location may announce a union vote before Thompson’s waiting period is over.

Julie Crysler is a recovering editor of This Magazine. Her current gig is at CBC Radio.