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A poll conducted recently by Quinnipiac University has found that most New York City residents (68 percent) believe Walmart's lower prices would hurt smaller nearby businesses.

So that's... a bad thing for Walmart, right? Well you wouldn't know it from some of last week's headlines about the poll, declaring that "New York voters want Walmart."

There is an element of truth to that claim. It stems from one of the poll's other findings -- that 74 percent of New Yorkers think Walmart's lower prices would benefit New York shoppers.

But here's the problem with pronouncing New Yorkers pro-Walmart based on that information: just because New Yorkers think the retailer would bring lower prices to the city doesn't mean they think Walmart would be good for New York City overall.

Walmart has issued another round of ads aimed at convincing New Yorkers that the retailer will be great for the city, despite copious evidence to the contrary. And this latest media push is almost comically absurd: It's focused on how "pro-labor" Walmart is.

As we noted last month, Walmart's been on a big propaganda kick lately, sending out mailers ("You don't ask the special interests or the political insiders for permission to use the bathroom. So why should they decide where you're allowed to shop?"), a highly-suspicious poll, and a pro-Walmart-in-NYC website. The latest ads, via City Hall, say: "To the special interests trying to block Walmart -- If Walmart wants to come to New York City, let them. I know you have your own political agenda. But it shouldn't prevent hard working people from putting food on the table. That's not right." And then there are these videos of Walmart employees talking about how much they love working at Walmart.

The worker uprising in Wisconsin has been significant for a number of reasons, one being that it has turned the nation's attention to unions and the labor movement for the first time in a very long while.

It seems appropriate, then, to bring up an important aspect of Walmart's business practices: the company's union-busting ways.

In early February, it was reported that Walmart had agreed to partner with an "unlikely ally" in its bid to gain access to New York City: the company signed a five-year plan with the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York stating that Walmart would use union workers for all construction, renovation and demolition work at its potential NYC stores.

There are a lot of reasons to oppose opening a Walmart in New York City.

As we are aware, the big box retailer is a wage- and job-killer that contributes to urban blight and has a terrible track record with women's rights. Now, the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City has given us another item to add to that list: Walmart is homophobic.

As Walmart has been working hard to infiltrate New York City, winning the blessing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg along the way, the Stonewall Democrats have come out in support of the anti-Walmart group Walmart Free NYC.

New York City has held yet another hearing on whether the city should allow Walmart to set up shop within the five boroughs.

As you may know by now, Mayor Bloomberg is rolling out the red carpet for the retailer, and Walmart is eying a spot in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn.

But opposition has been stiff, with labor unions, workers, New York City residents, and some city leaders working tirelessly to keep Walmart from lowering wages and ultimately killing jobs in their city.

The latest hearing was held jointly by the city's Civil Rights, Civil Service and Labor and Women's Issues committees, which invited a number of current and former Walmart employees to testify about their experiences working for the company. Here's a little about the workers who attended the hearing, via Crain's:

The much-ballyhooed New York City Walmart hearing has finally taken place. This is the hearing which Walmart itself refused to attend, but which was expected to draw such a large anti-Walmart crowd that organizers had to reschedule so they could find a larger venue.

Turns out the organizers were right.

The anti-Walmart crowd was huge, so much so that some people had to be turned away at the door. Jobs With Justice New York reported on the Walmart Free NYC rally held at the event:

"Braving twenty-degree weather, over four hundred members of the Walmart Free NYC Coalition showed up on the steps of City hall last Thursday to oppose Walmart’s plans to open stores in New York City, with at least a hundred more turned away at the gates."

Walmart's assault on NYC continues!

This Thursday, February 3, the New York City Council will hold a public hearing regarding Walmart's plans to open a series of NYC stores, starting in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The meeting has been postponed twice: first because so many people were expected to attend that organizers had to find a bigger venue, and the second time because of inclement weather. In the interim, Walmart has been unleashing a steady stream of increasingly absurd propaganda aimed at convincing New Yorkers that a Walmart within the five boroughs will be good for the city (which we know is not the case). The company has also refused to attend the upcoming hearing.

New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has released a report finding that a New York City Walmart would have a net negative effect on job creation in the city while driving down wages and benefits for workers.

Published in conjunction with the Center for Community Planning and Development at Hunter College, the report looks at data from more than 50 Walmart studies around the country and concludes that Walmarts generally put neighboring mom-and-pop stores out of business, negating any jobs created by the retailer. "For every two jobs that a Walmart adds, they destroy three," de Blasio told ABC. "So there's a net job loss. The jobs that remain are lower paying. You add all that up, it doesn't make sense for a community. It's like a Trojan horse."

The report also notes that Walmart would burden New York City taxpayers because the company relies on government-subsidized healthcare to provide healthcare access for many of its workers and has a history of not paying its taxes.

Read this post for more reasons why a New York City Walmart would be terrible for the city.

While labor conditions in America are far from perfect, there is no doubt that they are significantly better than the sweatshop conditions faced by low wage earners in many other countries.

That is why, since the 1990s, many companies have been "outsourcing" American jobs to other countries like Mexico, China, India, Vietnam and more. It has been a race to the bottom with corporations looking for the place with the lowest labor costs possible, which usually means the worst treatment of workers they can get away with. This trend was one of the major reasons for the loss of so many manufacturing jobs in the US, which tended to be decent jobs one could support a family on. The loss of manufacturing jobs was made worse because the service industry jobs that have increasingly replaced them pay much less and offer precious little in terms of benefits.

In a surprising and hopeful reversal of this trend, Master Lock, based in Milwaukee, has started bringing some manufacturing jobs from China back to the United States. Master Lock never completely shut down their manufacturing facility in Milwaukee (which has been operating since 1921) when they moved most of the 1,300 jobs to China and Mexico in the early 1990s. And it is a good thing because they have just brought about 3 dozen jobs back to Milwaukee, bringing the total number of people working at the plant to 379. And the best part? These jobs are unionized, which means decent pay, good benefits, and respect on the job.

We've been beating the anti-Walmart drum here at the Poverty in America blog for a while now. Most recently, the fight has centered around keeping Walmart out of New York City, one of the latest targets of the retailer's urban expansion plan (along with Chicago and Washington, D.C.).

People often ask why fighting Walmart is such a big deal. After all, new businesses mean new jobs, right? And Walmart's jobs could be beneficial to struggling low-income residents, right?

Unfortunately, the reality is that Walmart spells nothing but bad news for America's major urban areas. Here are the top eight reasons why. (Many thanks to Wake-Up Walmart for the data.)

1. Walmart displaces better-paying retail jobs. According to a 2005 study, when Walmart enters a metropolitan area it kills similar retail jobs that pay 18% more. All told, average retail worker earnings in an area decrease by 0.5-0.8% (a small sounding but significant amount for just one company).

2. Walmart workers earn sub-poverty-level wages. The average Walmart employee makes $11.75 per hour, or a little less than $21,000 per year. That's 6% below the official federal poverty rate for a family of four -- an amount that is itself woefully insufficient to support a family.