Every school year, teachers shell out hundreds of dollars from their own pockets to buy classroom supplies. Mary Cathryn Ricker hopes they won't be buying them at Wal-Mart ? and is urging parents to boycott the giant retailer when they make back-to-school purchases.

Ricker, president of St. Paul Federation of Teachers Local 28, joined scores of other union and community members at a rally Tuesday to send a message they will not support Wal-Mart's policies that hurt workers and the community. The event, held at the Midway St. Paul Wal-Mart store, was part of a national campaign with the two largest teacher organizations ? the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association ? who have more than 3 million members.

In her 13 years of teaching 7th and 8th grade English, Ricker has bought numerous pens, pencils and notebooks for her students and many items for her classroom ? from literature to bookmarks to bulletin board materials.

"It's pretty fair to say that teachers spend $50 to $100 just in August and at least $250 to $300 a year" on such supplies, she said.

"We teach our students about human rights," she said. "We encourage our members to demonstrate for the students that we respect a fair wage . . . We are urging our members to find their classroom supplies somewhere else this year."

Teacher Mary Cathryn Ricker addresses particpants at a "Send Wal-Mart Back to School" rally.

At the rally, demonstrators displayed a huge report card that gave Wal-Mart an "F" in five categories:

Poverty-level wages
Wal-Mart pays workers too little to keep a family of four out of poverty.

Taxpayer abuse
Wal-Mart costs American taxpayers up to $2.7 billion per year in taxpayer funded public health care and public assistance programs.

Poor benefits
Fewer than half of Wal-Mart's workers are covered by the company's health plan because of long waiting periods for eligibility and high costs - and because Wal-Mart increased the number of hours per week from 28 to 34 for employees to qualify for full-time health benefits, forcing them to wait even longer for eligibility as part-timers.

Discrimination
Wal-Mart is facing the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in history affecting more than 1.6 million female employees. In some cases, women earned $5,000 a year less than men for the same job.

Child labor
Wal-Mart agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it broke child labor laws.

Ricker said she believes most people would be willing to pay a little more for Wal-Mart's products if the company would raise wages and improve standards.

"I'm willing and able to spend $2.01 instead of $2.00 for some notebooks ? or another 15 or 20 cents on a $30 purchase," she said. "That would be a small price to pay for workers to earn a fair wage."

For more information
For the sources of the statistics and cases cited above and more on Wal-Mart, visit www.wakeupwalmart.com