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Walmart Strike in Seattle, November 15, 2012.
Walmart, trying to change the subject in advance of protests and strikes at the outset of the holiday shopping season, has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food and Commercial Workers union, arguing that UFCW is illegally attempting to disrupt its business.
A non-union coalition of Walmart workers called OUR Walmart has taken the lead on organizing the recent historic labor actions, which included the first strikes in the company’s 50-year history. Members pay OUR Walmart $5 in monthly dues, but the coalition has not attempted to unionize or collectively bargain for associates on a labor contract. All of their actions to date have sought to raise awareness over erratic hours, low wages, lack of benefits and retaliation for speaking out on these issues.
But Walmart claims that UFCW is behind OUR Walmart and has organized the protests themselves. There are links between the group and the union, but OUR Walmart claims no direct association:
OUR Walmart and another group, Making Change at Walmart, are affiliated with the UFCW, which represents more than 1 million workers including many at retailers that compete with Walmart. According to a filing with the Labor Department, OUR Walmart was a subsidiary of the UFCW as of 2011.
Walmart worker and OUR Walmart member Mary Pat Tifft told Reuters that OUR Walmart is an independent organization that gets technical support from the union but that the UFCW has no stake or controlling interest in the group.
The NLRB is obligated, after the filing, to investigate the charges, but it would involve probing the funding sources, organizational hierarchy and decision-making process of OUR Walmart. The case turns on the technical differences between OUR Walmart being an affiliate of the UFCW or merely supported by them. The retail giant also objects to non-employees coming on their private property to hand out literature and demonstrate, which looks to me like a free speech issue.
Meanwhile, Walmart workers struck in Seattle and Dallas in the past week. Laura Clawson points out that the dichotomy between Walmart dismissing the labor actions as part of a small minority and also filing this unfair labor practice charge to shut down additional actions before they occur is pretty revealing. Anytime a massive retailer runs to the National Labor Relations Board for relief, you have to laugh, too. I thought they didn’t believe in the NLRB?
Photo by OURWalmart under Creative Commons license.
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“…arguing that UFCW is illegally attempting to disrupt its business.”
As a Wal-Mart shopper I was very vocal this morning in Wal Mart expressing my disgust openly at the treatment of Wal-mart employees.
Not pulling any punches I spoke my mind to a clerk with a manager glaring right at me as I was checking out. I turned and asked him if he had a problem with my comments. He did not respond and had fear in his eyes, as the rest of the employees smiled at me. No answer, I asked? What the matter, corporate got your nuts in a vise? Have a nice day I said and he smiled. I smiled back. No silent German here, I said! “You folks are getting fucked.” As I walked out someone commented, that guys has balls, another commented he’s right, another said right on brother. Nothing the “demographics” of the Wal Mart employees I see often, I said these folks are being bullied by corporate scum and are being clearly taken advantage of and need help.
So when you shop. Express your opinion loud. Let folks hear it and make them sweat….. They won’t bother you cause they want your money and be prepared to drop a “fucker” if need be…
Except without a national and conspicuous boycott of Wal-Mart goods and services, Wal-mart will never change. You may feel better about speaking your mind, you may have other customers vocally sympathize and you may have done little more sweat the checker and upset the manager of a store at which you still spent money. Now the manager will be watching that checker closely for any sign of red agitation or labor unrest; making the checker's life unpleasant.
Wal-Mart is used to haters and doesn't care what you said at all as long as those dollars keep getting vacuumed into their bulging coffers. What do you think happened? the manager called the corporate and said a customer was very serious! about its labor practices and use profanity to boot? No.
It does not take balls to swear in front of a Wal-Mart cash register operator.
I wish the employees of Wal-mart the best in a Black Friday Strike. I think nothing will change unless we, as consumers of their product, also inform Wal-Mart we are not shopping there until things change, and we then actually do not shop there until they do.
Not a WM shopper, but will be there with the union on Friday. Very conscious of our actions on a very stressful day for the workers.
Very nicely done, JJ. If one has to shop Walmart at all, that’s the way to do it.
Wal-Mart files unfair labor practice complaint………………..irony lives.
I know it is difficult for many, but stop buying at WM. There are other solutions.
The blacks stop taking busses after the Rosa Parks incident and things began to change. The only way to solve a problem is hurt their pocketbook!
Wait. What? Isn’t that what a strike is SUPPOSED to do?! So, Walmart’s argument claims that “help” is against the law? Nice. I hope all the Waltons shit in bed tonight.
Yes I got value for my buck! Why pay three times more for something at JC PENNY, made in China, like Wal-Mart
Secondly maybe someone else will have the balls to express their opinion as a shopper. That give’s you standing. If they don’t like it piss on them.
Third, I did not do it for me. This is a war friend. In war you don’t take your personal safety into consideration. Unless you are a coward. However, I’m not going to run into a hail of machine gun fire without first sending mortars and tossing a few hand grenades to silence the machine gun nest? Which is what Wal-Mart has done preemptively by filing this suit. Maybe Sam will have his Carnegie moment and give it all away. Mammon rules…….
“Bribe the Butler,” to lace the drinking water with some odorless tasteless, prune juice concentrate. Helps to enable *hitheads to purge themselves of toxin and poisons which negatively effect cognitive reasoning abilities? A “Kodak” moment, having “shat,” themselves profusely. Always a humbling moment, for even affluent, “shatheads.”
Setting up benevolent organization, to help people is a good thing, and a nice tax write off for billionaires. I don’t quite get it! Paying people a living wage with, with access to health services providing a decent standard of living would be in the corporation’s interest also. Like Ford stated; “My workers have to be able to buy the product they make.” Well in America today after car payment and insurance, fuel, Mortgage/rent payment, now mandate health insurance, food, Americans have nothing left to purchase anything, but a little booze and pills to ease the pain of our leveraged servitude to corporate America, after all the American jobs where rounded up like cattle, and sent to slaughter…..
The better way to punish Walmart and it’s business practices is to buy American made products. That and continued pressure to unionize. I’m union and Walmart damages my bargaining position by driving wages down and eliminating benefits that unions fought and in many cases died to acquire through collective bargaining. Big business fears the masses they use to accumulate massive wealth.We, those that work in those businesses, are the working capital that makes wealth possible.Somewhere along way business decided that that contract with labor could be broken and labor would make very nice medieval serfs. Support labor and boycott Walmart black Friday.