Fighting Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart workers are not unionized ( only 7 percent of workers at the more than 10,000 stores worldwide, excluding China and Mexico, are in a union) and have long complained of poor working conditions and inadequate wages. Now they're standing up and fighting back. The wave of Walmart worker strikes and protests have swelled, spreading to 28 stores in 12 states. The strikes began in Los Angeles and has spread to stores in Dallas; Seattle; the San Francisco Bay Area; Miami; the Washington, D.C., area; Sacramento; Chicago; and Orlando. If, over the next several months, Walmart does not systematically retaliate against these striking workers, it will embolden other workers to do the same thing. They are demonstration strikes. For every one worker who actually goes outside and holds a picket sign, you can be sure that 25 workers inside the store or in other stores feel the same way but are afraid to be publicly identified. The actions over the past few months--warehouse strikes, retail store strikes, marches, sit-down blockades and more--represent the biggest challenge by workers to Walmart’s low-wage, anti-union employment strategy in the company's 50-year history. Walmart workers are uniting globally as well as nationally. Last week, Walmart workers from around the world agreed to band together in a new alliance. The new Walmart alliance members will share information, help each other organize, take joint actions and highlight Walmart's poor track record in respecting workers and their rights.

The strikes in recent days are not like the typical contract strikes at a unionized company. They are a minority of workers, often a quite small minority, leaving work only for a short time. Organizers are never entirely sure who will drop out of the strike or be swept in at the last minute. Most of the strikers are active in OUR Walmart(Organization United for Respect at Walmart) , an association of workers at the retail giant who hope by their actions to demonstrate to other workers that group action is possible. http://forrespect.org/ Unions, specifically the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), have attempted to organize retail workers at the company—long known for both its low prices and poverty wages—but the company’s aggressive union-busting has always won the day.  The UFCW went the orthodox organizing route. There were workers who signed union cards, including majorities in some places. But Walmart was extremely good at using existing labor law, which is extremely pro-corporate, to squash it. The UFCW realized that that wasn’t going to work. OUR Walmart is a kind of return to labor formations of the 1930s. It’s an association–they aren’t looking for legal certification, they don’t claim to represent everyone. Lots of labor history takes place informally in the absence of a union.  Striking warehouse workers have organized with Warehouse Workers United in California and Warehouse Workers for Justice in Illinois; retail workers around the country with OUR Walmart—all organizations affiliated with unions, but which aren’t unions themselves. Walmart workers seem to have found a strategy for advancing their interest and protecting their rights. In a period when union rights are under wide attack, it’s a development with potential.

 The competitive advantage of Walmart is their distribution system. There are layers of subcontractors, but it’s all one system. It’s a mass sweatshop, where pressure is put through subcontractors to squeeze labor. The industry is the supply chain, regardless of who is the technical employer. One of the competitive advantages of Walmart is their ability to deploy labor in ways that they refer to as “flexible.” Come in tonight, work three hours tomorrow, etc. For the workers, this is chaos. So a serious organizing success would be if, in the next six months, workers get more predictable shifts, or if store managers think twice before moving someone around from shift to shift. Workers responsible for moving  trillions of dollars worth of goods a year through the global economy are paid low wages, often denied breaks and basic protective gear, and are employed primarily through temp agencies. In Quebec where they were actually forced to negotiate with a union, the union did not ask for wage or benefits increases. They simply wanted to give workers predictable shifts—to make it possible for workers to have lives. Instead of doing this, Walmart shut the store down. Walmart was saying, “We cannot operate when workers are sure of a regular shift.”  Workers are on the picket line because they’re trying to transform their daily existence. And that’s the core of what the labor movement does.

From here , here and here