Barred From Unionizing, Wal-mart Workers Form New Group To Fight For Better Conditions

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/21/245774/walmart-non-union-group/

Yesterday, the Supreme Court sided with Wal-mart in an enormous employment discrimination suit that denied 1.5 million female workers the chance to form a class action to sue the company for billions in damages for discriminatory pay and promotion practices. Walmart’s triumph is just the latest in the corporation’s decades-long campaign to prevent workers from banding together to fight for fair pay and decent working conditions. The corporation’s union-busting has become notorious, along with directly connecting to their sexist practices, appalling working conditions, and menial wages.

For more than 20 years, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the nation’s main union for retail workers, has been trying to help organize Wal-mart employees. Repeatedly prevented from forming unions, employees are now trying the non-union organizing route, with UFCW’s help. The New York Times reported last week on the “innovative” new group:

The group, Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart for short, says it has quietly signed up thousands of members in recent months, and it is going public this week with a Web site, ourwalmart.org, and a Facebook page. Organizers say they have more than 50 members at some stores, and they hope to soon have tens of thousands of members. Wal-Mart has nearly 1.4 million workers nationwide.

In recent weeks, OUR Walmart has organized gatherings of 10 to 80 workers in Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles and other cities…One big concern, they said, was low wages.


more at link

the elections have failed? So keep organizing. Don't settle for some half-assed group that speaks truth to power and sends firmly worded petitions. DO something. I find this bizarre and a settling for something less.

Spot on

Then again, I think all of us should unionize. It's the LEAST we can do.

And I think the Walton family is so dumb, they'd buy it...

The workers have either been stupid enough to buy into the company's spin, or the company has succeeded in intimidating them into voting against unionization. But they are not "barred" from unionizing. Hyperbole is not helpful.

Stories about how Walmart keeps unions out are legion: when they find out who the union organizers are, they do their best to fire them all for stuff that will stand up in court. They'll tell the remaining workers the store will "probably" close if the union is approved, and if it IS approved they'll do everything they can to shut down the union.

Example 1: The Jacksonville, Texas, Walmart's butcher department unionized under the UFCW in February 2000. Walmart retaliated by finding a source for pre-packaged meat and closed every in-store butcher department in the company.

Example 2: The Jonquiere, Quebec, store unionized in 2003. On February 1, 2005, the Minister of Labour allowed contract arbitration in the dispute between the store and employees, and Walmart announced they'd close that store the same day. They locked the door on April 29. (They then opened another one in Chicoutimi, which is about 12 kilometers east of Jonquiere.)

Knowing Walmart has no qualms about throwing everyone you work with out of a job if you unionize is pretty damn good justification for not trying to unionize.