Wal-Mart Beats a Union Once More (NYT)

[harpboy_ak]

Yep, the company that locks 'em in for forced unpaid overtime busts the union again...

At a Small Shop in Colorado, Wal-Mart Beats a Union Once More
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/politics/26walmart.html

Published: February 26, 2005

LOVELAND, Colo., Feb. 25 - Joshua Noble, a 21-year-old who loves to snowboard, jolted Wal-Mart Stores last November when he got a majority of employees here at the Wal-Mart tire-and-lube shop where he worked to sign statements saying they wanted to vote on bringing in a labor union.
The unionization drive begun by Mr. Noble created a storm in this onetime ranching town at the foot of the Rockies - even the BBC covered it - and became a closely watched test of labor's efforts to unionize the world's largest retailer.
But on Friday the workers at the Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express abandoned Mr. Noble, voting 17 to 1 against unionizing, another setback for organized labor at the very moment when its leaders are mapping a campaign to pressure the company to improve wages and benefits.

and then there's the closer:

Cody Fields, who earns $8.10 an hour after two years, said that he had originally backed the union "because we need a change" but that the videos had been effective. "It's just a bunch of brainwashing," Mr. Fields said, "but it kind of worked."

The UFCW and SEIU need to start getting really active in organizing Wal-Mart. If the Evil Dwarves of Bentonville insist on shutting stores when they actually do organize, that can't be anything but good news for the unionized stores and small shops that they try so hard to put out of business so that they can hire their employees at starvation wages.

[rodeodance]

1. Wal=Mart must have taken a page out of the WH playbook

......Wal-Mart responded to the organizing drive by flying in a group of labor experts from its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

Wal-Mart's team, several workers said, hammered away at a variety of themes: that unions only want workers' dues, that they cannot guarantee better wages or benefits, that they want to put Wal-Mart out of business, that they foment walkouts in which the strikers can lose their jobs.........

[China_cat]

13. Of course the union can't guarantee better wages or benefits.

Not when the company refuses to bargain in good faith.

[JohnnyRingo]

2. "We better not join the union Josh".....

"The company says it's the worst thing for us workers".
"I imagine they know best, you don't get as rich as them by being stupid".

[bluestateguy]

3. I haven't shopped at Wal Mart for 2 years

and I will willingly pay more money for the same goods and services at another store.

[lastknowngood]

4. They are no longer from Bentonvile they are a branch of the

Chinese government and part of the plot to drive down wages to third world prices.

[Conservativesux]

36. We need to think of corporatations like Wal-Mart as non-American...

....let the flag-wavers at Wallymart wave Old Glory all they want. That doesnt make them "American".

[MsMagnificent]

5. Seventeen-to-One?

I take it the One was Josh Noble?
Gee, I thought The One was supposed to be a positive thing? Ah well, The Matrix, indeed the entire archetype is outdated already. Oh dear.

After all that, after working at a place 2 years and earning only $8.10, and nobody else votes for a union?

How convenient that Red State employees really don't want to earn higher wages... makes as much sense as exit polls meaning the opposite outcome (esp. in Florida and Ohio!)

[dsc]

6. Sadly it was likely accurate

I don't know about Colorado but NC is union phobic. Even teachers pretty much refuse to unionize here. We often lose planning periods to either watch classes or do other duties. Now a math teacher, not me, is being forced to teach without a plan period at all. Yet, I am the only math teacher in the NCAE or non union, union.

[saigon68]

9. Soon to be TOOTHLESS wonders all

Walmart is a Corporate Thug and it hires $8.00 an hour rustics to fix cars

At a Gross of $ 64.00 a day to live on ,these are the shaggy types you see when they are 35 and have a "Summer Smile".

They can't afford a $180.00 trip to the dentist twice a year or $300.00 to extract a Rotten Tooth. And Walmart ain't about to help them.

Summer Smile = some are there-- some are not !!!!

[China_cat]

14. Actually, it won't even be $64/day

Because the majority of workers do not get a full 8 hours a day so as not to have to provide benefits. They'll get paid for 7 hrs. 45 minutes. or even 7 hours but they'll have to work 9.

[cap]

7. maybe the unions need a swat team to support the locals

They need people who know how to do a media presentation that is just as effective. They need an anti-Walmart blitz.

It cant just be the UFCW and SEIU...the Teamsters need to join in. The CWA (cable workers as well). No communication/transportation. No Walmart. Get community boycotts going at the same time.

[lonestarnot]

20. APWU needs to help out as well! We need concerted effort. n/t

[ikojo]

40. 100 years ago there was a union that wanted to organize ALL

workers and called for a systemic change in the capitalist system. That union, the IWW, was demonized by the AFL and CIO. The government and it's corporate lackies did all they could to jail its leaders and succeeded in bringing it down.

The IWW believed in not an American union for American workers but in ONE BIG UNION of ALL WORKERS. Like capital they saw beyond borders and saw the need to organize EVERY WORKER.

Now it seems some in "organized" labor are waking up to this truth. Too bad American workers have bought hook line and sinker the lie that is capitalism and tend to side with the powerful instead of the powerless at our peril.

[cap]

8. white red staters expect the company to take care of them

at the expense of the black or minority employee.

[saigon68]

10. The prevailing attitude is

"Those darkies sure are lazy" </sarcasm>

[blueknight]

11. josh will be fired asap,

mark my words. as soon as he is late one time,or screws up once hs is gone. i hope those dumbass rednecks keep making $8.00 an hour

[xchrom]

12. it's amazing what lengths american employees will go to

to work against their own best interests.

i think until the ''boycott walmart '' gains more momentum the empolyees are going to continue to suffer.

[KDLarsen]

17. Hell, look at the past presidential election..

.. I reckon that around 40-odd million voted against what would have been their best interest, <sarkasm>but hey it's ok, because Bush is such a likeable guy!</sarkasm>

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

15. What I am finding amazing...

Is the number of everyday people, of all walks of life, that do everything they can to not do business with Walmart, and say so.

Quite frankly, they have a growing problem, one that, if they do not moderate their ways, will only come to take them down.

Note: Where i live is not a hotbed of consumer activism. Hardly.

[salin]

16. Indeed, almost choked at Thanksgiving when my mod repub

sister-in-law declared that they NEVER shop at Walmart, and then went on to list awful deeds of the corporation. Of course I chimed in and added to the list.

On edit: this conversation happened in Indiana - another area that is not quite a hotbed of social activism or social concern.

[Ilsa]

18. I'm seeing this more, also even from people in

Red state Texas, and I'm in the thick of conservatives around here.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

23. all I can say is ... wow... salin... that site in your sig is

just incredible!

Where did you come across it?

It is the best thing I have read in ages. Thanks for sharing it.

[salin]

38. Thanks... that was my thought when I read it... amazing!

I think i found it a month or so ago in op-ed forum. Put it in the sig in hopes that a few others might read it as well. Pass it along - I think it is a terrific piece! :hi:

[Melynn]

37. I know conservatives that boycott Wal Mart

These conservatives don't like Wal Mart's bully boy business tactics or how much business Wal Mart does with "godless communist China".

People are getting hip to Wal Mart and their odious business practices and boycotting the Bentonville Bully.

[liberalcenter]

19. Union Rep was on Big Ed

Union Rep was on Big Ed on Friday.
It sounds like Walmart intimidated the employees.

Big Suprise.

Voting in Ohio ~= Voting at Walmart

[lonestarnot]

21. Welcome to DU Liberalcenter!

:D :toast:

[NewHampshireDem]

22. The standard Wal-Mart line is something like ...

"If you unionize, we'll have to stop giving you all these benefits ... like the employee discount, health insurance, profit sharing, the investment program" etc. etc. They also give people the idea that if you work at Wal-Mart long enough you'll be a store manager and make an obscene amount of money ... and sadly the average Wal-Mart employee doesn't do the math to figure out that ain't gonna happen, since they need way more under-paid shelf stockers than they need well-compensated managers.

It's the same type of rip-off used by the right wing ... they sell an American Dream that they then use the system to keep the average worker from achieving. For some reason, the average person believes it. :shrug:

[Occulus]

24. Walmart employees who want a union need to start playing DIRTY.

Such as: in states where consumer law requires that the lowest advertized price be the one charged (such as, if an item is mistakenly marked $.50 instead of $5.00, $.50 MUST be charged, not $5.00- it's that way in MI, I believe), the night stock people need to "mistakenly" mark their stock down by a factor of ten. Have one employee call attention to the fact and volunteer to spend the night going back over the prices. Have it happen again and again and make them buy a new price gun. Those little things are sort of pricey....

The meat department workers need to start "discovering" holes all over freshly delivered meat. They need to then "find" the "problem", and thus score some "brownie points" with their boss.

Clothes department workers need to start introducing bugs and worms into the clothing, thus creating holes and in the end a substandard product- which of course they will 'dutifully' report to their managers or- better yet- whatever WalMart uses for quality control.

Have all the employees come down with "blue flu" on the businest shopping day of the year.

If you're a mystery shopper, give WalMart the lowest possible scores, every single time. Be the axe that scythes through the WalMart image.

Report the meat department to the health department and try to get a surprise inspection.

Track FMLA eligibility and spread the word to other employees on that. In fact, print out the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) and distribute it to employees- 1260 hours in the last calendar year gets you protection under that, full-time or not. BING- WalMart cannot fire eligible employees for medical reasons.

I bet they already try, so that would cost them money, too.

Get on the phone and tie up their service desk people with inanane and imbecilic questions. Keep them busy with tripe all day, every day. Get your friends involved, call from payphones, malls, etc. Make their service desk people answer the phone all day instead of serving customers. Make their service desks a unpopular and inefficient place to deal with.

In other words, WalMart workers and enemies of WalMart desperately need to begin engaging in corporate sabotage. It needs to be a whispering campaign targeting WalMart's bottom line.

Do everything you can to get into management if you already work there, and then take the place down from the inside. Get another job- work both for a week, and then figure out how to seriously fudge up Wally ops.

If they figure out that any stores where they try to bust an incipient union suffer serious problems with their bottom line, they'll either give up and allow the union, or close the store, and either result is perfectly acceptable to me, for one, and I suspect many others.

Let's force this sorry sack of shit company out of business.

[SuffragetteSal]

25. Did you see the new 'Buffalo Soldier' tv ad by Walmart?

It is shocking that Walmart has this primetime ad...

[bvar22]

26. Wally World kills god's unborn children

MONEY SPENT AT WAL-MART KILLS
GOD'S UNBORN CHILDREN!!!

Score some of those bloody posters that the Anti-Choice crowd uses to picket Planned Parenthood, and use them to picket Wally World.

Wal-Mart supports
COMMUNIST DICTATORS!!!

I’m absolutely PRO-CHOICE, but think the Fundies need to face this hypocrisy.

Will the Republicans stand on Moral Values when their wallet is threatened?
Only immoral people (Communist abortion lovers) shop at Wal-Mart!

[NewHampshireDem]

27. The second one is pretty nice ...

espeically since Wa-Mart alone is China's 5th largest trading partner.

http://www.ufcw1518.com/index2.html?view.php?id=767~mainFrame

More than 80 percent of the 6,000 factories in Wal-Mart's worldwide database of suppliers are in China. Wal-Mart estimates it spent $15 billion on Chinese-made products last year, accounting for nearly one-eighth of all Chinese exports to the United States. If the company that Sam Walton built with his "Made in America" ad campaign were itself a separate nation, it would rank as China's fifth-largest export market, ahead of Germany and Britain.

[terryg11]

28. If a store goes union they may shut it down

there was a story out of Canada a few weeks back (that's when I heard it on NPR) about workers at a soon to be built Walmart store that voted in favor of unionizing. When that was made public, the company decided not to build the store there after all. The town is probably better off this way.

[dameocrat]

31. Fortunately the Canadian Parlaiment is raising hell

and they probably won't be able to shut it down.

Surprisingly it was the governing Liberals who lead the attack with Ontario Liberal Mario Silva lambasting Wal Mart for closing the store after only nine days of bargaining. "It is imperative that workers be protected from this kind of flagrant corporate injustice", Silva told the House of Commons. "When workers choose to be members of a union they should not do so with the fear that their jobs will be lost in such a punitive manner. We should all stand up for these workers in Jonquiere and across Canada".

Opposition NDP and Bloc Quebecois MPs pressed the attack harder demanding that the government summons Wal Mart Canada's CEO to a meeting to impress upon the retailer that his obligations like any other corporation operating in Canada to respect provincial labour laws.

Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent called Wal Mart, "the most anti-democratic company in the world", and urged Industry Minister David Emmerson, a BC Member of Parliament, to include respect for human rights clauses in the Investment Canada Act, the federal foreign investment review law.

"I think its pretty clear that if what Broadbent called for was already in the Investment Canada Act, Wal Mart would have never made it across the border", says UFCW Local 1518 President, Brooke Sundin. "Wal Mart's total disregard for the laws and rights of Canadians right across the country is astounding. They just don't care!" ..............

http://www.ufcw1518.com/

What Wal Mart has failed to realize, and still doesn't, is that there is only one thing that is more important than money to an American politician and that is getting re-elected. When the electorate starts sending messages to the politicians on a given issue you can bet money will take a back seat, even if you are the second largest contributor to the Republican Party in the US. In Canada of course, election law prohibits corporations, and Unions for that matter, from contributing more than a $1000 to a campaign, so the corporate money lever in this country is very short indeed......................

the US, Wal Mart may have been successful in bullying Department of Labour bureaucrats into signing secret, "sweetheart", deals on child labour violations and sending Wal Mart employee complaints to their government back to the company without investigating the complaints, but the word with the short lifespan in government is "secret". Now Wal Mart is faced with the threat of Congressional and Senate committee hearings into its labour practices, and one state albeit a small one, Connecticut has filed a lawsuit to overturn the child labour deal...................

Here in Canada Wal Mart has slipped over the same edge and is sliding down what could turn out to be a long slippery slope. No one can remember the last time a provincial Premier chastised a company publicly for not abiding by labour laws, but that's what has happened to Wal Mart in Quebec. Now, we have seen the never-before-seen when Members of Parliament from three of the four political parties in the House of Commons rose to criticize Wal Mart in the House for announcing the closure of the Jonquiere store to avoid having its employees covered under a collective agreement. Add to that the fact that the strongest condemnation came from a member of the governing party, and that party is not known for its support of Unions and working people.

What Wal Mart has failed to realize is that its fight with governments has just begun and the worst is yet to come its way. Lawsuits from states, criticism from Premiers, Congressional and Senate committee hearings and public condemnation in the House of Commons only leads to one thing, legislation. ................

http://www.ufcw1518.com/

expect legislation specifically targeting Walmart! Walmart will not close down that store. Canadian workers aren't wimpified like Americans. When Canada provides the model expect things to turn around here in the US as well.

[lastliberalintexas]

39. Walmart's expansion may bring their demise

Or at least knock them down a peg or two. Walmart forgot that the rest of the world won't out up with the kind of treatment employees in the US receive. They never should have opened a store in a "socialist" country if they expected to be able to continue to treat their employees like dirt.

And let me add- Go Canada! I hope they are able to hold their feet to the fire. Somebody needs to.

[Hershman]

29. Wal-Mart will go down sometime

either that or 1984 will come into effect. There can be no middle ground on this.

[Kimber Scott]

30. How much do Target and K-Mart workers get paid?

Just out of curiousity. Are they unionized? I hate Wal-Mart, but I'm wondering if their pay is in line with industry standards.

[napi21]

33. I don't know about Target, but my hubby used to work at Kmart.

He was a meatcutter in several different SuperK's. The pay wasn't bad. It was about the same as you could earn anywhere else in that profession. WM used to have meatcutters, but a meat department in Clolrado voted to unionize, and WM eliminated all the cutters chainwide. They have their meat cut and packaged somewhere else, but much lower paid employees. I don't know how many people realize that there really isn't such a thing as FRESH MEAT at a WM. Oh, it's not frozen, and it's in a fresh meat case, but it has to have been cut at least 24 hours before you ever see it!

I've tried a few meat items from WM, just to see what the difference was. I won't buy any again.

I understand people saying they have no choice but to shop there because their canned goods are cheaper, and some of their private label brands are ok. That's fine, they don't make any money on that stuff anyway. I would strongly suggest not buying their fresh meat and seafood products. They probably won't hurt you, but the taste just isn't there, and sometimes is just plain bad.

[Kimber Scott]

35. I won't buy the meat at Wal-Mart because it's "enhanced with a solution."

God knows how old it is. Actually, I don't buy anything from there, if I can help it. The other day on CNNFN they had a show about Wal-Mart in China. They were interviewing the guy in charge of the region, American, and they were walking through the street markets showing the vendors selling chickens, octopusses, etc. from their little huts, probably as they've been doing for thousands of years, and the Wal-Mart guy says, paraphrasing, "Well, we walked through here to see what people were selling and that's what we put in our store." I thought how sad, those people who'd been selling their goods on that street their whole life would soon be out of business and their kids and grandkids would be working at Wal-Mart.

[lasttrip]

32. morans

"It's just a bunch of brainwashing," Mr. Fields said, "but it kind of worked."

[Toucano]

34. Good luck Cody.

You're a sorry-assed, brain-washed wage slave. ENJOY!