WAL-MART WATCH - Making Change at Walmart

WalmartWatch.comTHE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE:HAS WAL-MART’S ANTI-WORKER ACTIVITYCROSSED LEGAL AND ETHICAL LINES?With all of the reported abuses of its workers, Wal-Mart is a primeexample of a company that needs a union to stand up for employees whohave been underpaid, forced to work overtime without pay, discriminatedagainst, and denied decent health care and pensions.But whenever and wherever workers seek to unionize, Wal-Martmobilizes its incredible power, sometimes in blatant violation of federallabor law, to block organizing efforts. The only U.S. Wal-Mart workerswho voted successfully to unionize were 10 butchers at a store in Jacksonville,Texas. Two weeks later Wal-Mart announced immediate plansto eliminate butchers at 180 stores in the region and ultimately at allSupercenters across the nation. 89Less than a year after Canadian workers at a Wal-Mart in Jonquiere,Quebec chose union representation in 2004, the company claimed thestore was unprofitable and shut it down throwing hundreds of employeesout of work. 90The message to employees is clear: exercise your legal right tounionize and you’ll end up in the unemployment line.Wal-Mart’s opposition to unions is so great it assigns a “Union ProbabilityIndex” to each store based on anonymous surveys of workers. Thecompany officially says the index is for “Unresolved People Issues,” butwhen it gets too high, management sends in a special team of managersto gear up an effort to root out pro-union activity. 91New hires are often shown two videos. The first is general informationabout the company and the second is about why Wal-Mart shouldbe union-free. 92 Jon Lehman, a former store manager, told BloombergNews that two dozen people with headsets at Wal-Mart headquarterstap into calls and e-mails from stores around the country to see whetheranyone is talking about unionizing. 93 Executives provide store officialswith “A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free.” The first pageprovides a hot-line number and, when called, the anti-union task forceis quickly dispatched. 94Wal-Mart and the Walton Family Foundation has given large grantsto the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. 95FACTS ON WAL-MART UNIONBUSTING18Wal-Mart is fiercely anti-worker and has an elaborate anti-union “hit squad” readyto dispatch at the first sign of worker discontent.The only successful organizing effort in a U.S. Wal-Mart was in the butcherdepartment of a store in Jacksonville, Texas. Within two weeks, Wal-Mart made a“strategic decision” to close the butcher departments. In Canada, workers formeda union in 2004 at a store in Quebec, which Wal-Mart closed down citing “lowprofitability”.Wal-Mart and the Walton Family Foundation have given large grants to the antiunionNational Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.