Job Actions Have
Wal-Mart Running Scared
It’s
déjà vu all over again at Wal-Mart. Returning to its customary practice of
using intimidation to respond to demands for improved working conditions, the
company recently began firing some
of the “associates” who participated in strikes at its stores. Other workers
are being disciplined under the pretext of violating Wal-Mart’s attendance
policy.
While
this is bad news for the workers affected, the use of heavy-handed tactics is a
sign that the company is worried about the historic job actions that have been
spreading through its U.S. operations. If Wal-Mart really believed its claims
that the OUR Wal-Mart group spearheading the protests has limited support among
the company’s massive workforce, then it would be ignoring the movement rather
than desperately trying to squelch it.
The current wave of firings is actually an escalation of repressive policies that the company has been implementing since OUR Wal-Mart began ramping up its campaign in 2011.
A report released
in May by American Rights at Work found that the company has been responding to
the activism by disguising acts of retaliation as legitimate discipline or
routine enforcement of company policy. Accusing Wal-Mart of fostering a
“climate of fear,” the report also documented ways in which the company
violated federal labor law by denying OUR Wal-Mart members and organizers
access for protected concerted activity.
Such
actions continue a tradition of anti-union animus that has characterized
Wal-Mart since its earliest years. While some have sought to romanticize founder
Sam Walton and pin the blame for the company’s notorious labor policies on his
successors, it was Sam himself who first brought in union-busting consultants
when some members of his then much smaller workforce began to talk about
organizing in the 1970s.
The
investment paid off for management. For example, after about half of the
workers at a Wal-Mart warehouse in Searcy, Arkansas signed cards in support of
Teamsters representation in the early 1980s, the consultants used the run-up to
the election to scare the workforce into ultimately voting more than
three-to-one against the union.
This
scenario would play out again and again, both in the United States and Canada.
For example, in 1997 the Ontario Labor Relations Board ruled that
Wal-Mart had violated Canadian law by intimidating workers in the period
preceding a representation election involving the United Steelworkers union. As
a result, the board certified the Steelworkers, even though a majority of
workers had voted against the union. The company, however, simply refused to
bargain with the union.
In
2000 a small group of courageous meat cutters at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in
Jacksonville, Texas voted for representation by the United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW). Within two weeks, the company announced that
it was shutting down the meat-cutting operations at that store and at more than
175 more in six states. The NLRB later ruled that
the company had violated federal labor law by refusing to discuss the closing
with the workers who had chosen union representation, but the issue was by then
moot.
In
2001 the UFCW said it was launching a national organizing drive at Wal-Mart,
but it focused on a few areas such as Las Vegas, where it engaged in a fierce battle with
a slew of anti-union specialists flown in from corporate headquarters in
Bentonville, Arkansas. Years later, the NLRB found that the company had engaged in
various unfair labor practices, but by then the organizing effort had fizzled
out. Looking back on the situation, the Las Vegas Sun published
an article headlined
WAL-MART BREAKS THE LAW, GETS PUNISHED, WINS ANYWAY.
Wal-Mart’s
labor relations practices have been so egregious that they go beyond regulatory
infractions and enter the realm of human rights abuses. It’s thus no surprise
that Human Rights Watch, which typically analyzes atrocities in dictatorial
governments, once published a report concluding
Wal-Mart violated the right of its workers to freedom of association.
The
problem for current Wal-Mart management is that its workers are more difficult
to intimidate than they were in the past. Organizing efforts used to be limited
to single locations; now OUR Wal-Mart, using non-traditional tactics, is
operating in many places and can mobilize large numbers of people, as seen in
last year’s Black Friday job actions as well as the recent strikes and the
protests at the company’s annual meeting.
One
way Wal-Mart management is responding to the growing solidarity is by
increasing its use of a category of worker it believes it can more readily
control: temps. The company traditionally used such contingent workers only during
the holiday season. Recently there have been reports that
some Wal-Mart stores are hiring only temps.
So
much for those TV ads that sought to portray a job at Wal-Mart as the
stepping-stone to a career.