Time To Investigate Wal-Mart's Anti-Democrat Electioneering
When the news broke earlier this month that Wal-Mart started organizing its store supervisors against Barack Obama and other pro-worker candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act, there was widespread outrage -- and rightly so.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
Yikes! This obviously raises a lot of questions, but let's start with two I want to specifically address: Is this legal? And what is Wal-Mart afraid of?
But before we begin - more than 24,000 people have already signed a citizen petition to the Federal Election Commission asking for an investigation into Wal-Mart's electioneering. Can you add your name to our letter?
Question one: Is this legal?
In two days, workers' rights advocacy group American Rights at Work and others will ask the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether Wal-Mart broke any laws. You can join the complaint by signing a petition to be submitted on Thursday.
A labor law expert says that the law "provides multiple layers of protection to insulate workers from any possible pressure to mold their political behavior to suit the boss' desires." Not only should Wal-Mart employees need to feel free to vote how the please in November, but other companies need to be discouraged from doing the same as Wal-Mart. Our petition to the FEC will try to bring some resolution to this issue.
Unfortunately for Wal-Mart workers, this kind of intimidation is nothing new. It's actually part and parcel for Wal-Mart's business plan. When Wal-Mart employees stand up for themselves and try to form a union, they face threats, propaganda, discrimination, intimidation, and even firings in retaliation.
What Wal-Mart is doing for November's political elections is what it, and hundreds of other anti-union companies, do all the time when workers say they want a union: intimidate workers to go against their own self-interests.
This isn't Wal-Mart's first foray fighting the Employee Free Choice Act. As the largest member of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, Wal-Mart is vicariously supporting and funding a $30 million campaign attacking pro-worker candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act. Additionally, Wal-Mart has a working relationship with the leader of another $30 million anti-union operation.
While the Bentonville behemoth denied funding this group, Wal-Mart does admit it "exchanges union information" with the group, and apparently collaborates on "'special projects' related to defending Big Tobacco, defending mercury poisoning, and other right-wing causes."
Question two: What, exactly, is Wal-Mart afraid of?
Wal-Mart is afraid of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for workers to join unions. The bill does what it name says: it gives employees a free choice if they want to join a union. For decades, that choice has rested only with employers like Wal-Mart. You can guess what their answer usually is.
Why is the Employee Free Choice Act so important for regular Americans? It's plain as day: workers are struggling in this country. Today's workplaces are tilted in favor of lavishly paid CEOs, who get golden parachutes while middle-class families struggle to get by. The Employee Free Choice Act will restore balance in the workplace, giving more workers a chance to form unions and get better health care, job security, and benefits.
Corporate interests are fighting the Employee Free Choice Act with everything they've got. They're protecting the status quo -- a rigged system that allows employers to intimidate, harass, and even fire workers who try to form a union. We're not talking about isolated incidents: 30 percent of employers fire pro-union workers during union organizing drives.
More than half of U.S. workers--60 million--say they would join a union right now if they could. Why? They know that coming together to bargain with employers over wages, benefits, and working conditions is the best path to getting ahead. Without labor law reform, economic opportunity for America's working families will continue to erode.
So join our complaint to the Federal Election Commission and demand accountability from the world's largest employer. Let's take this first step to bring back fairness to America's workplaces.
Follow Michael Whitney on Twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelwhitney
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As an employee of the California State University system, we had a union "vote" via card check. It was anything but democratic, and the pressure to sign the cards was intense. Cards were passed out at the end of curriculum meetings while the union organizers stood at the front of the room.
In the, I became a "member" of the UAW -- surely a group of education experts? I had to jump through various hoops to receive a very small portion of my dues back. The UAW budget I received listed so many "non-political" expenses that it was joke. (Sorry, but voter registration and "voter education" are definitely political.
My family has many union leaders and members, most of whom I support and agree with on major issues, but I wanted nothing to do with bringing the UAW into a major role involving teaching at CSU campuses.
In end, I signed a card because I wanted to leave the room without any conflict. Having been insulted nearly 20 years early as a student teacher forced to deal with an L.A. Unified picket line (choice: credential units to teach or upset the union... lousy choice), I opted not to create any waves.
Some (not all) unions need to be a lot less aggressive if they want my support. Workers should have a right to unionize, but I want the right to ask questions, too.
Unions are big businesses... very big.
I’m afraid that the problem goes much deeper than you have written. The age of paternalistic employers has been over for some time.
The decimation of unions began with the notorious Taft-Hartley Law in 1947: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft-Hartley_Act. Taft-Hartley is still adversely affecting American workers. And, new twists have been added to the union annihilation schemes such as placing known anti-labor types into positions and agencies where they are supposed to protect the interests of working people, but actually do the opposite.
The US has had an unprecedented concentration of wealth that has resulted in the concentration of political power. Quite naturally, those who have this power defend it ferociously. Unions, in particular, are perceived as the primary threat to the powerful elite. In collusion with government, the politically powerful have sought to destroy unions.
Only 8% of the US workforce are members of unions. The other most advanced countries have union membership ranging from 50% to 80% and, labor action is not unheard of as it is in the US. It would be instructive to know just how US workers compare to workers of other advanced countries, particularly, in the matter of legal layoff notification.
But until there is a fair distribution of the national wealth, there can be no fair distribution of political power ergo; the problem is much larger than just getting congress to pass some law that is likely to be riddled with loopholes.
I've seen a lot of people vilify walmart and hold the EFCA as if it were the saviour of the common man. But let's look at this a moment.
Under the EFCA the employer could no longer require that secret ballot elections be held to vote in favor of or against unions. How does this help the employees? Under the EFCA a signed petition is all that would be required to bring unions into the shop. Unions have a terrible history of corruption and violence and mob association. Is it possible that some unethical types might be the ones going around collecting signatures for this petition? At least with the secret ballot the employee could then vote how they really felt without fear of reprisal.
If so many people would truly join a union right now if they could, why don't they? What could be stopping them? Why has union membership been declining for years?
Why is it a bad thing that the CEO of walmart is paid a large salary? Unless you own stock in the company, why do you care what he earns?
Anyone who has ever been inside a walmart knows that the company will hire anyone off the street and pay them a set wage. Why is it wrong for this person to work for the wage they agreed to? Why should someone other than that employee and walmart have any say in what that employee is paid?
1) Unions aren't as corrupt as they are portrayed by the right. Unions help far more than they supposedly hurt. My mother is/was a single autoworker. If it weren't for the UAW I would have had a much, much worse childhood.
2) People don't join unions because...SURPRISE their employers fire them if they do! Furthermore, where there are no unions, employers fire employees that support the creation of a union. This is all stated in the article.
3) It's bad when a CEO is paid so much but then the company turns around and refuses to pay their employees a decent wage or give them benefits. If you can afford to pay a CEO millions, then you can afford to pay the laborers more.
4) WalMart will hire anyone off the street that will work for minimum wage, and no more. When their employees decide to form a union to make more money (face it, minimum wage isn't enough to live on even after the hike by the current congress.), they fire all of them. That's fact. And it's wrong. It's not other people saying they should get paid more, it's the employees that want to form a union. Unions aren't necessary third parties, they are an organization made up of the workers they are protecting.
Let's focus on that first point. Unions aren't all that corrupt. So we recognize that there is some corruption but it's not that bad. See here I was thinking that if the union wanted someone to join and that person refused those union goons would break both of his legs. Is it really that they only break one leg? Gosh that is better.
Surely you can see the clear incentive for pro-union people to get the required number of signatures on that petition by any means necessary when they know that there will be no secret ballot vote and no worker that doesn't want to be in the union will ever be able to publicly stand up against the union without fear of reprisal.
Walmart has always been an abomination in the retail industry by virtue of its corporate hegemony against local businesses that keep grassroots economies firmly rooted in their communities. I have never and probably never will shop at Walmart for this and innumerable other reasons. Any company that seizes power and rises to the top by destroying its competition and denying its employees the right to unionize for their interests to be protected will never have my vote or a single penny from my income. Might does not make right and the Democrats must follow the Green Party's lead in fighting back against this anti-democratic corruption whereby the managers seek to intimidate their employees into voting against their own best interests for a reactionary Bush clone like McCain. Obama may not be the ideal candidate, but at least he focuses an eagle eye on these heartland critical issues that rape, pillage and plunder our economy at the behest of greedy capitalists such as Walmart's executives. The Employee Free Choice Act must be passed and Walmart's ilk must be held in check.
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