From: Molly McGrath (memcgrat2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 12:25:33 EDT
[I don't know if I agree with the conclusion of the
article, sounds a bit over the top to me, but I think
students could play a role in helping out UFCW with
this. Plainly, it is easier for Wal-Mart workers to
talk to lawyers in complete privacy, rather than
participating in full-blown organizing drives. But
Wal-Mart is getting away with murder, and class action
suits won't create sustainable solutions to the
problem. Unions will.
-Molly]
UFCW Draws a Blank at 3,250 Wal-Marts, But Employees
File Flurry of Lawsuits
By Harry Kelber
LaborTalk for July 17, 2002:
The United Food and Commercial Workers, one of the
AFL-CIO?s largest affiliates with more than one
million
members, has failed to organize any of Wal-Mart?s
3,250
stores after several years of trying.
The union?s only ?historic? breakthrough was back in
Feb. 17, 2000, when the meat cutters in the
delicatessen department of a Wal-Mart store in
Jacksonville, Tex. voted 7 to 3 in favor of the UFCW
in
a National Labor Relations Board election. Wal-Mart
responded by eliminating its meat cutters and
switching
to ?case-ready meat, ? processed at off-site
facilities.
The UFCW can?t blame its organizing failures on the
grounds that the one million people who work for
Wal-Mart are so happy with their pay and working
conditions that they don?t need a union. The fact is
that thousands of current and former employees have
filed class action lawsuits in 28 states against the
world?s largest retailer, charging that they were
cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars by
being
forced to work ?off-the-clock? for many hours each
week.
Store managers adhere to company policy to keep
overtime to an absolute minimum. To fulfill their
daily
job assignments, employees have to work ?off the
clock,
? before or after their regular shift or during their
coffee breaks. Failure to do so can lead to a ?write
up? or dismissal. Receiving countless millions of
dollars annually in unpaid labor, Wal-Mart enjoys a
big
competitive edge over its unionized rivals.
Employees have set up Web sites where they complain
about favoritism, discrimination, speedup and other
abusive treatment. Most workers average about $8.50 an
hour.
The UFCW hasn?t given up on organizing Wal-Mart.
?We?re
not building a traditional organizing campaign, ? says
Al Zack, assistant director of the union?s Strategic
Programs Department, who is in charge of the Wal-Mart
campaign. ?We?re trying to organize a movement of
Wal-Mart workers. ?
Zack concedes there is very little progress to report,
except that the NLRB has received more than forty
complaints from workers in 24 states. He says that
Wal-Mart is a problem for other unions, not only the
UFCW, because it puts price pressure on unionized
suppliers, forcing them to cut wages or go out of
business.
While Wal-Mart has been remarkably successful in
maintaining a ?union-free environment, ? it has been
losing costly legal battles in lawsuits filed by
current and former employees. Two years ago, the giant
retailer had to shell out $50 million to 69,000
workers
in its Colorado stores, whose class-action lawsuit
cited overwhelming evidence of an enormous amount of
off-the-clock work. Wal-Mart also paid $485,000 to 10
former Hispanic employees in a discrimination lawsuit.
Family members of deceased Wal-Mart employees are
suing
the company because it took out about 350,000 life
insurance policies on the lives of its workers, made
payable to the company if they died.
Wal-Mart is also getting flak from human rights groups
for condoning sweatshop wages and conditions in the
factories of its overseas suppliers. In Bangladesh,
for
example, young women making shirts for Wal-Mart are
forced to work from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days
a week (87 hours), for from 9¢ to 20¢ an hour.
It is disgraceful that the UFCW hasn?t been able to
organize a single one of the thousands of Wal-Mart
stores. Other giant corporations have been following
the Wal-Mart formula: defeat a union organizing
campaign even before it gets off the ground. That?s
why
AFL-CIO unions haven?t organized many large companies
with thousands of employees in recent years.
It?s time for a new start. Why not have the AFL-CIO
launch a high profile, multi-union campaign against
Wal-Mart, involving every central labor council in
every community where the retail chain has stores?
Let?s have a nationwide competition to see how many
stores can be organized by the time of the 2005
AFL-CIO?s convention.
Our ?LaborTalk? column appears on
www.laboreducator.org
every Wednesday.
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