From: Allie Robbins (peaceout@gwu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 12:31:24 EDT
Just to defend UFCW for a second, a bunch of union summer sites have been
working with UFCW to try to organize Walmarts this summer.
allie
>===== Original Message From Molly McGrath <memcgrat2000@yahoo.com> =====
>[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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