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Wal-Mart’s failure to protect its workers: An unfortunate symbol

Posted December 4, 2008 at 3:09 pm, in From the News

By David Nassar

Executive Director Wal-Mart Watch

Sometimes symbols appear unexpectedly. Jdimytai Damour, a temporary Wal-Mart worker, became a symbol to millions of low-wage workers last Friday when he died a needless death because Wal-Mart failed to take the necessary precautions to protect him. He became a symbol of those workers quietly yielding to unsafe working conditions because they have no voice. Americans need Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act next year so that deaths like Mr. Damour’s, and so many other deaths and injuries to low-wage workers on the job can be avoided in the future.

In 2007 a respected human rights watchdog group, Human Rights Watch, released a report critical of Wal-Mart’s union-busting policies and practices in the United States. According to the report, “while many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus.” Wal-Mart’s opposition to its workers exercising their legal right to organize has even extended to terminating entire departments and closing entire stores.

For example, in February 2000, ten employees of the Wal-Mart meat department in a Jacksonville, Texas, store elected United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) as their union. Wal-Mart immediately scrapped their entire network of in-store butcher departments nationwide. And in Jonquière, Quebec, after the birth of a certified UFCW Local at a Wal-Mart store and a decision by the Minister of Labor for Quebec to grant the union’s request for contract arbitration, Wal-Mart announced that it would close the Jonquière store.

The result of this behavior is that workers are denied a seat at the table to contribute to setting standards that protect them on the job. In the absence of such contributions, management is free to set whatever standards it deems appropriate and workers are obligated to go along if they wish to keep their jobs. To make matters worse, Wal-Mart store management’s compensation is based on bonus systems that encourage cutting labor costs, resulting in more temporary workers. Temporary workers like Damour are particularly vulnerable in that environment because they have neither the context nor the influence to express reservations when asked to perform certain duties.

Without a union it is entirely up to Wal-Mart’s management to determine whether or not they took legitimate precautions to prevent this incident. In the absence of union representation, let me suggest if it is not already obvious from the events that unfolded, that Wal-Mart failed on at least a few levels to protect its employees and its customers.

First, it appears there was a shortage of adequate security at the doors. Wal-Mart has still not released how many guards were present at the time to control the rushing crowd of 2000 people. Second, the company used at least some temporary workers including Mr. Damour who were not familiar with what to expect on Black Friday. Third, as some news reports have pointed out, unlike other retailers Wal-Mart did not provide tickets for store entry or offer rain-checks for any items that were sold out. All of these choices contributed to the tragic events of that day and the workers who were on the line that morning had no say in making any of them.

More low-wage workers need a voice in their workplace. The current system of certifying a union has failed because employers have found ways to thwart the process, and the federal government has failed to prevent that interference or to protect workers right to organize in any meaningful way. It is time for a change.

Next year, by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, Congress can provide that change. No one will force workers to organize a union, but they will be freer to do so if they choose. I believe that many of them will seek a union for all the reasons that people have wanted unions in the past including workplace safety. Sadly and unexpectedly, Jdimytai Damour will be a symbol for that fight and a powerful reminder of how workers are taken advantage of every day.

Watch the video "Your New Job"

Send this video to every person who cares about fairness and wants a middle class in America, and get them to sign the petition to ensure that EFCA passes. And while you're at it, let your friends know about Meet the Bloggers because today at 1pm ET/10am PT, our special guest SEIU President Andy Stern will be discussing the importance of EFCA with bloggers Baratunde Thurston (JackandJillPolitics.com) and Michael Whitney (American Rights at Work).

Watch Andy Stern live on Meet the Bloggers today at 1pm ET.

Check out the articles below on EFCA, get informed, and join us on the show's live blog at 1pm ET/10 am PT, when we'll stand up to Wal-Mart, and stand up for workers' rights.

• The Law that Could Give Labor Some Brawn -- Moira Herbst, Business Week
• Happy Labor Day. Drop Dead. -- Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal
• Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win -- Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal
• Inside the Mind of Union Busters -- Art Levine, Today's Workplace Blog
• Wal-Mart's Desperate War Against Unionization -- ZP Heller, Brave New Films
• Employee Free Choice Act Summary -- American Rights at Work
• In Fight Over Law Securing Workers' Right to Organize, Corporations Bill Themselves as Underdogs -- David Sirota, AlterNet

P.S. And if you missed any episode of Meet the Bloggers, you can also watch them in the archives

August 1, 2008

Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win

as seen in the Wallstreet Journal on line

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

The actions by Wal-Mart -- the nation's largest private employer -- reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership. That could lead to higher payroll and health costs for companies already being hurt by rising fuel and commodities costs and the tough economic climate.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"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.

"If anyone representing Wal-Mart gave the impression we were telling associates how to vote, they were wrong and acting without approval," said David Tovar, Wal-Mart spokesman. Mr. Tovar acknowledged that the meetings were taking place for store managers and supervisors nationwide.

Wal-Mart's worries center on a piece of legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, which companies say would enable unions to quickly add millions of new members. "We believe EFCA is a bad bill and we have been on record as opposing it for some time," Mr. Tovar said. "We feel educating our associates about the bill is the right thing to do."

Other companies and groups are also making a case against the legislation to workers. Laundry company Cintas Corp., which has been fighting a multiyear organizing campaign by Unite Here, relaunched a Web site July 14 called CintasVotes. The site instructs visitors to take action by telling members of Congress to oppose the legislation.

"We feel it's important that our employee partners fully understand the implications that the Employee Free Choice Act could have on their work environment and benefits," said Heather Trainer, a Cintas spokeswoman.

Business-backed organizations are also running ads aimed at building opposition to the bill, including the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which counts several hundred industry associations as members. Another group, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, is run by former tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman. The groups, which aren't affiliated with each other, say they have a total of $50 million in funding. Neither will disclose which companies or individuals have provided funding.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made defeat of the legislation a top priority. In the past six months, it has flown state and local Chamber members to Washington to lobby members of Congress. On Thursday, the Chamber began airing a television ad in Minnesota and plans to run ads in other states as part of a broader campaign.

The bill was crafted by labor as a response to more aggressive opposition by companies to union-organizing activity. The AFL-CIO and individual unions such as the United Food and Commercial Workers have promised to make passage of the new labor law their No. 1 mission after the November election.

First introduced in 2003, the bill came to a vote last year and sailed through the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, but was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate and faced a veto threat by the White House. The bill was taken off the floor, and its backers pledged to reintroduce it when they could get more support.

The November election could bring that extra support in Congress, as well as the White House if Sen. Obama is elected and Democrats extend their control in the Senate. Sen. Obama co-sponsored the legislation, which also is known as "card check," and has said several times he would sign it into law if elected president. Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and voted against it last year.

Wal-Mart's labor-relations meetings are led by human-resources managers who received training from Wal-Mart on the implications of the Employee Free Choice Act

Fine Legal Line

Wal-Mart may be walking a fine legal line by holding meetings with its store department heads that link politics with a strong antiunion message. Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.

However, employers have fairly broad leeway to disseminate information about candidates' voting records and positions on issues, according to Jan Baran, a Washington attorney and expert on election law.

Both supporters and opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act believe it would simplify and speed labor's ability to unionize companies. Currently, companies can demand a secret-ballot election to determine union representation. Those elections often are preceded by months of strident employer and union campaigns.

Under the proposed legislation, companies could no longer have the right to insist on one secret ballot. Instead, the Free Choice, or "card check," legislation would let unions form if more than 50% of workers simply sign a card saying they want to join. It is far easier for unions to get workers to sign cards because the organizers can approach workers repeatedly, over a period of weeks or months, until the union garners enough support.

Employers argue that the card system could lead to workers being pressured to sign by pro-union colleagues and organizers. Unions counter that it shields workers from pressure from their employers.

On June 30 the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Wal-Mart illegally fired an employee in Kingman, Ariz., who supported the UFCW and illegally threatened to freeze merit-pay increases if employees voted for union representation. The decision came eight years after the organizing campaign failed, and four years after the case was originally heard.

"We've always maintained the termination was not related to the union and that there was nothing unlawful about an answer provided an associate about merit pay," said Mr. Tovar, the Wal-Mart spokesman. "Following the decision, we were considering offering reinstatement, but that is on hold, since the [union] appealed the decision."

Unions consider the Employee Free Choice Act as vital to the survival of the labor movement, which currently represents 7.5% of private-sector workers, half the percentage it did 25 years ago. The Service Employees International Union said the legislation would enable it to organize a million workers a year, up from its current pace of 100,000 workers a year.

The Underdogs

The business-backed lobbying groups are running ads in states where a win by a Democratic Senate candidate would boost support for the legislation in the Senate, saying the loss of secret ballots exposes workers to bullying labor bosses. In one, they use an actor from the "Sopranos" TV series about mob life to hammer home their point.

Business groups say they're the underdogs since they will be outspent by unions by a wide margin. Labor has pledged to spend $300 million on the election and securing passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, compared with under $100 million by business groups, according to Steven Law, chief legal officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber's strategy is to focus on the Senate, where labor needs eight more supporters of the legislation to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

"This is a David-and-Goliath confrontation, but we believe we'll have enough stones in the sling to knock this out," said Mr. Law.

Wal-Mart is a powerful ally. Through almost all of its 48-year history, Wal-Mart has fought hard to keep unions out of its stores, flying in labor-relations rapid-response teams from its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters to any location where union activity was building. The United Food and Commercial Workers was successful in organizing only one group of Wal-Mart workers -- a small number of butchers in East Texas in early 2000. Several weeks later, the company phased out butchers in all of its stores and began stocking prepackaged meat. When a store in Canada voted to unionize several years ago, the company closed the store, saying it had been unprofitable for years.

Labor has fought back with a campaign to portray Wal-Mart as treating its workers poorly. The UFCW helped employees file a series of complaints about the company's overtime, health-care and other policies with the National Labor Relations Board. Dozens of class-action lawsuits were filed on behalf of workers, many of which are still winding their way through the courts.

Wal-Mart has been trying to burnish its reputation by improving its worker benefits and touting its commitment to the environment. On the political front, it's hedging its bets, spreading its financial contributions on both sides of the political divide.

Twelve years ago, 98% of Wal-Mart's political donations went to Republicans. Now, as the Democrats seem poised to gain control in Washington, 48% of its $2.2 million in political contributions go to Democrats and 52% to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political giving.

Write to Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com and Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com

What is a Community College Degree worth? About $10.18 per hour.  

Wal-Mart 101: Creating retail management courses in Tenn.

  Monday, August 7, 2006  

NASHVILLE , Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen wants the state to do a better job at preparing students for careers at Wal-Mart. He wants to tailor community college programs to offer courses on retail management.  

Bredesen, a Democrat, pitched his proposal on how to address a management shortage at big-box retail stores on a recent trip to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s headquarters in Bentonville , Ark.  

While no formal arrangement has been struck, Bredesen and Wal-Mart officials agreed to work on developing a curriculum.  

Bredesen told The Associated Press he would consider an arrangement where community colleges teach Wal-Mart-specific skills, if the company would agree to guarantee jobs for graduates with good grades.  

Wal-Mart spokesman Dennis Alpert said Bredesen’s proposal came after hearing from company officials talk about a shortage of managers. The program would be a first for the world’s largest retailer.  

“Not just in Tennessee , but across the country, there’s a lacking of certain trained professionals” at large retail stores, Alpert said.  

The traditional model at Wal-Mart has been to hire entry-level workers and gradually have them to move up the ranks toward management positions, Alpert said.  

Bredesen said working with community colleges to develop retail-specific management skills could help jump-start recruitment and help Wal-Mart expand.  

The governor said he was impressed by the scope of operations at a Wal-Mart Supercenter .  

“The point they made was, ’When we open a store, the day it opens it’s a $100 million-plus business with 600 employees and all the complexities of running a business with 600 employees,”’ he said.  

Timothy Vogus, an assistant professor of management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , said running a Wal-Mart store is “very complex managerial work.”  

“You’re dealing with so many issues that are very hard to deal with, especially the human issues: the staffing, the recruiting, the training,” he said.  

While those skills are taught in undergraduate and graduate programs, retailers aren’t able to offer the salaries — or the prestige — that would attract those graduates to manage their stores.  

“When you go to get an MBA, people have an air about it that they want to go into investment banking or consulting,” Vogus said. “Even in undergraduate programs people have the idea that, ’If I’m going to manage a Wal-Mart store, I’m doing something wrong.”’  

Giving community college students those skills would give them a chance to leapfrog Wal-Mart’s internal labor market, and it could give them a higher ceiling for advancement, he said.  

Bredesen was the first of several governors to take up an invitation made by Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott at a National Governors Association meeting earlier this year for state executives to visit the company’s headquarters.  

Since then, Alpert said, Wal-Mart managers have either hosted or visited Govs. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan , Chris Gregoire of Washington , Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas . All are Democrats.  

The meetings come amid a Wal-Mart public relations drive to improve the company’s image after years of ignoring critics.  

Wal-Mart now touts changes such as its lower-cost health plans for employees. It has reached out to selected critics, including environmentalists, and started an outside support group called Working Families for Wal-Mart — chaired by civil rights leader Andrew Young.  

Still, Bredesen acknowledged, there are bound to be some skeptics about his plans to work with Wal-Mart on educational programs.  

“You can’t do anything without some criticisms,” Bredesen said. “But I certainly think that when you have an employer of that size — who has that many good jobs that they are saying need to be filled — we need to respond to that.”  

Wal-Mart employs nearly 40,000 people at its 122 facilities in Tennessee , paying an average of $10.18 per hour.  

Bredesen said courses could be tailored to the needs of Wal-Mart, but they could also apply to other large retailers in the state.  

“I really think a lot of the future of the community college system is being as responsive as possible to the needs of individual employers,” Bredesen said. “Not just turning out people with generic skills, but the very specific skills that employers are looking for.”

Wal-Mart applauds B.C. labour board ruling, plans to use it for Surrey dispute.

MAY 29, 2006 - Memo: Wal-Mart Pressuring Suppliers To Join Front Group

WASHINGTON (PAI)--An internal Wal-Mart memo, released by the labor-backed WakeUpWalMart.com, shows the monster retailer is pressuring its suppliers to join a Wal-Mart funded front group.

The memo, written by Terry Nelson, a key Bush campaign operative in 2004 who now works for the front group, named Working Families for Wal-Mart, urges the retailer’s suppliers to join the organization.

"Wal-Mart is under attack, and Wal-Mart and Sam's Club suppliers have the power to do something about it and help protect their business,” the key sentence says.

The Wal-Mart memo to its suppliers is not the first instance where the retailer used its financial weight to force them to toe the line.  Previously, it ordered suppliers to cut their own prices drastically when selling to Wal-Mart, forcing them to run in the red, cut their workers’ wages and eliminate benefits, or move to China.

And Wal-Mart not only provides all of the money for the “working families” front group, but also bankrolls a retail association in Maryland that is challenging that state’s new law forcing all firms in the state with at least 10,000 workers to pay at least 8 percent of payroll for their workers’ health care, or contribute an equivalent amount to the state fund that pays for health care for poor children.

Of the four Maryland firms that meet the 10,000-worker threshold, the only one that flunks the 8 percent standard is the one that paid for the retail association that challenges the standard: Wal-Mart.

The Maryland law is the first such statute in the U.S., and the union movement is pushing others nationwide.

The “working families” group is headed by Andrew Young, President Carter’s former UN ambassador and a former Democratic congressman from Atlanta and civil rights leader.  He told the Associated Press in February that his current consulting firm, GoodWorks International, has a contract from Working Families for Wal-Mart for consulting work.  Neither Young nor Wal-Mart would say how much his firm is paid.

"This just exposes what a sham Wal-Mart's publicity stunts have become. Wal-Mart has become so desperate it is even willing to cross the line and intimidate its suppliers to try and salvage Wal-Mart's faltering public image," said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com “Wal-Mart's memo to suppliers makes no mention of the fact that Wal-Mart's image is declining because the company pays poverty level wages, provides unaffordable health care, helps ship U.S. jobs overseas, is being sued for  discrimination, and continues to get caught for child labor violations,” WakeUpWalMart added.

“Rather than address these serious issues, Wal-Mart is now using its own personal Right-Wing front group to try and deceive people.  The group, in conjunction with two right-wing firms is running a ‘smoke and mirrors’ campaign, complete with paid steering committee members and canvassers, to create a false impression that there are people willing to defend the indefensible.”

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