Will Labor Take the Wal-Mart Challenge?

The Nation

“Staying
union free is a full-time commitment. Unless union prevention is a goal
equal to other objectives within an organization, the goal will usually
not be attained. The commitment to stay union free must exist at all
levels of management–from the Chairperson of the “Board” down to the
front-line manager. Therefore, no one in management is immune to
carrying his or her “own weight” in the union prevention effort. The
entire management staff should fully comprehend and appreciate exactly
what is expected of their individual efforts to meet the union free
objective…. Unless each member of management is willing to spend the
necessary time, effort, energy, and money, it will not be accomplished.
The time involved is…365 days per year….”

This
admonition comes from a handbook Wal-Mart distributes to managers, and
gives an idea of the passion and vision behind Wal-Mart's unionbusting
project. The $259 billion retail behemoth that has become a defining
feature of the American landscape has also profoundly altered labor
politics, deploying ever more creative and ruthless tactics to suppress
the right to organize, while driving down wages and benefits in the
retail industry and beyond.

The
company is providing a business model widely imitated by other
corporations, especially its competitors. To take one recent example,
after striking for months, grocery workers in Southern California were
forced to accept a vastly reduced health plan early this year, as
supermarkets, anticipating competition from new Wal-Mart Supercenters
throughout the state, refused to compromise with the union–probably
the first time in history that a potential competitor who had not even
entered the market yet was such a key player in a labor dispute. But
the California grocers are not alone. Supermarkets all over the country
have been lowering wages and decimating workers' health plans.
Management claims these cutbacks are necessary to compete with
Wal-Mart, but another explanation makes at least as much sense:
“Greed,” says Linda Gruen, a former Wal-Mart worker now organizing
supermarket chains for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
“Management sees what Wal-Mart gets away with,” she says, and realizes
that the way to increase profits is to do the same.

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