UNITED STATES-WAL-MART AND THE UNIONS.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has fended off unions at its U.S. stores throughout its climb to the top of the retailing world, is now the focus of a major organizing effort by the United Food and Commercial Workers.
The union, with 1.3 million members in North America, is actively recruiting potential members at more than 100 Wal-Mart stores in 17 states, including the store at 8801 Base Line Road in Little Rock .
Meghan Scott, a Food and Commercial Workers spokesman in Washington , said the union increased its organizing efforts after the election of President Barack Obama and the reintroduction this year of federal legislation that would make it easier for workers to gain union representation.
"We’ve seen a pretty significant uptick in calls from Wal-Mart workers across the country," Scott said. "The workers just seem to be emboldened in a way that they have not been in the last few years."
Wal-Mart spokesman Daphne Moore said the company is fully aware of the push to organize. She said employees seeking to join unions do not represent the bulk of Wal-Mart workers.
"The large majority tell us they enjoy their jobs," she said. "Many of our associates just don’t seem to feel that union membership would be a better deal."
A supercenter in North Miami Beach , Fla. , is the latest hot spot for Wal-Mart union activity. Workers who have been signing up potential members gathered in the store’s parking lot last week to deliver a petition to store management to "cease its coercion, intimidation and unfair labor practices" aimed at blocking union representation.
"We need this union," store employee Eugene Hart said. "We need a voice to get better wages, better benefits."
The 32-year-old said he has been with the company for three years and makes $10.15 an hour. He said he can’t afford the $300 a month it would cost for health insurance through Wal-Mart’s plans, so the medical bills for his premature baby were covered by Medicaid.
"That’s unacceptable," he said. The organizing effort was going well, Hart said, before Wal-Mart sent a team from its Bentonville headquarters to talk to workers and show an antiunion video.
Moore rebutted workers’ reports that Wal-Mart fired or reassigned managers at the store, but said it is not unusual for the company to make changes to get the "right leadership in place."
"Clearly some associates at our North Miami Beach store have some concerns. We are continuing to work with them to ensure that their concerns are addressed," she said.
In addition to Florida and Arkansas , Scott said the union is seeking to sign up members at Wal-Mart stores in Massachusetts , New York , Pennsylvania , Maryland , Virginia , Ohio , Illinois , Missouri , Wisconsin , Minnesota , Oklahoma , Texas , Louisiana , Washington and California .
Last year, in the midst of the presidential campaign, the AFL-CIO and other labor groups filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over reports that Wal-Mart required managers and supervisors to attend mandatory meetings at which they were warned that Obama’s election would be bad for the company.
Obama supports legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act that would allow workers to gain union representation if more than half of a proposed bargaining unit signs union cards.
Unions contend that companies use the time between card-signing and the election to intimidate workers with threats of dismissal or other retribution if a bargaining unit is formed.
The proposed legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress but appears to be a few votes short of the 60 needed in the Senate to end an expected filibuster by opponents. U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., previously a supporter of the bill, said recently she will not support it.
U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., also an earlier supporter, said in a statement this month that the bill is "not perfect," and that he wants labor and management groups to recommend a compromise.
Under current law, workers can try to organize after signing up at least 30 percent of their colleagues. But employers usually demand government-run elections before accepting new unions.
The proposed legislation provides that if a majority of employees sign pro-union cards, the union would automatically be certified.
Wal-Mart is far from alone in opposing the Employee Free Choice Act. Most major retailers have expressed opposition, although a couple have suggested seeking a middle ground on the issue.
’UNDERSTAFFED, OVERWORKED’
Cynthia Murray of Laurel , Md. , a nine-year employee in the apparel fitting room of a Wal-Mart store, said workers need representation to negotiate for better working conditions.
"We’re understaffed, we’re overworked," she said.
Murray said she’s paid $10.80 an hour, and her most recent profit-sharing payment was $180. Full-time employees at her store are getting only 35 hours a week, she said, and part-time workers are down to 20 hours.
"I just want a fair deal, that’s all," she said. "It’s not like people aren’t shopping here, they are. If we were in a slump or something, I could go with that, but we’re not."
Murray said her store manager warned employees about opening the doors to a union, telling them that they wouldn’t get paid any better with union representation. She said Wal-Mart has not threatened to fire her, but that many at her store fear some retaliation if they talk to union organizers.
"There’s no doubt about it, they’re afraid of Wal-Mart," she said.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history who has studied Wal-Mart for several years, said the new organizing effort clearly appears linked to the push for the Employee Free Choice Act.
"I think it’s a kind of demonstration, as it were, to show that normal union-organizing processes don’t work at Wal-Mart, and that’s why you need the new labor law," he said.
If the union succeeds in organizing a few stores, he said, "that would show concretely that there is at least some percentage of Wal-Mart workers that want to form a union and they don’t agree that everything is fine at Wal-Mart."
Establishing a few bargaining units also might encourage workers with some protection as a result of union representation to speak out publicly about any grievances against the company, he said.
Lichtenstein, who teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has written a book to be published in July titled The Retail Evolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.
Lichtenstein said Wal-Mart’s decision late last year to settle 63 class-action lawsuits alleging violations of wage and hour laws was a "dramatic" move that indicated Wal-Mart was "cognizant of a new environment" with the incoming Obama administration.
In Canada , the nation’s Supreme Court has heard arguments but not yet ruled on whether Wal-Mart broke Canadian labor law when it closed a store in 2005 after workers voted to unionize.
And in a Texas case dating back nine years, Wal-Mart recently was ordered to negotiate with a few meat cutters over the impact of its decision to eliminate their jobs after they voted for union representation.
In Mexico , Wal-Mart bakery and restaurant employees are represented by that nation’s largest union, a relationshi
