A Union at Wal-Mart? Sort of...

I've been meaning to share an interesting article about Wal-Mart from a couple weeks back. I've posted my comments at the end.

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Fla. Wal-Mart workers unite — without union

250 employees form group to collectively air complaints about treatment

Associated Press
September 29, 2005

TAMPA, Fla. - It's not a union, but some Wal-Mart workers say it might be the next best thing.

Searching for a voice in their work lives, employees of some central Florida Wal-Mart stores have formed a workers group to collectively air complaints about what they claim is shoddy treatment by the retail giant.

About 250 employees and former employees from 40 central Florida stores have joined the fledgling Wal-Mart Workers Association, spurred by what they say is a reduction of hours and schedule changes recently that may jeopardize health care benefits for some. Organizers say the word-of-mouth campaign is attracting 15 to 20 new members every week.

The members say they hope their efforts will persuade the company to listen to its people and make some changes.

"Management seems like they don't really respect the associates," said Carl Jones, acting chairman of the new group, who makes $9.40 an hour as the lead cart-pusher at a store outside Orlando. "We don't have a voice. We don't have any rights at all."

The company, however, says most of its associates are happy, and characterized the effort in Florida as another attempt by the unions to get their hands in the pockets of some of its 1.3 million workers in the United States.

"It's within (employees') legal rights to do that, but this group is a wolf in sheep's clothing," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Christi Gallagher said. "This is a labor organization attempting to masquerade as something else."

The world's largest and most profitable retailer has heard the employees' complaints before. Stores around the United States have been accused of everything from paying lousy wages and locking workers in overnight to discriminating against women, while foiling attempts by labor groups such as the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to organize workers.

The food and commercial workers union is among the sponsors of the new workers association, along with the Service Employees International Union, and Acorn, an advocacy group for the poor. Central Florida was chosen for the launch because of Wal-Mart's aggressive expansion here.

Nine Wal-Mart Supercenters have opened in Florida so far this year to go along with a dozen new stores last year, according to the company. The state has 170 Supercenters and discount stores, 39 Sam's Club stores, eight neighborhood markets and six distribution center. More than 92,000 people work in the company's Florida facilities.

"Florida is like Wal-Mart central," said Rick Smith, state director of the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN), a coalition of labor, anti-poverty and environmental groups trying to change the way Wal-Mart does business. Smith is spearheading the workers association project, which is also being launched soon in the Dallas area with hopes of expanding it to other cities.

"It was carefully formulated," he said. "This is not the traditional unit we have now in terms of collective bargaining or having an election, this is about what sort of problems Wal-Mart employees are having at work and what can they do to make their lives better at work."

The group has already helped some of the employees who've had their hours cut apply for partial unemployment benefits, Smith said.

Claire Middleton, 70, said she worked a full-time day job for four years taking in returns at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pinellas Park near St. Petersburg. The store changed her schedule in July, telling her she would have to be available from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week if she wanted to keep getting shifts.

Her bad eyes make it difficult to drive after dark and she's afraid of losing her health care benefits if she doesn't work enough hours. She makes $8.56 an hour.

Rveva Barrett, 61, was working as the community involvement coordinator at the same store, even appearing in a national Wal-Mart commercial last year with community leaders. Her job was eliminated recently and she was told she could take another position with a $200 a month pay cut or leave.

Both women have joined the workers association, paying the $5-a-month dues.

"This is a really bad thing that's happening to all the people at Wal-Mart," Barrett said. "Unless we do something about it now, it's going to get worse."

Gallagher, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the incidents are isolated. She said the company has an "open-door policy" and urges associates to talk over any problems with managers. That works for most, she said, noting that associates themselves have shunned opportunities to unionize.

"We regularly receive thousands of applications for 400 jobs when we open new stores," she said. "I think that certainly would be an example that we are seen as a benefit to a lot of our associates."

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For an in-depth analysis of the issues contained in this article, I recommend "The United States of Wal-Mart" by John Dicker. While I have my own concerns over the relevance of organized labor in today's America, I think the formation of "associations" like these is in the best interest of Wal-Mart's employees. The world's largest retailer simply has too much power over its "associates," and the best way to secure better wages, benefits, and working conditions is to have more leverage in negotiating, i.e. collective bargaining.

The responses offered by Wal-Mart Spokeswoman Christi Gallagher in this article are a window into Wal-Mart's PR machine, well described in Mr. Dicker's book. It seems Wal-Mart's representatives ("Wal-flacks," in Mr. Dicker's terms) are determined to read from the same script and highlight the same points when it comes to discussing employee treatment. I offer the following responses:

1) The incidents of mistreatment described by members of the Wal-Mart Workers Association are "isolated"

This record of poor employee treatement at stores across the country is well documented; Wal-Mart can't (in good conscience) pretend it simply doesn't exist. A person can only logically assume that this record stems from ideas imbedded in the company's "corporate culture." Even if that isn't the case and Wal-Mart merely has some "bad apples" in its cadre of store managers, the size of the company ensures that these incidents are a common occurence that must be investigated and addressed. After all, would the company be facing the largest class-action lawsuit ever filed, alleging systematic mistreatment of its female employees, if these incidents were "isolated?" Of course not.

2) The company has an "open-door policy" that allows employees to discuss problems with management

The fact that employees have an "open-door" to management does not ensure that any complaints they share will be addressed. Wal-Mart has long claimed that it can "police itself," but history has shown that no gigantic organization, whether it be a government, a corporation, or even a labor union, can be trusted to do so without some kind of third-party oversight. Without true accountability, the "open-door policy" is worthless. Furthermore, it would be nice if we could believe that every single manager at Wal-Mart wouldn't dare to retaliate against an employee who airs a grievance, but no one is that naive. One of the benefits of having a union at Wal-Mart would be that employees could bring their concerns to a third party, confidentially and without fear of retaliation.

3) Employees themselves have shunned opportunities to unionize

Employees have "shunned" unions under enormous pressure from Wal-Mart. Preventing unionization at each and every store is one of the company's top priorities. When workers at a Canadian store were brave enough to vote for unionization, the company quickly shut the store down. When meat cutters at a Supercenter joined the local UFCW, the company fired them and decided to only sell pre-packaged meat at all its stores. Wal-Mart employees know full well that openly supporting a union will probably cost them their jobs.

4) Organized labor only wants money from Wal-Mart employees

I will concede that organized labor is motivated to unionize Wal-Mart partly because it employs more people than any other corporation in America. Organized labor wants more members, which certainly means more income and more political power. However, the purpose of a union is to protect workers, and Wal-Mart looks ridiculous painting organized labor as "evil" or by portraying the Florida employee association as "a wolf is sheep's clothing" simply because it is backed by the unions. The company tells its employees that organized labor doesn't care about them -- only its own management does -- a very tenuous argument.

5) Wal-Mart has good jobs because so many people apply for them

This argument is Wal-Mart's favorite, and everyone from CEO Lee Scott on down to "Wal-flacks" like Ms. Gallagher loves to use it (note that she is quoted in the article as saying "we regularly receive thousands of applications for 400 jobs when we open new stores"). This argument is also the most ridiculous. How can anyone at Wal-Mart claim the number of applicants "certainly would be an example that we are seen as a benefit to a lot of our associates"? Uh, those people don't work for you (yet). Just because a person seeks a Wal-Mart job does not mean that he or she will like the way he or she is treated by the company. I think a more telling statistic than the number of applicants is the rate of employee turnover (i.e. how soon an employee leaves Wal-Mart after being hired). Wal-Mart's turnover rate is 44 percent per year -- if nearly half the people who work at Wal-Mart leave in a given year, then how can the company's jobs be all that great? According to Mr. Dicker's book (pp. 30-31), 70 percent of new employees leave within 90 days of hiring. Hmmm...

Although I have a lot of respect for Wal-Mart as a corporation and as a retailer, I find its employee relations to be disgusting. Full-scale unionization might not be the answer to the company's "labor problem," but Wal-Mart offers no solutions of its own...instead, it keeps portraying the fiction that "everything's fine" with propaganda that seems completely out of touch with reality. It's hard to take Wal-Mart seriously or have any sympathy for its position when it continues to stand behind a script of nothing more than hollow rhetoric. The company will have to come to terms with these issues, and it would be better for everyone if it did so sooner rather than later.