What is the best method to get WalMart workers to ban together and unionize? Or is this a lost hope?

They just need to quit and stop working for $8 per hour while be treated like shit. Go do something productive like deal bud

You would go about it in the normal way: unionize the workers in one store. Then go to the next, etc.

Contact the AFL-CIO, they have really great resources for doing this.

if they think there’s unionizing going on, they’ll fire everyone and find new workers who don’t care that they’re treated like crap for meager wages.

Incidentally, I know someone who’s worked there for 10 years, and she’s never been treated like crap. Just FYI.

That is not remotely a “well established fact”. If any Wal*Mart employee thinks they’re not being treated fairly, they are 100% welcome to terminate their own employment and find a better job. We do not live in a caste system in this country. Your career options are your own making.

There are about 30 million people in your country already in that position, who are not exactly successful in finding a better job. If you already have so little training that you have to work at walmart (which btw. went bust in Germany because they could not handle actual competition), your chances of finding a better one, especially with 30 million competitors, are not exactly astronomical.

Just so ya’ll know, it is against the law to fire people for union organizing activities. There have been many attempts to organize at Walmart stores, and I don’t believe any have succeeded yet. Walmart used their ability to force the employees to listen to their speeches telling them how awful a union would be for them. They probably tell a lot of lies. No matter. It works.

If you’re going to unionize walmart employees, you’re going to have to get access to them and constantly talk to them and counteract management propaganda. Good luck.

If Wal Mart is the only job you can acquire, perhaps you should appreciate the wages you have. If you think you can do better, walk out the door and apply to a business of your choice.

I would say this is a lost cause because unions only work when employees are irreplaceable. In theory, it would work perfectly at a medical center because each employee requires a certain degree and lots of on-the-job experience.

@Vortico I completely agree with your first paragraph, and completely disagree with your second.

Unions only work where employees are completely replaceable. The whole point of a Union is that everyone who works there bands together and says “If you treat any one of us badly, you’re going to have to answer to all of us.” This is why we even have such a concept of “scab” workers or “crossing the picket line”. Because there are other people perfectly capable of doing the job, but if they do, they ruin the only sway the Union has, so they’re looked down upon.

At one of my first jobs post-college, I was a white-collar employee. I was forbidden from doing anything even remotely blue collar. I was not allowed, for example, to move my computer monitor from one end of the desk to the other. Why? Because that’s a job for the blue-collar unionized employees. And if I were to do that job, it would prove the unionized employees less needed and less valuable, thus reducing the union’s influence over the company.

At a job where employees are irreplaceable, Unions are not needed, because every individual employee is able to negotiate based on his/her own skill set. “If you don’t give me a raise, I’m going to quit and then you’ll be up shit’s creek.” Unions are needed where companies don’t have to give a rat’s ass if any particular employee quits – they only have to care if EVERY employee walks off the job.

@MrItty You have some very good points. Admittedly, I’m not very knowledgeable about this topic, so you are most likely correct.

I once worked a convention in Cleveland. I got all my heavy stuff to the site for my booth, etc. I was required to wait for a union electrician to come plug my lights into an extension cord. Really people? I do this task at home, it doesn’t take an electrician (my 5 year old nephew can do it) and it cost $50/hour and they billed in half-hour increments. This is NUTS!!!

Unionized employees have nearly ruined many industries, such as transportation. It is so expensive to get items from the ships to the trains to the stores, all because of union rules, that many of the products we use in the U. S. are unloaded in Mexico and Canada, and transported by NAFTA trucks, putting hundreds and hundreds workers out of work.

Unions are both good and bad things. In some industries, where employers are particularly abusive, unions can be a good thing. But they can also cause a lot of inefficiency and ultimately hurt the people they represent as others have pointed out. I worked for an airline in a small regional airport, and when it came time to vote on union status, we all voted no. It really didn’t make sense for us.

Now if I were a coal miner in West Virginia…

Nobody that I’ve talked to at work (granted, I work at Sam’s, not Wal-Mart) is interested in unionizing – indeed, a lot of us have had fallings-out with unions in previous jobs. So it is, I hear, in many stores.
Why would we? We already have good benefits (medical insurance, dental insurance, stocks, and even a 401k), access to higher-ups, and the entry-level wage at my store is well above minimum. The only thing that we need protection from is the abrasive clientèle.

It is not a “well established fact that WalMart Corp. is one of the most corrupt, unfair…corporations in the world.” Rather, Wal-Mart’s opponents are dead set on making it look as bad as possible. I will grant some corruption – bugs are inevitable in large systems.

@YARNLADY that is what i would call false consciousness, Unions rarely ever, in fact never ever, ruin industries. That is almost always down to mismanagement, over production, etc or extraneous circumstances beyond the companies control.

That you accept that position is because the right wing are adept at convincing you that workers are more greedy than the Board of directors, that is clearly untrue, the wage differential is there, in black and white for all to see.

Having said that some Unions are much better than others, some work hard and are dedicated some are venal and self serving, but that is really the fault of the union members.

If @nullo is representative of the employees at Sam’s or Wal-Mart then that is why the there is no union, the workers are content.

And the bottom line is, as was stated several times above, if you feel you are being treated unfairly, go work somewhere else. I wish I had a Wal-mart where I could shop.

It is a simple truth that not all employers are bad and not all employees are good. Union supporters seem to assume just the opposite. Union dues are not cheap, all those union bosses have to be paid. Also unions protect not only the hard working productive employees but also the slack asses.

@rooeytoo don’t want to hear it

@mammal – hehehe, wow, yep I would shop there and yep I expect employees to be respectful to customers. If the customer is rude, it makes the job more difficult, but it is what the employee is being paid to do.

And nope I am really not too much of a bitcher. Actually I like to roam around and shop on my own. But thanks for the free analysis anyhow.

@mammal I worked in two union stores before working at Sam’s – one a 30-store supermarket chain, the other a 4-store high-end grocery retailer, and in both of those, I was expected to be polite and respectful. Before that I worked at a car wash, and even there, I was to be polite.
I was fired from the big chain because someone – a customer – thought that one of my facetious comments was dissing the senior management. She ended up telling the department manager that I had said that the senior management could, “kiss my ass,” and the next thing I knew, I was out of a job.

I’m a union supporter. I used to work for a union. I believe that workers often need to engage in collective action in order to force their employers to improve wages and working conditions. I think that free riders are scum. Free riders are workers who benefit from the union contract but don’t pay union dues.

I recently became a free rider.

It wasn’t my fault. One day they called me into HR. No one knew why. I thought maybe they were going to fire me. It turned out I’m… rather my position had been the subject of negotiations, and it was now in the bargaining unit. My wages stayed the same, but my benefit package was suddenly a lot worse. One thousand dollars worse. If I join the union, it’ll cost me another 2 k. For what? A reduced benefit package?

It is probably true that at will employees’ salaries are higher because of the union, but I signed up for an at will position.

The economics of union campaigns are complex. Inn fact, it is much harder to organize in difficult economic times. Historically, more union chapters are certified during good times. It’s easy to see why. In boom times, labor is scarce. Employers are making more money. Thy lose more during a work stoppage.

Walmart is a bottom feeder when it comes to employees. People work there only when they can’t get any other work. They hire many part time workers. They can make do with employees who have almost no skills and no education. In other words, walmart employees are easily replaceable in good times as well as bad. When employers don’t need any particular set of employees, it’s only a bit of a pain to fire them all and hire a whole new batch.

Walmart hates unions with an unbelievable passion. The only thing they need from employees is for them to be able to smile and remember where the toilet paper is. The employees are ridiculously easy to replace. That’s why it is next to impossible to organize walmart employees.

@wundayatta
>> People work there only when they can’t get any other work. They hire many
>> part time workers. They can make do with employees who have almost no skills
>> and no education. In other words, walmart employees are easily replaceable in
>> good times as well as bad

Which is why I’m 100% against any such proposed unionization. People who have no skills should be grateful for ANY employment they can get. Companies should not have to pay them more than they’re worth. If you are completely replaceable, you should expect to be replaced if you aren’t doing the job well or are complaining about your working conditions.

@MrItty I don’t know why you are against it. It really has nothing to do with what you or I might think. Honestly, I have no feelings other than sadness. I’m sorry we have so many uneducated people in this country who can only find work in Walmart, or any other minimum wage job.

I think the reason why there are no (or maybe 1?) unions at Walmart is because people know they can and will be replaced. Walmart makes sure they know that.they would rather close a store than let the union in. This site outlines about a million complaints about how horrible Walmart is to it’s employees. Here’s what Walmart does to prevent union campaigns from succeeding. Walmart is so clever, they are capable of splitting interunion solitarity. Walmart is trying to gain a foothold around the world. In South Africa, unions have vowed to strike if Walmart does not honor existing contracts in the store they are buying a stake in. Stay tuned.

@wundayatta always a pleasure. ditch the go work somewhere else if you don’t like it…and i’ll avoid the speculative analysis, how about that? i mean one could suggest that you go live in Columbia, or China or on the moon if you don’t like the idea of unionization and democracy. Better still…we live and let live, if one isn’t really interfering in the others business :)

@Nullo i’m not sure what your position is within your company, but some advice; my current colleague used to be a bank manager, good career prospects, pretty good salary, and so forth, he was sacked, for a trumped up misdemeanour, on the spot, that day…gone, no severance pay nothing, i’m not going to judge, but the Bank were looking for cutbacks, who knows. Now he could have had access to free legal resources through a union in order to legally challenge the dismissal, but did he belong to a Union, of course not, because he thought, deep down, that nonsense was for the rank and file, and the unambitious losers, now that is just plain dumb, naive and self defeating. i mean, union dues in this country are a few bucks a week, maybe it is exorbitant in America…

@mammal Could you show me where I made that “go work somewhere else comment? I’m having trouble finding it.

@mammal A union is no guarantee, either. Like I said, I was ejected clean out of a union job because a woman having a bad day lied to the manager about me.
At Wal-Mart, I just need to follow the rules – no chance of being fired for staffing reasons, my department’s understaffed – and cultivate good relationships with my bosses. No union dues or politics.
You may not have been watching, but about ⅓ of the political turmoil here leading up to the midterms was generated by various unions who have set themselves against the Tea Party people, commanding their members to go out and protest. I’d leave for that very reason.

I would guess the majority of employees would have to be prounion and open about it. I’m not an expert on unions but I think for skilled trades/technical jobs that people such as myself work in unions may be almost mandatory unless you want to be making low-skilled production workers wages for performing highly skilled tasks. Been there, done that.

@mammal That you accept that position is because the right wing are adept at convincing you is an unfounded assumption.

walmart closes any store if the employees so much as attempt to unionize. and you cant convince people not to work at a certain place no matter how bad of an employer they are. the only option is to make a law keeping walmart from closing.

@dealrrr That ought to be the company’s choice, IMO.