UFCW re-starts anti-Wal-Mart effort
WASHINGTON (PAI) – After a five-year break to take stock and launch a consumer revolt against anti-worker retailer Wal-Mart and its treatment of employees and customers, the United Food and Commercial Workers is starting a new organizing drive at the company.

The union is emboldened by several factors. One is its recent win in Canada, where provincial labor laws forced Wal-Mart to accept an arbitrator’s two-year contract settlement in the Wal-Mart store in Ste. Hyacinthe, Quebec. Similar cases are pending elsewhere north of the border.

Another is the election of Democrat Barack Obama to the White House, with strong labor support and over strenuous Wal-Mart opposition. The firm even went so far as to order its managers to warn workers to vote against Obama or suffer dire consequences if Obama won.

The pro-UFCW workers went to Washington, D.C., calling themselves Wal-Mart Workers for Change, and detailed in stories to congressional staffers and in a new video both working conditions at the retailer and its often-illegal tactics against union supporters. The D.C. trip by workers from 17 states followed UFCW’s decision to send more than 60 organizers to 15 states to begin its new campaign.

In the video, Cynthia Murray, a Wal-Mart associate from Maryland, said the workers are “intimidated, and they are afraid. My family and other families have paid the price for freedom. And when you tell me I can’t talk about a union, you’re taking my freedom from me.”

Vikki Gill, a former Wal-Mart manager in St. Louis, said in the video, “Wal-Mart’s slogan is ‘Save Money, Live Better.’ Wal-Mart is saving money and living better at the associates’ expense.” The film and the workers also point out that Wal-Mart made $13.4 billion in profits last year.

Organizing Wal-Mart is important for several reasons. It is the largest private company in the U.S., with more than one million workers. Its economic power is such that it can dictate terms to its suppliers, forcing them to sell it goods at such low prices they have to cut their own workers’ wages.

And Wal-Mart’s unionized competitors have cited the threat of the giant retailer in arguing for their own wage and benefit cuts.