WASHINGTON - The union organizing movement against Wal-Mart Stores has all the trappings of a grass-roots political campaign: a snappy Web site, volunteer action list, and an issues-based platform that focuses on wages, health care and retirement security.
If the unionizing campaign at the retail behemoth has a familiar ring, it may be because one of its leaders honed his skills in the 2004 presidential campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Howard Dean approach
Paul Blank was the national political director for Dean, whose strong showing early in the contest was credited to an Internet-based campaign that appealed to young voters and donors disillusioned by big-party politics.
Organized labor — led by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) — is using a similar approach against Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. The company, with sales of $284 billion last year, has embittered unions for years by blocking efforts to organize its more than 1.2 million North American workers, including shutting down a store in Canada where employees were pressing for union representation and closing all its meat-packing operations when 11 butchers in Texas voted to unionize.
"One of the reasons the UFCW hired me is that I had approached them and said look, if you're going to change the largest company in the world, there's only one way to do that," Blank said in an interview. That way, Blank continued, was "to build enough pressure from the bottom up to change Wal-Mart. And in some ways, I believe that's the case in how to change the political system as well."
40,000 signed up
The Dean campaign used the Internet to enlist volunteers, alert supporters to campaign events and neighborhood fund-raising events, and rally young voters — dubbed "Deanie boppers." The Internet also became a formidable fund-raising engine for Dean.
Blank says the union has signed up more than 40,000 supporters on its anti-Wal-Mart Internet site in just a few weeks, although the UFCW is not using the Web to raise money. Those supporters include community activists concerned about Wal-Mart's impact on small businesses, environmentalists opposed to "big-box" stores and Wal-Mart workers who want better pay and benefits.
He credits UFCW President Joe Hansen for launching the "Wake Up Wal-Mart" campaign earlier this year, attacking the company on a broad front after 20 years of failed efforts to organize Wal-Mart employees.
"The UFCW has realized that it's not just a worker-based campaign any longer, but it's really America's campaign to change Wal-Mart," Blank said. "So we have shifted the focus from just in-store organizing, which is the traditional union model of store-by-store organizing into a model where we're building a grass-roots movement of Americans who want to change Wal-Mart."
The changes the UFCW and its allies at the AFL-CIO labor federation seek include guaranteed health and retirement benefits and a boost in wages that now average $9.68 per hour.
Wal-Mart offers health insurance and a 401(k) retirement plan to its workers, but the union says the vast majority of employees earn too little to pay their share of medical coverage or to participate in the 401(k).
Wal-Mart's response
The company recently launched its own public-relations blitz to soften its hard-edge business image. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott, speaking at the company's first-ever press conference at the headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., in February, said the company creates stable jobs and is committed to providing a good working environment for employees.
Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for communications, said in a written statement that the company is "willing to listen to people with concerns about health care and other employee issues" and dismissed critics as "simply focused on their own self-interests and narrow political agendas."
But Wal-Mart did not grant a request for a telephone interview to discuss the UFCW's campaign.
Wal-Mart, an American icon that is expanding across the globe, has had its troubles. In recent weeks, Thomas Coughlin resigned as vice chairman amid questions about his expense claims and labor accusations that he helped finance anti-union activities in violation of federal law. A federal grand jury also is reviewing allegations of misspending within Wal-Mart. And the company has recently settled cases involving allegations of child and immigrant labor abuses.
Wal-Mart also faced angry unions and had bomb threats when it shut down a store in Jonquiere, Quebec, where employees seeking to unionize asked a Quebec labor board to intervene. Wal-Mart blamed the closure on poor sales.
Still, the recent stumbles haven't hurt business. Wal-Mart sales continue to grow, although not as fast as that of rivals Target and Costco.
Posted by UFCW 227 at April 25, 2005 03:08 PM