UNION GROUPS DEMAND FEDS ACT VS. WAL-MART ANTI-OBAMA VOTING ORDER

Friday, August 15, 2008

(PAI)UNION GROUPS DEMAND FEDS ACT VS. WAL-MART ANTI-OBAMA VOTING ORDER

By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

            WASHINGTON (PAI)--The AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work, Change to Win and WakeUp Wal-Mart formally asked the government to probe and punish Wal-Mart for its order to its managers and supervisors to work against and vote against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), because of his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. They called the order illegal under federal election law.

            Their August 14 request to the Federal Election Commission said the retail monster broke federal election law with mandatory meetings with its store managers and department supervisors in seven states to push its threat. The meetings were first reported in the Wall Street Journal.

            The labor groups’ request may not get very far. The FEC is known as a toothless tiger in enforcing election law violations. Its decisions, when they come at all, are years after the law-breaking occurs and its fines are usually small.

            The meetings were confirmed by other Wal-Mart workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation, but who nevertheless called another organization that probes the retailer, Wal-Mart Watch, to discuss the sessions.

            Wal-Mart, the Journal story said, specifically warned managers and supervisors that working and voting for Obama for president is a vote for the Employee Free Choice Act. The act, beaten by a Senate GOP filibuster this year, will come up again in the next Congress.

            Federal law lets corporations “communicate express advocacy about federal candidates,” such as Obama “only to a restricted class” of employees, the labor groups’ complaint says. That class has to be salaried, not hourly, and it is only “employees who have policymaking, managerial, professional or supervisory responsibilities.”

            The Wal-Mart store managers and department supervisors, summoned to the meetings about Obama and EFCA, are hourly workers. Even Wal-Mart’s spokesman calls them “associates”--the behemoth’s name for rank-and-file workers.

            The Employee Free Choice Act, which Wal-Mart hates, would level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining by--among other things

--outlawing the very “captive audience” meetings Wal-Mart held. Firms hold those with workers in almost all organizing drives, featuring anti-union harangues with no rebuttals and workers must attend or face discipline.

            The act would not only outlaw those sessions, but it would legalize card-check

recognition of unions as an option for workers to choose, increase fines for labor law-breaking--another action Wal-Mart is notorious for--and makes it easier to get court orders against violators, especially repeaters such as Wal-Mart.

            Wal-Mart, which with 1.4 million workers is the world’s largest private company, says it talks with workers about EFCA but does not pressure them how to vote on candidates who are for or against it. The workers who called Wal-Mart Watch say that’s ridiculous, given the firm’s history.

            So does AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff. He called Wal-Mart “guilty of trying to bully" its workers and the U.S. political system, reported a Canadian union federation allied with the UFCW--which has been trying to organize the monster retailer.

            Wal-Mart Watch said the Journal story "demonstrates once again Wal-Mart intimidates its workers." The story was "consistent" with many reports it got from Wal-Mart workers in the last week, the organization added. One Missouri supervisor who called flatly said Wal-Mart was ordering them how to vote.

            “Some reports we received were even more egregious than what was described in (the Journal) story. In one case, a worker said they were shown a slide that said 'Obama = union' and then were told why unions were bad...All of these tactics seem to be designed to keep workers from demanding better wages, decent benefits or fairer working conditions,” Wal-Mart Watch said.

            Added Michael Whitney of American Rights at Work: “Unfortunately for Wal-Mart workers, this kind of intimidation is nothing new. It's actually part and parcel for Wal-Mart's business plan. When Wal-Mart employees stand up for themselves and try to form a union, they face threats, propaganda, discrimination, intimidation, and even firings in retaliation. What Wal-Mart is doing for November's election is what it, and hundreds of other anti-union companies, do all the time when workers say they

want an union: Intimidating them to go against their own self-interests.

            But while the FEC may be a toothless tiger, Wal-Mart faces a more real threat north of the border. Next year, the Canadian Supreme Court will hear arguments by two workers in a Wal-Mart store in Jonquiere, Quebec, that the firm broke provincial labor law and freedom of association by union-busting.

            Wal-Mart closed Jonquiere in April 2005, after workers voted to unionize with UFCW Canada and when Quebec law required Wal-Mart to bargain to a first contract. Wal-Mart called Jonquiere “unprofitable” and fired all 190 workers. Few believed that explanation. "When the Supreme Court accepts to hear you, it's because the case is of national interest," said Louis Bolduc, executive assistant to UFCW Canada's president.