The Wall Street Journal reports today that Wal-Mart has joined the fight against Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a piece of legislation designed to make it easier for workers to unionize.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.
The actions by Wal-Mart — the nation’s largest private employer — reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership. That could lead to higher payroll and health costs for companies already being hurt by rising fuel and commodities costs and the tough economic climate.
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don’t specifically tell attendees how to vote in November’s election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
Wal-Mart joins in this latest anti-union adventure with groups bearing such Orwellian names as the “Coalition for a Democratic Workplace” and the “Employee Freedom Action Committee,” because we all know how committed Wal-Mart is to a free and democratic workplace. It is after all Wal-Mart’s workers who vote for the company’s CEO, not its shareholders.
Business-backed organizations are also running ads aimed at building opposition to the bill, including the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which counts several hundred industry associations as members. Another group, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, is run by former tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman. The groups, which aren’t affiliated with each other, say they have a total of $50 million in funding. Neither will disclose which companies or individuals have provided funding.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made defeat of the legislation a top priority. In the past six months, it has flown state and local Chamber members to Washington to lobby members of Congress. On Thursday, the Chamber began airing a television ad in Minnesota and plans to run ads in other states as part of a broader campaign.
Amplifying the downright Orwellian absurdity of this fight, the business coalition that opposes the EFCA portrays itself as a “David” facing the “Goliath” of organized labor, because corporate lobbyists are spending less money than their labor counterparts, who are–make no mistake–fighting for their very lives, for the very possibility that organized labor will survive in America in the twenty-first century.
I wish I had some clever turn of phrase or incisive analysis to offer on this matter, but I don’t.
Let me be short, then: what Wal-Mart is doing is vile. Given the massive corporate campaign to block the EFCA, it is very reasonable for us to assume that Wal-Mart’s workers might actually want to unionize, if given a fair chance. Wal-Mart, however, doesn’t want to let them unionize and will do everything it can to stop them.
Through almost all of its 48-year history, Wal-Mart has fought hard to keep unions out of its stores, flying in labor-relations rapid-response teams from its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters to any location where union activity was building. The United Food and Commercial Workers was successful in organizing only one group of Wal-Mart workers — a small number of butchers in East Texas in early 2000. Several weeks later, the company phased out butchers in all of its stores and began stocking prepackaged meat. When a store in Canada voted to unionize several years ago, the company closed the store, saying it had been unprofitable for years.
Being able to organize or join a labor union is, I believe, a fundamental right of all free persons. Wal-Mart, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce apparently want to use their collective clout to make it hard for their workers to exercise that right. They are, from this perspective, by definition against freedom. They are fundamentally opposed to democracy. They want to restrict their workers’ choices and want to keep all negotiating leverage for themselves, leaving none for labor.
Which of course comes as no surprise.
It is in fact the name Employee Free Choice Act that is Orewellian. It in fact removed the most important free choice, the secret ballot.
As odious as other Walmart tactics have been in this case they are on the side of democracy on this one. There I said it. While some, perhaps most, workers in commodity labor industries want to join a union it behooves the government to preserve the secret ballot so that a vocal, socially persuasive minority does not run roughshod over the majority.
Comment by John — August 1, 2008 @ 7:56 am
I will beg to differ.
First, Wal-Mart isn’t seeking to preserve the secret ballot because of its admiration for democracy.
But beyond that, the secret ballot is not the everywhere/always necessary lynch pin to democracy. There is no equation I’ve ever read that says democracy = secret ballot. Sometimes, secret ballot makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t.
If secret ballots *as such* were an essential feature to democratic theory–that is, if secret ballots were in every case the logical prerequisite for democracy–then the US Congress and Senate would be anti-democratic by virtue of our knowing who voted for what. Maybe our Senators should insist on the implementation of secret ballot to enhance democracy. I suspect many Senators would like that.
If secret ballots were by definition required for true democracy, then Obama’s caucus wins were odiously anti-democratic. I know a certain Senator from New York who would not disagree.
Finally, by that logic, the US wasn’t a “real” democracy before 1884 (of course, there was no true practicing universal suffrage until much later, but that has nothing to do with the secret ballot).
In the history of democracy, there have been many, many cases where the secret ballot was not in effect. The institutional forms of particular real-world democracies can–and do–vary by circumstance.
Democracy ought to be about having a *real choice*.
In this case, Wal-Mart wants the secret ballot because IT KNOWS IN ADVANCE that it can win those votes; they’ve perfected the pressure techniques for doing so. They spend millions killing unions, largely successfully, and in those rare cases where they don’t succeed close the store or eliminate the department where the workers got what they wanted.
If it were the other way around–if say, the card system were more advantageous to them–the executives at Wal-Mart would call secret ballot an odious assault on democracy.
That’s why it’s Orwellian for Wal-Mart to pretend to be a defender of democracy. They are democratic in the way that the Soviet Union was technically a democracy. They, like the Communist Party leadership, always win 99% of the vote. It’s a rigged game.
So the name Employee Free Choice Act: In as much as the EFCA will actually give workers A CHOICE to form a labor union–not a guarantee, just a realistic shot at occasional success–that’s actually a pretty accurate title, or as accurate as you can get in Washington politics.
Comment by Lee — August 1, 2008 @ 11:24 am
P.S.: Looking into this matter, but as far as I can tell the EFCA does not ELIMINATE the option of the secret ballot. It can still be used if workers prefer.
Comment by Lee — August 1, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the nature of this secret ballot but, according to this site:
http://republicans.edlabor.house.gov/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=58
it sounds like it doesn’t allow a secret ballot vote for unionization. Rep John Kline (R-MN) from the article:
“It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone – your employer, your union organizer, and your co-workers – knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee ‘free choice…. It seems pretty clear to me that the only way to ensure that a worker is ‘free to choose’ is to ensure that there’s a private ballot, so that no one knows how you voted. I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker’s democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it ‘Employee Free Choice.’”
I must say that his outrage is a tad puzzling (okay, okay, we’ll call a rat a rat: it’s just disingenuous) since he doesn’t otherwise seem to support the rest of the bill. I’m not really familiar with John Kline but, it’s a little hard for me to imagine him having the same zealous support for labor (falsely suggested by his quote above) that we would find with, say, Dennis Kucinich.
Just a random, conclusive thought:
The the dismantling of the Labor Movement has been part and parcel of the rising income disparity since the early 70’s.
Comment by aaron — August 1, 2008 @ 1:32 pm
I’m sure Wal-Mart is only doing this for their own benefit.
That still doesn’t meant that the secret or private ballot doesn’t matter. Anyone who has seen the peer pressure in an office to contribute to someone’s charity or a co-worker’s gift knows that in places the pressure to sign a card will be overwhelming. All the better a worker has a fair change to vote “yes” or “no” with said vote known only to themselves.
The other parts of the EFCA are good but removing the requirement of a secret ballot renders the rest moot to me.
Comment by John — August 1, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
Secret/private ballot can matter, especially in an election for political candidates that takes place on neutral polling grounds. In many cases, depending on the concentration of power and the institutional circumstances, it is the best choice. But I see no a priori reason to prefer it.
Union elections, which take place on company grounds, and are not elections for candidates but on the question of whether to organize, seem qualitatively different to me.
Peer pressure does matter–especially in situations where there is an organized political machine that might manipulate the election–but in this case, as the WSJ has amply documented, ALL the peer pressure/manipulation is coming from Wal-Mart, whereas union organizers are highly restricted in what they can do by law.
Again, everything I’ve read suggests that workers can still CHOOSE to go through the NLRB election process. Another option is being put on the table for organized labor. Nothing, as far as I can tell, is being taken away–at least from labor.
The secret ballot issue for union organizing concerns me about as much as Iowa’s caucus process does. Yes, people will try to influence you to join them, to organize. That’s the point. At least with these cards, there is some chance labor might occasionally win change–it’s a way of neutralizing the enormous natural advantages companies have in such votes.
Comment by Lee — August 1, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
As a former union member I disagree. But I think we shall have to agree to disagree on this point.
Comment by John — August 1, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
Yeah, I suspect we can agree to disagree. On balance, I think the EFCA is a good thing, especially if the option of NLRB elections remains open, but even if not. A formal right to unionize is meaningless unless there is some chance of real success.
Comment by Lee — August 1, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
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