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Wal-Mart workers in
Colorado get support for Friday's UFCW vote while CEO Lee Scott attacks
unions for trying to protect high wages One hundred people gathered yesterday outside a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Loveland, Colorado to support the company's Tire & Lube workers, who will vote on union representation next Friday. If a majority decides for representation through UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW, this would be the first organised Wal-Mart workplace in the United States. Recently, the Bentonville-based retail giant decided to close a store in Jonquière, Canada rather than to conclude a collective agreement with UFCW, which represents its workers. Earlier this month, the workers at another Tire & Lube workplace in Colorado were intimidated by the Canada decision to the extent that they did not dare to vote for union representation. Community group fears Wal-Mart election will not be free and fair This has now prompted a Denver-based community organisation, Jobs for Justice, to react. Its Director Heidi Zwicker tells the Rocky Mountain News that they want to support free and fair elections. The Loveland workers petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for certification already in 2000, and more than half of them have already left the company. Josh Noble, the Tire & Lube employee who initiated the petition, participated in the rally and spoke with the Colorado newspaper: "We have to educate the workers in the store about the union," He said. "Right now, they're scared." Wages and health care benefits aren't fair and competitive now, he added: "They want to pay as little as possible - we do the job of four or five people and get paid for half a person." Only days ago, a well known U.S. grocery chain Winn-Dixie had to file for protection from its creditors, driven to near bankruptcy by Wal-Mart's social dumping. And the company is in court for the largest class action suit in American history, saying that women workers have been systematically discriminated against. Charges have also been raised for using illegal immigrants for cleaning work, paying them below the statutory minimum wage. Lee H. Scott accuses UFCW for protecting high wages in retailing But Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's CEO, was untouched by this when he spoke to corporate leaders in Los Angeles, California yesterday. He accused the trade unions, and particularly UFCW, for creating a bad reputation for the company. Los Angeles Times tells that he blamed union activists for trying to protect high-paying jobs in the grocery industry, and said that if they had their way, prices would rise. The 70,000 grocery workers in Southern California who one year ago were on strike or locked out by their employers for four months would surely not agree. They were desperate to fight for the right of their families to medical care, to stay able to pay their housing mortgages and to send their children to school. Lee Scott slapped these workers in the face when he told his fellow executives that Wal-Mart intends to open 25 new stores in this very region. This would force supermarket chains with union employees to compete, and thus lower prices, he said. Only a few days ago, new proof emerged about how Wal-Mart can exert this pressure on its competitors, when it was revealed that Wal-Mart workers' children in Alabama top the list of those who have to rely on public social assistance, Medicaid, when they need care. Wal-Mart owners are America's wealthiest people To believe that lower prices for consumers would be the driving force for Wal-Mart's social dumping - or wal-martization as it has began to be called - would be a mistake. If the company lost its top position on Fortune's list of the companies most admired by corporate executives, its owners - the Walton family - still top the same newsmagazine's list over the wealthiest Americans. So this is why Wal-Mart cannot afford to pay its workers as much as its more decent competitors, this is why it has to employ undeclared workers for wages under the (already very low) statutory minimum wage, and this is why Wal-Mart workers' children that get sick are in a much worse position than those of other retailers. The company's sweetheart deal with the George W. Bush administration's Labor Department is now under Federal scrutiny. Senator Edward M. Kennedy and U.S. Representative George Miller are among those who have been outraged over the widespread illegal use by Wal-Mart of young teenagers for dangerous jobs, such as operating chainsaws, scrap paper balers and fork lifts. Lee Scott's luncheon with business leaders in Los Angeles was part of an expensive public relations campaign to try to clean up the company's badly tarnished image. That he went to here was hardly a coincidence. What would be a better place to scare up the 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers in the United States than Southern California, the site of last year's bitter grocery strike. But it was not only about putting pressure on his own workers to stay out of the UFCW. It was also an attempt to mend the damages from a recent scandal in close-by Inglewood, where Wal-Mart paid for a major effort to get voters to approve a construction permit for a new superstore. This campaign, which was seen as a confirmation of the arrogance of the Bentonville retailer, backfired and the Inglewood residents said a resounding no to the projected entry.
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