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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090417/us_ ... mart_union

Yahoo! News + Reuters wrote: 2 hrs 42 mins ago

(Reuters) – The United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) has stepped up efforts to organize employees at the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

UFCW's efforts at the company, after a five-year lull, combine with its attempt to win Congressional support for a bill that makes unionizing easier, the paper reported.

Last month, Wal-Mart Treasurer Charles Holley had said the retailer was opposed to a bill introduced in the Congress that would let employees form a union if a majority signed authorization cards.

The paper said since Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private sector employer with 1.4 million employees, the union's campaign could have significant impact on the legislative debate and other actions to organize workers.

Wal-Mart could not be immediately reached for comment.

(Reporting by Eric Yep in Bangalore; Editing by David Holmes)

To be honest, this bothers me. (Before the lynching begins, let me explain.)

Yes, it's true that some Wal-Mart workers are underpaid, abused, and others are just lazy and worthless (we've all had to deal with them a time or two.)

I think they deserve far more rights in the company, better benefits (especially if they've been there long enough), etc.

So, a Union would not be a bad idea to make sure the employees receive better than what they have now.

On the flipside, however...

The problems it presents (and these are just a few. I don't know the inner working mechanics of the union/big business machine, so I won't go there...)

...are as follows:

1.) Proficient employees (I.E. longterm) will be given a severance package of sorts, so they don't have to pay them, thus leaving us with the absolute bottom of the barrel scumbags who won't do their job. (Which could drive away some customers, or even companies.)

2.) To accommodate their wishes, Wal-Mart will have to raise prices higher than they are already, and Wal-Mart's already bargain basement pricing isn't that much of a bargain lately. (Sure, I bought a pair of jeans for $8.00, but a bottle of Maalox cost me $5.00...I used to be able to buy it for $3.65) Not to mention their increase on TF prices when everyone else got the hint to cash in and sell, sell, sell. (And if Wally raises their prices, the competition will finally do so as well.)

In this economy, we need better workers who are reliable and competent, and lower cost of living so people can simply just survive. (Actually living is a luxury to some folks right now, survival's the name of the game.)

A Union for truckers? Okay. Unions for things like UPS or the USPS, etc? Okay. Unions for Wal-Mart? No. Not right now. A few years ago? Sure. Should've ground Wally World into the pavement.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous that They're even considering a Union with Wal-Mart right now. Do I want the people to keep their jobs? Sure. But they won't leave the Union battle at job security, they'll take it to the next level, which will cost US the consumers more and more money.

It'd be hard enough on our wallets to keep the current employees in the workforce if this Union thing goes through, but I can deal with that. That's a necessity. Giving them extras and goodies right now isn't.

I dunno. If I'm wrong on this one, I admit it in advance. If I'm not, then I have to worry. I can't afford much now, as it is. If prices continue to climb, I'm screwed.

Just like a lot of us.

I know what I'm about to say runs against the general opinion of the unions but I beg of you please hear me out...


The Unions of today are not what they once were. They have become greedy and corrupt and yes communist:

They have driven many companies to the verge of bankruptcy and beyond by forcing companies to retain unproductive and even detrimental employees and pay them the same rate as productive employees.

They have driven up prices on every kind of item from cars to hamburgers by demanding concessions from companies that those companies simply can not afford to pay.

They force companies to accept behavior, the ability to simply walk of the job for example, from employee that by all rights those employees should be fired for.

They force people that have no desire to join the unions because they disagree with the policies of the union to join the unions just to have or keep a job.

They even go so far as to steal from their members and use the money that should be going to benefit the union members to support politicians who have even gone so far as to attack and destroy the very industries of unions from whom they have received financial support




They do all this and yet somehow unions who have long since ceased to protect workers rights and have instead become the greatest assault upon those rights are seen as a good thing. Please my brethren I beg of you this madness must stop.

Unions are an absolutely necessity to every day American worker for all the reasons the OP.

Yeah there are corruption but guess what so is management a lot of time. When properly used both Unions and Management keep each other in check and honest. The problems is that top level morons are running each sides and want unreasonable things on both sides they do this to look tough and end up looking like a pair of dip-shits because they end fighting each other and not working together.

Coming from a family with a lot Union members, I support the Unions.

I see this title and a few things pop into my head...

1) Unions have gotten a foothold in Walmart before in Eastern Canada, and wallyworld shut those locations down. Regardless of any press releases they issued at the time the message is clear. Wal-mart would rather close a location than have it union-operated. They can always open another store close by anyways. They lose a few months of sales, and still end up unionless in the long run.

2) Unions have overstepped their boundries. I have no problem with an auto-workers union helping Ford plant employees, or woodworkers union looking out for loggers, but driver unions signing up a McDonalds, or a civil service union helping a supermarket just doesn't seem right. Those cases seem more that the union has grown too large and when their key industries start lossing jobs, they rush to sign up anyone that they can possibly pull union dues from to pay their bloated office staffs, and line the pockets of the union heads and lobbyists.

3) In the current ecomony, we all know things are going to get worse, before they get better, so prices are going to get raised and we all are going to have to shop smarter. If the Wal-mart or other store you shop at does get unionized, how much more will it effect the prices there? Saddly we really don't know until it happens, and if it does and it is cheaper to shop at Target or K-Mart, Zellers or Sears whatever, then it's the workers who chose to unionize that will eventally be at fault when the stores they work at are no longer profitable to maintain.

I personally am not anti-union, I just feel that unions should exist for the cause they were created for. When they do, they are a force for positive output and assistance for their members.

What we mostly see nowdays, that is not the case. If Wal-mart workers unionize, more power to them, but i hope it's done for the right reasons, and done at the national level so selected stores don't get shafted, screwing no only the workers of that local, but impacting the people who shop and/or need that store to be there. Anything less within this political and economic climate, would be a diservice to all parties involved.

Editor wrote:I see this title and a few things pop into my head...

1) Unions have gotten a foothold in Walmart before in Eastern Canada, and wallyworld shut those locations down. Regardless of any press releases they issued at the time the message is clear. Wal-mart would rather close a location than have it union-operated. They can always open another store close by anyways. They lose a few months of sales, and still end up unionless in the long run.

2) Unions have overstepped their boundries. I have no problem with an auto-workers union helping Ford plant employees, or woodworkers union looking out for loggers, but driver unions signing up a McDonalds, or a civil service union helping a supermarket just doesn't seem right. Those cases seem more that the union has grown too large and when their key industries start lossing jobs, they rush to sign up anyone that they can possibly pull union dues from to pay their bloated office staffs, and line the pockets of the union heads and lobbyists.

3) In the current ecomony, we all know things are going to get worse, before they get better, so prices are going to get raised and we all are going to have to shop smarter. If the Wal-mart or other store you shop at does get unionized, how much more will it effect the prices there? Saddly we really don't know until it happens, and if it does and it is cheaper to shop at Target or K-Mart, Zellers or Sears whatever, then it's the workers who chose to unionize that will eventally be at fault when the stores they work at are no longer profitable to maintain.

I personally am not anti-union, I just feel that unions should exist for the cause they were created for. When they do, they are a force for positive output and assistance for their members.

What we mostly see nowdays, that is not the case. If Wal-mart workers unionize, more power to them, but i hope it's done for the right reasons, and done at the national level so selected stores don't get shafted, screwing no only the workers of that local, but impacting the people who shop and/or need that store to be there. Anything less within this political and economic climate, would be a diservice to all parties involved.

^ THIS. *slow clap*

I'm IN a union and I feel really awkward about it. Sure, I like it when we can use our bargaining power to insist that we get paid a liveable wage, and I know a colleague who has had to use their legal counsel when some insano student claimed he sexually assaulted her (which is really funny if you know my colleague, but even he wasn't laughing).

However, what really turns me off about my union is the politics. Not the internal politics, but their meddling in state and national politics. I guess it's a necessary evil that my union has lobbyists in DC: apparently that's the only way to get heard. But I really get enraged when I get their monthly brainwashing newsletter.

See: I live in a republic, not a pseudo-worker's state. I, like many Americans, am not an idiot. So I do not like being told whom to vote for. This union doesn't just seek to 'educate' us on the issues, or even just 'endorse' a candidate. They tell us whom we should vote for, smear the other guy, imply we're idiots or anti-education if we would decide to choose to vote for the other guy. Then they hit us with mailings. Phone calls. Emails. All the while I'm thinking--how much of this money to do these mailings, phone banks, etc, really could be going into better tasks for the union, as in reaching out to grad students, or getting better dental coverage, etc.

But instead, they treat us like sheep. We have no choice--if you teach here, you belong to the union. You don't sign anything to agree, it's contingent on employment. I had no choice in joining this union and paying union dues. (And yeah, I could have chosen NOT to work here, but they didn't tell me about all this union stuff until I had already been teaching for a week). So they know in a sense 'they got me', and think that I'm going to toe their line and vote for their candidate just because THEY tell me to? They think I'm going to vote YES on every lower school budget vote out of some weird sense of solidarity, because high school teachers are also in a union--if you're union, you must support everyone ELSE's union? How's that even logical?

Last time I checked, I still had the right to a) a secret ballot (ain't nobody's bidness who I pull the lever for) and b) decide on my own, using the brains the good lord gave me. Especially because, let's face it, ALL politicians are corrupt. What's it say about my union that they support a system of government that's hopelessly corrupt and filled with graft, kickbacks, and cronyism?

Birds of a feather.

HK, venting. But you should read NY Teacher. It's like that brainwashing scene in _clockwork orange_.

Can't really go against most of what's been said in this thread.

Unions have their place and their purpose (though the purpose as shown in previous posts is becoming more and more corrupted)

The part of the story I have a problem with is card-check. If that gets passed and Unions flood into just-about-damn-near-everything, then things are going to start grinding to a halt.
Example

All these new union shops are going to have issues. Managements aren't all going to play nice. Strikes happen. Other Unions start 'sympathy' strikes. Enough places have work stoppages that other firms can't do their business. Economy seizes.

Yeah, not a certainty that it'd happen, but plausible.

Besides that, look at the affect that Unions-gone-amuck have done to airlines and the Auto industry. Sure things were fine as long as business was good but as soon as the industries hit bumpy patches the Unions refused concession of certain benefits further driving companies into the red to the point of shutting down.
Now when that happens what happens to the employees, their benefits, their pensions... they're all f**ked. But the union's don't care, most of those people will remain members of the Union in the hopes of getting a job elsewhere... so it still get's the members dues.




Just realized that was all a bit ranty. sorry 'bout that

I support Unions. I think they are a necessity for skill specific work.

That being said...most of Wal-Mart consists of unskilled work. I worked at a Wal-Mart during college...They pay (unskilled labor) people better than most places AND have a significant benefit package.

Honestly, most of the work that happens at Wal-Mart isn't worthy of much more than the present compensation packages provide.

If a proposed Wal-Mart Union is organized to ensure that the workers are able to keep a 40 hour week (Wal-Mart often just takes hours away from people when business slows, making workers pay for it instead of bottom-line), maintain benefits, and work rights (something in SERIOUS question at most Wal-Marts)...then I'm for it.

If the goal is to get these unskilled jobs up to $15 an hour...I'm against it.

Before any Union folk get angry at me, when I say 'unskilled' I genuinely mean 'unskilled'. I'm not referring to Auto Workers or any other specialized knowledge field.

If any Wal-Mart store joins a union, that store will get closed down by corporate. Wal-Mart is about the most anti-union corporation there is.

muswp1 wrote:If any Wal-Mart store joins a union, that store will get closed down by corporate. Wal-Mart is about the most anti-union corporation there is.

Yea its happend in my area twice with Walmart. They get union in and its shut down asap. Damn american corporate companies that are bad to their workers and kill canadian breed busninesses.

Having worked both for Walmart and having personal experience with the UFCW (Local 1099) while working at Kroger, I can say I made more at Walmart, quite a bit more actually. And I would have gotten some form of benefits at part time, even though I was full time anyhow. At Kroger/UFCW, I hired in at 5 cents more then minimum wage was in 1999, got a nickel raise every six months that they usually "forgot" to give me, never got any type of benefits at all, and had to pay a weekly dues to the union. So it's very hard for me to wish that on anyone at Walmart.

But on the flip side, Walmart just treats you like a non-human pile of dooky on the personal end of the scale. Rules against this and that, complaints about everything we did, wanting more done with less people, and basically encouraging you to keep your head down and not having any initiative of your own so you don't draw any unwanted wrath.

Walmart needs some kind of reform for sure, but not necessarily in the form of the useless and greedy UFCW.

I'd like to add though that if that's what the employees vote for and bring in, then Walmart should just suffer along with them and not be douches and close the store. I too have heard of that happening, and I also know that my gf has been shown anti-union videos at Walmart as a manager and told to fire those who bring up unions.

They tried to bring in a union into Daktronics (the company that makes large video scoreboards and such like the one at Dolphins Stadium). That company comprises mostly of college students from South Dakota State University. They of course had no say in voting for or against it. Of course the students jobs are going to be the ones replaced if a union got in there. Thankfully the union got voted out. Unions are/can be the devil.

I spent about 2 years working for a Customer Service general purpose call-centre in a division handling Amazon.com and Target.com.

About a year in there was a union vote, that was being pushed by a small number of employees. The Union was voted in by about 52% vote.

At the time I was there we handled:
Amazon
Target
X-Box game support
2 other Microsoft divisions
3-4 Credit companies (both support & collections)
and about 5 other companies.

At the time I left, Amazon and Target were being phased out in favor of a new centre in Asia, Microsoft was making cuts, and the Union had not even officially taking root in the office as every time they tried to negotiate with the company, another client changed "their operational needs" and suddenly the game field was different again.

At the time I walked out the door for the last time, the understanding was that had the vote been looked at again and the people who had left or lost their position lost their vote it was only 30% pro-union.

The office is still there but at 5PM when I worked there the parking lot (designed when the building was built as a Home Depot type store) was about 60-75% filled with employee vehicles. Now the place has less than 20 cars at the same time of day. The union shop opened in an office around the corner is closed, and the foot traffic between the Transit depot (which i still use to go to work) is almost nonexistent at times when it used to have dozens of people shuffling to the centre (5 minutes from the station)

Yes, a fine examples of how bringing in a union to your place of work can truly benefit you and your co-workers.

The worst part is the people who clearly voter for the union who were surprised by everything as they started to fall apart, regardless of the fact that a number of companies that we provided service for, made it clear that they had no interest to dealing with a union shop and said they had every intention of reducing service and/or pulling out as their contracts allowed.