November 2012
Walkouts Show Potential for Class
Struggle
Walmart “Black Friday” Strike Actions,
Protests Called at Stores Across U.S.
Protest by Walmart strikers and supporters at Pico Rivera, California, a center of walkouts, October 4.
(Internationalist photo)
Protests Called at Stores Across U.S.
Protest by Walmart strikers and supporters at Pico Rivera, California, a center of walkouts, October 4.
(Internationalist photo)
Walmart, the Arkansas-based commercial empire founded by
Sam Walton, is the largest private employer in the United States (with 1.3
million employees), Mexico (175,000), Latin America (325,000) and the world,
with a total of over 2 million “associates” around the globe. It is also almost
completely non-union, and that’s no accident. Walmart management has been found
guilty of systematically keeping women and racial minorities in low-paying
positions, locking night-shift workers in its stores, bribing governments,
exposing workers to serious health hazards, paying less than the minimum wage
and keeping workers in part-time positions to avoid paying for health care.
Walmart workers complain of endless abuse, and are unable to make ends meet
without food stamps and Medicaid for their children. Now on “Black Friday,”
November 23, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the
year, protests have been called at up to 1,000 Walmart facilities around the
U.S. Supporters of labor rights should join in.
The stage has been set
by unprecedented actions this fall when Walmart workers walked off the job in
several states beginning in September in Illinois and Southern California. In
early October, walkouts hit 28 stores in 12 states. Then on November 15 workers
struck at a warehouse in Pico Rivera, California, in Seattle, Washington and
Dallas, Texas. The strikers threw down the gauntlet to Walmart, challenging the
long-held belief that Walmart is too powerful (or “too evil”) to organize. But
in doing so, workers have also challenged the hidebound labor movement, which so
far has failed miserably to unionize the retail giant. Instead of doing the hard
work of signing up workers and showing
they are prepared to defy anti-labor laws, the unions (notably the United
Food and Commercial Workers) have relied on consumer boycotts and legislation
seeking to keep the low-wage chain out of
key metropolitan centers.
Such softball tactics are doomed to fail in the long run.
Labor’s gotta play hardball to win.
Walmart can be unionized – it just can’t be done playing by the bosses’ rules.
Virtually every effective tactic of workers’ struggle has been declared illegal.
That just means that workers have to stand up to cops and courts as well as a
vicious anti-union company. Rather than being an unbeatable monolith, Walmart is
a fluid chain of distribution centers and outlets, whose “just-in-time”
distribution system depends heavily on the work of just a few employees to make
the gears turn. A disruption at one part of the system has consequences
throughout the whole. Rather than concentrating our efforts on boycotting
Walmart in favor of other companies who also exploit their workers, the
unprecedented strikes carried out by warehouse and retail workers so far have
shown that the power to bring Walmart to its knees lies with the workers
themselves.
“Every strike reminds the capitalists that it is the
workers and not they who are the real masters—the workers who are more and more
loudly proclaiming their rights. Every strike reminds the workers that their
position is not hopeless, that they are not alone.”
–V.I. Lenin, “On Strikes” (1899)
The recent, first-ever strikes against Walmart in the U.S.
were only partial stoppages, which rather than shutting down whole shops slowed
things down considerably. Yet they have had a significant impact on Walmart …
and the conventional wisdom of labor officialdom. They have broken through the
logic that Walmart is too tough to organize, the excuse used by union
bureaucrats to justify their policy of lobbying politicians rather than
organizing workers. Although workers who participated in the walkouts are backed
by unions, they aren’t recognized by management. Their work stoppages therefore
fall outside the many legal snares that workers with contracts often face. UFCW
has lately changed its tune regarding Walmart, urging workers to organize their
own store actions and walkouts through the Organization United for Respect at
Walmart (OUR Walmart) campaign. But organized labor has never used its
muscle to shut down Walmart.
The walkouts demonstrated also how sections of seemingly
unconnected workers can quickly act in concert with each other. Warehouse
workers near Riverside, California sparked a wave of rebellion among Walmart
workers when they walked off the job to protest working conditions in early
September. Limber Herrera, a warehouse worker in Riverside describes her
workplace, “So many of my coworkers are living in pain because of the pressure
to work fast or lose our jobs. We often breathe a thick black dust that gives us
nosebleeds and headaches. We want Walmart to take responsibility and fix these
bad working conditions” (Warehouse Workers United, 9 August). In early
September, in what came to be known as the “WalMarch,” dozens of workers who are
supporters of WWU marched for six days from San Bernardino County to downtown
Los Angeles demanding that their employer address working conditions and safety.
The workplace action quickly spread. Warehouse workers in
Elwood, IL backed by the United Electrical Workers (UE), struck retail giant
Walmart’s largest distribution center on September 15. They demanded better
working conditions and an end to wage theft on the part of Walmart contractor,
Roadlink. The Walmart strikers spoke at strike rallies of the Chicago Teachers
Union (CTU), which pointed out that the Walmart foundation supports the
privatization of schools. The warehouse workers complained of erratic work
hours, low pay and unsafe working conditions, where they are often asked to hand
lift extreme loads and work without shin guards or proper masks. Like many Walmart workers, the warehouse
staff don’t work directly for Walmart, but are hired instead through
subcontractors. The strike ended after two weeks, with Roadlink promising to end
all retaliation against employees who speak out. However, recent reports are
that the intimidation tactics have continued.
But the Riverside and Elwood workers lit a spark that
inspired solidarity strikes at several Walmarts in several states in the weeks
that followed. Under the leadership of OUR Walmart and backed by UFCW, a group
of 200 supporters disrupted Walmart’s annual investors meeting in Bentonville
Arkansas. The workers have given Walmart a deadline: meet our demands for better
pay and working conditions and stop all retaliation against workers who
participate in workplace organizing, or there will be a strike on Black Friday,
November 22-23. Walmart has now retaliated by lodging a complaint against the
UFCW with the National Labor Relations Board and threatening to sue the union.
Meanwhile, Walmart “associates” have been ordered to report for work as early as
3 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, provoking angry complaints from workers who intend
to spend the traditional holiday with their families.
Hardnosed Walmart
execs won’t stand idly by as they lose millions in potential profits, and they
won’t stop at lawsuits if their past actions are any indication of future
actions. Their labor practices traditionally include bare-knuckle intimidation,
firings, and in the most successful organizing situations, mass layoffs and
store closures. The first Walmart store to be unionized in North America was in
Jonquière, in northern Québec in 2004. We traveled there to report the story
(see “Attention
Wal-Mart Workers: Union Victory in Quebec,” The Internationalist No. 20,
January-February 2005). But the multinational retail chain retaliated by
shutting the store. With Walmart facing a cross-country campaign, they may
resort to new and even more ruthless efforts to squash any efforts to organize
or unionize their stores. Workers will need the support of labor and community
allies if they intend to bring down the behemoth.
In the face of mass unemployment, capitalists figure
workers will be so desperate to hold onto a job, no matter how poorly paid, that
they will be to afraid to unionize. But desperation can also produce militancy.
It’s happened before. In January-February 1937, auto workers occupied the
Fischer Body No. 1 plant in Flint, Michigan. Running off the cops and facing
down National Guard machine guns, the sit-down strike won after five weeks. This
electrified labor. In March, 110 women workers sat down at the Woolworth
5-and-10 chain store in Detroit, protesting against nickel-and-dime wages. Women
workers at the Woolworth store in New York’s Union Square followed suit. Within
seven days, as union leaders threatened to call a national strike, the company
gave in to the strikers’ demands. What was key was the example of militant
action by the Flint auto workers, the enthusiastic support of unions, and
refusal to be intimidated by the bosses’ laws. Naturally, two years later the
Supreme Court ruled sit-down strikes illegal.
As Black Friday 2012 approaches, activists in a number of
cities are planning solidarity actions. But consumer boycotts almost never work
(the claim that the United Farm Workers won with the grape boycott is a myth),
because they fail to mobilize labor’s power. A real strike would aim at
Walmart’s supply chain, and would require solid mass pickets that no one dares
cross. Walmart workers can’t do that on their own, but a serious mobilization of
unions can. If hundreds of unionists are on the lines, Teamsters and even many
non-union truckers would honor the picket lines. These are the kind of tactics
necessary to challenge the corporate monster. What’s effective in stopping the
chain from bleeding communities dry is not “withholding our dollar” from the
store, but “withholding our labor” from the shop floor. But
that requires a willingness to defy cops, courts and capitalist politicians,
Democrats and Republicans alike, to whom the sellout labor bureaucracy are
beholden.
The fight to organize the unorganized has always been a
watchword of revolutionaries in the labor movement. Today that task is as urgent
as it has ever been, but neither “normal” trade-union or liberal pressure
tactics can fulfill it. What is required is genuine class-struggle unionism, the
potential for which is shown by the recent victory of immigrant workers at the
Hot and Crusty bakery/restaurant in New
York City. “If you play by the bosses’ rules, you’re bound to lose,” read
workers’ signs during 55 days on the picket line. The struggle culminated in an
inspiring labor victory with a groundbreaking contract that includes a union
hiring hall, virtually unprecedented in the “restaurant sweatshops” staffed by
hundreds of thousands of super-exploited immigrants. Having participated
intensively in this struggle, the Internationalist Group has stressed that the
Hot and Crusty victory could spark major new struggles in the area and beyond
(see “Hot and Crusty Workers Win with Groundbreaking Contract,” at
www.internationalist.org).
Only by fighting to build a class-struggle opposition in
the ranks of labor, together with the support of other workers and the
oppressed, will it be possible to shatter the stranglehold of the “labor
lieutenants of capital.” Old-style business unionism and even reformist “social
justice unionism” won’t work in these times of all-sided capitalist attack on
working people. Life on the Walmart plantation is
hell. What’s needed is to break the chains that bind wage slaves to the
modern slave masters, to build a workers party to fight for a workers
government. Solidarity, one section of workers defending another and
recognizing that our interests are the same, isn’t just a nice idea: it’s the
only possible way in which workers at Walmart, or anywhere else, can fight back
effectively and win. Courageous actions by Walmart workers can lead the way
forward, and demonstrate that what it takes to win is class struggle. ■
To contact the League for the Fourth International or its sections, send an e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com
Concurro en el
presente estadio, a formular especial petición de Clemencia, ante Usted, en su
carácter de Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América y máxima potestad, a los
efectos de resolver lo que considero respetuosamente es una cuestión de carácter
humanitario. Sepa Usted Sr. Presidente OBAMA, que no me moviliza en lo personal
y en lo institucional como PRESIDENTE DE LA FUNDACION DE ALTOS ESTUDIOS ABOGADOS
SIN FRONTERAS, sito en la calle ESMERALDA N° 517, PISO 3°, Ciudad Autónoma de
Buenos Aires, República Argentina, ningún interés político. Los actos que dan
origen a esta respetuosa pretensión, se enmarcan en una clara convicción que se
ha iniciado un ciclo de necesaria conectividad entre los pueblos de América
toda; para transitar el definitivo camino de la integración y de la paz
necesaria, como herramienta del desarrollo y cumplimiento de los supremos
objetivos que nuestros pueblos hermanos deben trazarse, entonces, es que
concurro ante Usted, a formalizar, con acuerdo a lo estatuido en la Ley Máxima
de Vuestra Nación, su Constitución Nacional, este pedido de Clemencia o Perdón,
consignado en el artículo II de la Sección II (Cláusula de Perdón).-
The average age of the military man is 19 years. He is a short
haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by
society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to
buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country. He never really cared much
for work and he would rather wax his own car than wash his father's, but he has
never collected unemployment either. 
He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a
professional. 
He has
learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. 
He feels every
note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention,
while tempering the burning desire to' square-away' those around him who haven't
bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking. In an odd twist, day
in and day out, far from home, he defends their right to be disrespectful. 
Remember him,
always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood. 
On October 7 (the anniversary of the US attack on Afghanistan), a
delegation of 31 US antiwar activists marched with tens of thousands of
Pakistanis sickened by the civilian death toll and growth of rightwing reaction
brought on by the US drone war in Waziristan. Hear first-hand reports and view
slides from delegation members who just met with the families of drone victims,
with intellectuals, political activists, and others in Islamabad, Lahore, and
the tribal areas. We will also hear from Pakistanis on the impact of the US
“War on Terror” and drone attacks on Pakistan.
