SACCAWU letter to Massmart December 14 demonstrations

Richard Elliott  14 December 2012 09:46:29

Kindly be advised Union members within Massmart Divisions will be staging peaceful lunch hour pickets/demonstrations at various establishments between 12h00 and 15h00
on Friday the 14th of December 2012. Such protest action is part of the Global Day of action by workers employed by Walmart in support of the following demands:

a) Elimination of precarious forms of employment within Walmart;
b) Compliance with ILO Core Labour standards, including Freedom of Association, by Walmart in all countries where the Company operates;
c) Compliance with Labour laws, by Walmart, in all countries where the Company operates.

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UNI Walmart Alliance video

Richard Elliott  15 October 2012 17:19:03

Here's some footage from Los Angeles - when the first striking Walmart workers returned to the store with members of the newly formed Alliance in support. A momentus day 5 October 2012


                                                                                                                                                   

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Walmart workers threaten strike on black Friday, stores’ busiest Day

Richard Elliott  11 October 2012 14:44:04

UNI says Walmart is feeling the pressure with strike action this week set to esacalate culminating in the threat of strike action on Black Friday, the stores busiest day.
Bloomberg's Daily Labor Report says that Walmart workers are not ruling out taking strike across the United States on Black Friday on November 23 - the day after Thanksgiving.
Head of UNI Commerce, Alke Boessiger said, "The Walmart workers are showing bravery and tenacity and taking the fight to Walmart management in Bentonville outside of yesterday's shareholders meeting but just as significantly to the stores where they can effect Walmart's bottom line. These workers are not asking for the moon, only a voice on the job, decent work conditions and fair pay. One of there biggest grievances is Walmart's policy of cutting hours and effectively squeezing workers out. In the past they have been too afraid of retaliation by the management to speak out but now they have found their voice. Black Friday could be the final tipping point." $

Read rest of the article here.

See Alliance Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UNI-Global-Union-AllianceWalmart/

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Competition Appeal Court decision recognises increased threat of Walmart

Richard Elliott  10 October 2012 17:48:10

Competition Appeal Court decision recognises increased threat of Walmart


Switzerland, 10.10.2012 - UNI Global Union, reacting to the South Africa Appeal Court decision to order Walmart to double the supplier development fund to R240 million for its acquisition of Massmart, says it’s a further indictment of Walmart’s destructive business model.

The Court underlined the need to keep Walmart under close scrutiny by appointing an advisory board to oversee the administration of the fund. The board will include UNI affiliate SACCAWU, the government and the South Africa Small and Medium Enterprise Forum.

UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings said, “This is a victory in forcing Walmart to face up to its responsibilities. It’s also an acknowledgement that Walmart poses a serious risk to South African suppliers and cannot be trusted to administer the supply development fund on its own. However the decision does not go far enough. Joseph Stiglitz, who represented the South African government in compiling the expert report for the Court, had called for R500 million and up to R2 billion over ten years. That would have been a amount more in keeping with the size of the threat to South Africa suppliers, farmers and small businesses.”

Jennings added, “It’s clear there has been a sea change in attitude to Walmart around the world. In South Africa the Court decision is a vote of no confidence. In the backyard of Walmart, the United States, Walmart workers are finally rebelling and saying enough is enough after 50 years of worsening work conditions and wages which are not enough to support a family. They are striking in the US for the first time in Walmart history. This strike action is reverberating around the world including India where the individual states must decide whether to allow Walmart in and under what conditions. Many states have already come out and said no to Foreign Direct Investment which will be spearheaded by Walmart because they fear it will destroy the local economy."

Jennings concluded, “We have formed the UNI Walmart Global Union Alliance to stand up to a company which insists on putting profit before its own workers. Well now its workers in the US have had enough and they’re prepared to risk their jobs to fight for change. Don’t rule out South Africa Walmart workers and others across the globe protesting in solidarity. As they say in the US once the ketchup is out of the bottle you can’t put it back.”

Bones Skulu, the General Secretary of SACCAWU said, "SACCAWU will use its position on the Advisory Board of the Supplier Development Fund to monitor, critically assess and compel Walmart/Massmart to act in accordance with the Court ruling, given that Walmart to date is still unscrupulously resisting to fully comply with the earlier part of the Competition Appeal Court ruling around the reinstatement of the 503 Massmart workers who lost their jobs. The company has also intentionally, conveniently and selectively chosen to misinterpret the Court order on the issue of back pay. In South African labour law as elsewhere in the world, a reinstatement order unless it specifically states otherwise, always means with retrospective back pay and conditions no less favourable than those in existence prior to dismissal. Finally, the Court has recognised the risks the local economy faces because of Walmart. We will now challenge the company to observe the obligations handed down by the Court to give South African producers the opportunity to benefit rather than be hammered by Walmart."

The Competition Appeal Court decision

· The fund will create funding projects with the goal of minimising the risk posed to South African suppliers by the merger,

· The fund will protect existing and potential micro, small and medium producers of South African products who run the risk of being harmed by Wal-Mart's entry into South Africa.

· The fund should enable these producers to take advantage of Wal-Mart's global value-chain, and incentivise the retailer to purchase products from South African producers, over and above products that it would, in any event, purchase.

Background

Last year SACCAWU and three government bodies appealed the decision to allow Walmart to buy a R16 billion majority stake in South Africa’s Massmart retail chain. The union and the government departments argued that there were not enough conditions in place to protect local manufacturers and suppliers at risk from closure because of cheap Walmart imports.

The competition authorities decided that the Walmart/Massmart merger go ahead but recognised the need to protect local suppliers and jobs by imposing adequate and effective conditions. Namely that there should be no job cuts in the first two years, honour union collective bargaining agreements for three years and invest R100 million into a jobs fund to improve the competitiveness of the local industry.

In March of this year, the Competition Appeals Court ordered a three person panel representing the unions, the government and the company to come up with a study about how the fund should be used to protect and increase the capacity of the local supply chain. The panel has delivered two reports – the majority report from Stiglitz and Hodge representing the government and the unions and the minority report from Morris representing Walmart. Stiglitz and Hodge represented a fund of up to R2 billion.

See Alliance blog: http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Blogs/walmart.nsf/
See Alliance Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UNI-Global-Union-AllianceWalmart/

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Walmart Strikes Spread to more states

Richard Elliott  10 October 2012 13:44:56

                                                                                                                                                                               

In an article published in "Salon", UNI Global Union's Head of Commerce, Alke Boessiger said that the possibility of the strike action currently spreading across Walmart stores in the US leading to similar actions elsewhere in the world could not be ruled out.

Read the full story here:

Walmart Strikes Spread to more states


The first-ever walkouts by warehouse workers and store employees are a game-changer
by Josh Eidelson


"For the second time in five days – and also the second time in Walmart’s five decades – workers at multiple US Walmart stores are on strike. This morning, workers walked off the job at stores in Dallas, Texas; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Laurel, Maryland; and Northern, Central, and Southern California. No end date has been announced; some plan to remain on strike at least through tomorrow, when they’ll join other Walmart workers for a demonstration outside the company’s annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Today’s is the latest in a wave of Walmart supply chain strikes without precedent in the United States: From shrimp workers in Louisiana, to warehouse workers in California and Illinois, to Walmart store employees in five states.

“A lot of associates, we have to use somewhat of a buddy system,” Dallas worker Colby Harris said last night. “We loan each other money during non-paycheck weeks just to make it through to the next week when we get paid. Because we don’t have enough money after paying bills to even eat lunch.” Harris, who’s now on strike, said that after three years at Walmart, he makes $8.90 an hour in the produce department, and workers at his store have faced “constant retaliation” for speaking up.

On Thursday, as first reported at Salon, southern California Walmart store workers staged a day-long walkout of their own. Organizers say over sixty workers from nine stores signed in as on strike. About thirty of them were from the same store in Pico Rivera, where strikers and supporters rallied with labor leaders, clergy, politicians. “I’m still thrilled about what happened,” said Harris, who flew in for last week’s walkout. “And it’s given me a lot more energy and a lot more drive.” Other workers were visiting from further away than Texas: When the striking workers returned to work Friday morning, international Walmart workers marched into their nine stores with them, carrying their own countries’ flags.
Reached by email last night, Walmart spokesperson Dan Fogleman said the company “has some of the best jobs in the retail industry – good pay, affordable benefits and the chance for advancement.” Asked about last week’s walkout, he said, “There is nothing new, nor historic, about the fact that labor unions want to organize Walmart. Their rally was just the latest publicity stunt by [the United Food & Commercial Workers union] to seek media attention in order to further its political agenda and financial objectives.” Fogleman said that Walmart “had a few people go out to join the rally – very few when you consider the more than 12,000 people we employ in LA County…. This event was not a factor.”

Both Thursday’s strike and today’s were spearheaded by OUR Walmart, a year-old organization of Walmart workers backed by UFCW. The group is calling for improved staffing and benefits and, for an end to alleged retaliation against its members. Though closely tied to the UFCW, OUR Walmart isn’t identifying itself as a union or calling for union recognition from the famously anti-labor company. UFCW, SEIU, the service employees union, and ACORN supported a different non-union Walmart workers association in 2005, so the concept isn’t new. But the strikes are.

Before these work stoppages, “the other stuff had been so predictable from Walmart’s point of view,” Columbia University political scientist Dorian Warren said yesterday. They’ve always had activists coming to Bentonville. They’ve never had a disruption in their supply chain.” Warren, who’s co-writing a book on Walmart, said the strikes by warehouse workers and store employees are a game-changer: “There was ‘Before,’ and there was ‘After,’ and we just crossed that line.”
Like last week’s, OUR Walmart is describing today’s strike as a protest against retaliation. In July interviews with Salon, OUR Walmart activists alleged that Walmart illegally punished them for standing up. OUR Walmart has since filed dozens of Unfair Labor Practice charges against Walmart with the National Labor Relations Board. OUR Walmart alleges that the company has tried to suppress employees’ activism through illegal tactics, like threatening workers, as well as legal ones, like holding mandatory meetings to bash OUR Walmart. In interviews with Salon, Walmart’s Fogleman denied the threats and retaliation, but not the mandatory meetings.

Those retaliation charges also affect the riskiness of the strike. Labor law generally recognizes non-union workers’ right to strike without being punished for it. But it also recognizes employers’ right to “permanently replace” those striking workers, preventing them from coming back to work (if that seems not to make sense, that’s because it doesn’t). If the government agrees with OUR Walmart that the strikers are motivated by alleged crimes by management, then it would be illegal for Walmart to “permanently replace” them.

Asked yesterday whether any workers would be penalized for missing their shifts on Thursday, Fogleman e-mailed, “The law allows workers to do this, so long as it is done in a peaceful way.” But OUR Walmart activists say that when it comes to Walmart, legal protections are little comfort. Harris gave the example of a co-worker who was fired, ostensibly for “stealing time,” immediately after a lunch break conversation with Harris about getting involved in OUR Walmart; he said management was standing nearby throughout the conversation.

Professor Warren predicted that public relations concerns would be “infinitely more important” than the law in dictating Walmart’s response to strikes. Given that retaliation against strikers is more likely to draw attention, said Warren, “the gamble is, it could either send a signal that if anybody else tries this you’re going to get fired. Or it could actually end up pissing off more workers who would then be willing to take collective action. So that’s actually their dilemma right now, because their normal response is just retaliation, to fire workers.”

Dallas store workers are walking off the job just as three dozen Illinois distribution center workers return to work. Like the 8 C.J.’s Seafood workers who struck in June and the 30 California warehouse workers who struck in September, the Elwood, IL workers aren’t legally employed by Walmart, but they’re moving goods for the retail giant. “Walmart owns the facility,” freight handler Phillip Bailey said yesterday. “They decide exactly what goes on there…the whole thing is a squeeze that ends up squeezing the workers the most…the conditions all stem from Walmart.” (As Salon has reported, some experts agree.) Bailey said he and other workers were fired for their role in presenting a petition addressing issues of safety and wage theft.
A rally and civil disobedience action in support of the workers last Monday temporarily shut down the Elwood distribution center, Walmart’s largest in the United States. The three week Elwood strike against the Walmart subcontractor RoadLink was organized by the Warehouse Workers Organizing Committee, which is backed by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union (UE). According to Leah Fried, a UE staffer working with the workers, RoadLink has agreed to rescind all of its allegedly retaliatory discipline – including the firing of Bailey and three others – and, in a rare move, to pay the strikers full wages for the time they were on strike.

Bailey, said that victory holds a lesson for other workers in the Walmart supply chain: “Sometimes, if you stand up and stick together, you win.”

What’s next? OUR Walmart has promised a major announcement tomorrow regarding future actions. Meanwhile, there’s more organizing afoot. Two weeks ago, US Customs and Immigration Services issued visas to three workers who were leaders in the June CJ’s Seafood strike, following approval from the Justice Department on the grounds that they were witnesses or victims to workplace crimes. According to National Guestworker Alliance Lead Organizer Jacob Horwitz, those workers plan to organize other guest workers in Walmart’s supply chain to confront the company.

Last week’s strike also took place as representatives of the global union federation UNI were in town to launch a new Walmart Global Union Alliance. “In Argentina we have a union, so we’re able to have that strength that doesn’t exist here,” Marta Miranda, a three-year Walmart greeter turned full-time union delegate, told Salon Friday in Spanish. Miranda, who was visiting as part of the UNI delegation, said that when she returns to Argentina, she’ll tell her co-workers that “the sleeping giant is waking up.”

Head of UNI Commerce Alke Boessiger said Friday to expect the new global alliance to coordinate “joint actions” in the coming months. Boessiger emphasized that while many countries laws that are more pro-union than the US, “Walmart will do anything to avoid unions” anywhere. She added that Walmart workers abroad understand that supporting US workers is necessary for the sake of “making sure that this model that the company has developed in the US is not being exported.” Could those joint actions include multi-country strikes? “I wouldn’t exclude it,” she said.

“We’re going to do whatever it takes in order to get this change to happen,” Harris said hours before the start of today’s strike. “If it costs me my job, then I’m fine with that at this point. That’s how bad it is…it’s a small price to pay for global change.”"

See also story in The Nation with more background and detail on the strike: http://www.thenation.com/blog/170444/why-we-should-all-care-about-walmart-strikers#

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Walmart workers from around the world demand better working conditions

Richard Elliott  9 October 2012 15:31:24

Walmart workers from around the world have gathered in front of Los Angeles City Hall, demanding better working conditions and the right to unionize the world's biggest retail store chain.

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Huelga de trabajadores de Walmart

Richard Elliott  9 October 2012 14:14:58

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Huelga de trabajadores de Walmart

Richard Elliott  9 October 2012 14:11:09

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Huelga de trabajadores de Walmart

Richard Elliott  9 October 2012 14:02:49

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Huelga de trabajadores de Walmart

Richard Elliott  9 October 2012 13:56:06

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