Apply to Join the 2013 Change Walmart Summer

Deadline to apply: May 17, 2013

This summer, the national movement to make change at Walmart will take a giant step forward. In the tradition of the 1964 Freedom Summer and the UFW’s grape boycott, a deeply committed group of labor, student and community supporters will spend the summer building local OUR Walmart and Making Change at Walmart (MCAW) support teams across the country that demonstrate the broad, growing movement calling on Walmart to change.  The program will run from June 15th – Labor Day.

What’s Next for Walmart Strikers

Josh Eidelson has written an extremely informative and important feature article for The Nation  “The Great Walmart Walkout.”  He interviews workers, organizers and labor scholars about the Black Friday walkouts.  He includes both skeptical  and optimistic views.

For instance,

“I feel hopeful,” says [Cornell University's Kate] Bronfenbrenner, “and I haven’t felt hopeful about Walmart workers ever before.” She cites the historic nature of the strikes, the breadth of supply chain organizing and evidence of significant leadership development among workers. “Obviously Walmart is a tough company to crack,” she says. “But Walmart right now is the one that’s off-balance, not the union, not the workers… As long as we have the world’s largest corporation feeling like it’s not quite in control, I think we have a lot to be hopeful about.” She notes that historically, unions have often had to build strength through years of concerted activity, including strikes and incremental improvements in working conditions, before finally winning formal recognition from industry behemoths like General Motors. “Huge national contracts are very hard to get,” says Bronfenbrenner. “But they’ll get there.”

Walmart’s Exploitation Is Nothing New, So What Made Workers Finally Fight Back?

by Sarah Jaffe

(Nov. 14) Last month, when strikers from Southern California arrived in Bentonville, Ark., to protest Walmart’s labor practices with reggae beats, pots and pans, and a Latin American-inflected protest culture, it became clear to onlookers that America’s superstore was no longer the small family business that Sam Walton had founded and grown in the cradle of the anti-labor culture of Southern evangelicaldom. But it’s also become clear that Walmart’s own ambitions to become a global empire — expanding beyond southern suburbs to new regions, and continuing to erode protections for its workers — have brought the “family values” behemoth into confrontation with another kind of religious and labor rights tradition.

Walmart has long been the Holy Grail for labor organizers. The nation’s largest retailer, it is notorious for its low wages, lack of benefits, abusive labor practices, and for leaving its workers dependent on public assistance while making the Walton family rich beyond imagination. And it has been nearly impossible to organize.

Until now.

My Chicagoland Black Friday in words and pictures

 by Bob Simpson

As I was writing this blog post on Sunday morning, news came from the Associated Press about the real human cost of our Black Fridays:

“DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh’s capital, an official said Sunday. Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe. Bangladesh’s garment factories make clothes for brands including Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour and Tesco.”

Walmart stocks up on products manufactured under deadly sweatshop conditions. It organizes Black Friday sales knowing they can touch off riots in their stores. Then Walmart sends security guards and police after peaceful demonstrators who only seek justice in the global workplace. Who said irony is dead?

I didn’t hear of any Black Friday shopper nastiness in Chicagoland, but there were a number of peaceful demonstrations against Walmart and other retailers who exploit and abuse their own employees and supply chain workers around the world.

My Black Friday began at around 4:30 am with a drive from my home in Oak Park to Bedford Park, a suburb south of Midway Airport. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) had rented a hotel meeting room there as a staging area for Walmart protestors, plus buses to carry them to several Chicagoland Walmart stores and eventually to downtown to support food and retail workers there.

It was dark and deserted within the complex of hotels, but when I found the yellow school buses, I knew I was in the right place. Once in the lobby, a UFCW staffer saw me  and guided me to their meeting room where staff people were already giving away lime-green Our Walmart tee shirts, buttons and signs. About 30 people were there drinking coffee and munching on donuts.