Walmart workers FINALLY strike

Walmart's First-Ever Retail Worker Strike Spreads To 12 Cities [UPDATE]

This is HUGE news, even though its a small strike, comperatively, finally the terror that is Walmart management union busting is starting to crack, Walmart is the holy grail of the labor movement, the symbol of modern Capitalism, I hope this spreads, and I hope we all support the workers.

good to hear. Shouldn't this be up in the general section though?

RGacky3 said:

I hope we all support the workers.

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Even the lazy ones? Even the non-productive ones? The problem with classifying specific entities into groups is that one must do an awful lot of generalizing. "The workers" as you utilized it here suggests laborers who are being taken advantage of by "the management" which suggests evil and heartless penny-pinchers. Being an avowed socialist you are obviously in favor of this generalization despite the fact that it breeds incompetence, laziness, and greed (among other things).

What I would much rather see is that people support the right of individuals to determine their own contracts through voluntary and mutual agreement. If Walmart was such a bad place to work, nobody would work there and the competition would be quick to swoop in and hire their disgruntled workers. That said, 88 workers from 28 stores is hardly jaw-dropping.

RGacky3 said:

Walmart's First-Ever Retail Worker Strike Spreads To 12 Cities [UPDATE]

This is HUGE news, even though its a small strike, comperatively, finally the terror that is Walmart management union busting is starting to crack, Walmart is the holy grail of the labor movement, the symbol of modern Capitalism, I hope this spreads, and I hope we all support the workers.

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I hope it does too. Most low/middle income folks are typically unaffected by a striking workforce. It is these same folks who are the majority of the shoppers at Walmart. If the strikes spread more of these shoppers will become disgruntled and thusly increasing their dislike of unions which will cause their participation to continue to decline…great plan

Bad time to go on strike.

I've heard horror stories (maybe an exgeration ) of the working condition in Wal-Mart. Never would I work there.

This is great news, Wal-Mart management needs this wake up call.

It is only a matter of time until a full blown effort is made to organize WM workers into a union and then we will have a real battle to witness. This seems like only a tiny skirmish and is not really the strike that capture the attention of the nation.

TNAR said:

Even the lazy ones? Even the non-productive ones? The problem with classifying specific entities into groups is that one must do an awful lot of generalizing. "The workers" as you utilized it here suggests laborers who are being taken advantage of by "the management" which suggests evil and heartless penny-pinchers. Being an avowed socialist you are obviously in favor of this generalization despite the fact that it breeds incompetence, laziness, and greed (among other things).

What I would much rather see is that people support the right of individuals to determine their own contracts through voluntary and mutual agreement. If Walmart was such a bad place to work, nobody would work there and the competition would be quick to swoop in and hire their disgruntled workers. That said, 88 workers from 28 stores is hardly jaw-dropping.

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So I guess if someone says "support the troops" the correct response should be "what even the ones that are dicks?"

I'm supporting them in their efforts to Unionize and have some sort of say over how their workplace is run.

Also the only generalization I'm making is that Walmart as a corporation (like all corporations) maximizes profits by minimizing cost, especially through workers while trying to get the most out out of them and that the workers are much better off if they work together to fight that and get more of the product of their labor and better conditions through collective action, I'm not making any character judgements at all. Your just building up a strawman, and you're the only one here going around talking about "character" rather than actual economics. Also this would end up helping the economy as a whole since it would mean more in the middle class.

About your second paragraph, its rediculous what your saying, there are 5 job seekers for every opening, and people work at Walmart because its their only option, also the "voluntary and mutual" agreement is made on the basis of gigantically unequal power dynamics and hugely favorable to the corporation as opposed to the worker, that is unless the workers come together to bring their bargaining power a little bit higher and a little big more towrad the power of the corporation.

I mean this is just basic economics, and even more just basic common sense.

Yeah its not Jaw-Dropping, but what is jaw-Dropping is that it happened in Walmart, the top dog in Union busting.

Dickieboy said:

I hope it does too. Most low/middle income folks are typically unaffected by a striking workforce. It is these same folks who are the majority of the shoppers at Walmart. If the strikes spread more of these shoppers will become disgruntled and thusly increasing their dislike of unions which will cause their participation to continue to decline…great plan

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I doubt that, since most Walmart shoppers are also workers who suffer similar conditions, many of whole would like to be part of a union but cannot be.

RDS said:

Bad time to go on strike.

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Actually, when things are doing phenominally well for the rich and corporations, and really bad for workers, this is the perfect time to strike. WHat brought about hte New deal was in large part labor activism in the MIDDLE of the great depression.

RGacky3 said:

I doubt that, since most Walmart shoppers are also workers who suffer similar conditions, many of whole would like to be part of a union but cannot be.

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“Most Walmart shoppers…suffer similar conditions”? REALLY? Seems like a GROSS over-generalization. I’m sure you can substantiate that…never mind.

They MAY but you assume they would place their compassion for other workers ABOVE their ability to get ‘stuff’. When folks have difficulty getting their ‘stuff’ they exhibit the most basic human nature of self-preservation, unions be damned. Arguing otherwise is simply naive.

I rarely shop at Wal-Mart because I can't deal with the idiot masses that plague its aisles.

When I DO, though, I'm usually pleasantly surprised by the quality of service and enthusiasm I see from the employees.

I'm sure there are horror stories from employees at most large retailers. Not every manager is going to do their job well or correctly, and many managers who receive worship from THEIR bosses are the ones who suck most at the job they're assigned to. But let's be realistic here. Union membership is falling overall, and the only area seeing any sort of increase in membership is government. There's a reason for that, and it isn't just "union busting". There are very real consequences to implementing unions that effect people who have nothing to do with the union, the job they do, or the managers they're dealing with. Acting as if unionizing is the only way to rid Wal-Mart of "abhorrent" working conditions is a bit melodramatic, IMO.

haymarket said:

It is only a matter of time until a full blown effort is made to organize WM workers into a union and then we will have a real battle to witness. This seems like only a tiny skirmish and is not really the strike that capture the attention of the nation.

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Yeah, that worked out so well for the Wm meat cutters...

Dickieboy said:

“Most Walmart shoppers…suffer similar conditions”? REALLY? Seems like a GROSS over-generalization. I’m sure you can substantiate that…never mind.

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Really? Most people in American are working to middle class ... and I think its a fair thing to say that thus most Walmart shoppers.

Dickieboy said:

They MAY but you assume they would place their compassion for other workers ABOVE their ability to get ‘stuff’. When folks have difficulty getting their ‘stuff’ they exhibit the most basic human nature of self-preservation, unions be damned. Arguing otherwise is simply naive.

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Its not an assumption, it's based on history, also its not compassion for other workers, its also solidarily based on common interests, if other workers can make it, it makes it easier for you to make it. Also the fact that most Americans are progressive on most issues.

TNAR said:

Even the lazy ones? Even the non-productive ones? The problem with classifying specific entities into groups is that one must do an awful lot of generalizing. "The workers" as you utilized it here suggests laborers who are being taken advantage of by "the management" which suggests evil and heartless penny-pinchers. Being an avowed socialist you are obviously in favor of this generalization despite the fact that it breeds incompetence, laziness, and greed (among other things).

What I would much rather see is that people support the right of individuals to determine their own contracts through voluntary and mutual agreement. If Walmart was such a bad place to work, nobody would work there and the competition would be quick to swoop in and hire their disgruntled workers. That said, 88 workers from 28 stores is hardly jaw-dropping.

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Post data to support any of these positions, please.

RGacky3 said:

Really? Most people in American are working to middle class ... and I think its a fair thing to say that thus most Walmart shoppers.

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"working to middle class"....huh? Anyway, nice dodge...

Its not an assumption, it's based on history, also its not compassion for other workers, its also solidarily based on common interests, if other workers can make it, it makes it easier for you to make it. Also the fact that most Americans are progressive on most issues.

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And with all this 'solidarity' you claim how do you explain the historic decline in private sector unions?

And please provide some evidence of this 'most Americans are progressive' as it is contrary to things I've read...

Dickieboy said:

Yeah, that worked out so well for the Wm meat cutters...

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Are you referring to the Texas event? I am talking about a NATIONAL union organizing all the stores or a majority of them. That changes the power equation significantly from a few meat cutters at a Texas store. In union disputes it is all about numbers, power and how you use both.

haymarket said:

Are you referring to the Texas event? I am talking about a NATIONAL union organizing all the stores or a majority of them. That changes the power equation significantly from a few meat cutters at a Texas store. In union disputes it is all about numbers, power and how you use both.

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Yes. The Texas attempt caused the loss of employment of the NATIONAL Wm meatcutters...nice effort. But go ahead and support it. This will merely increase the operating cost of Wm which will result in an increase in the prices low/middle income folks will have to pay for their 'stuff'.

walmart can afford to treat its workers better.

Dickieboy said:

"working to middle class"....huh? Anyway, nice dodge...

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How is it a dodge?

Dickieboy said:

And with all this 'solidarity' you claim how do you explain the historic decline in private sector unions?

And please provide some evidence of this 'most Americans are progressive' as it is contrary to things I've read...

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Well ... 1. Reagan stopping labor laws being enforced, labor protections havn't been protected for the last 30 years, 2. Giant anti-Union propeganda and Union-Busting from the wealthy and powerful, 3. The Red Scare, 4. Giant power of Capital in the United States, 5. the Democrats abandoning labor.

ALso most Americans are progressive based on polls showing most support a public healthcare system (not obama care necessarily, since its a private healthcare system), most supporting being tough on the banks, most supporting more income equality and so on, if you don't believe me I can find the polls, but if you don't, and I show them, I expect an apology, since it unnecessarily takes up time.

Yes. The Texas attempt caused the loss of employment of the NATIONAL Wm meatcutters...nice effort. But go ahead and support it. This will merely increase the operating cost of Wm which will result in an increase in the prices low/middle income folks will have to pay for their 'stuff'.

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That argument has been debunked over and over and over and over again, yet you right wingers keep bringing it up, let me just copy and paste.

"1. You're assuming that all wages are spent all the time that no saving goes up,
2. You're assuming that all products will go up universally which is not true (you can only consume so much food, only so much energy and so on, higher wages will lead to purchasing totally new items like luxury items, thus not causing major inflation),
3. You're assuming that competition doesn't have a downward pressure on prices as more people will want to take advantage of a growing market.
4. You're assuming that more disposable income DOESN'T lead to consumers having more options and thus better power to keep prices lower, which it obviously does
5. You're ignoring the fact that Unions make even non Union wages go up due to a stronger labor market, and it least to less unemployment.
6. You're also totally ignoring that consumtion is DRIVEN BY WAGES.
7. You're also assuming that corporations are able to just turn ALL the labor costs into the price, which is impossible, they are going to have to take a profit rate hit (not necessarily a profit hit though due to increased buisiness).
8. You're totally ignoring all the empirical evidence that shows you are demonstrably wrong, since higher wage countries tend to have higher living standards.

And there are more out there ... Either way that argument has been debunked over and over again, so don't talk to me about struggling with issues, since you obviously have no understanding of economics. "

Dickieboy said:

Yes. The Texas attempt caused the loss of employment of the NATIONAL Wm meatcutters...nice effort. But go ahead and support it. This will merely increase the operating cost of Wm which will result in an increase in the prices low/middle income folks will have to pay for their 'stuff'.

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The Wal Mart syndrome is killing America. The desire for a very small short term gain at the expense of long term more important gain is killing this country as sure as cancer kills its victims.

Many of the people who shop at Wal Mart tend to be blue collar folks who make less than $50K per year. Many work two jobs at low wages. Years ago, many of those same folks would have jobs in unionized plants or warehouses and their lives and those of their family would have been a whole lot better. But in the drive to save a dime off a spray can of deoderant or a nickel off a roll of toilet paper, we are more than willing to embrace cheap goods made from China, buy them in an ugly box store devoid of anything resembling personal service and have most of their employees get little better than minimum wage.

It must stop. The race to the bottom must stop. We need a new economic patriotism that rejects cheaply made Chinese goods and rejects workers being paid wages that they cannot live on and rejects denying them basic rights to organize all in the name of cheaper toiletries.

RGacky3 said:

Walmart's First-Ever Retail Worker Strike Spreads To 12 Cities [UPDATE]

This is HUGE news, even though its a small strike, comperatively, finally the terror that is Walmart management union busting is starting to crack, Walmart is the holy grail of the labor movement, the symbol of modern Capitalism, I hope this spreads, and I hope we all support the workers.

Click to expand...

It's a bit of a start. I don't shop at WalMart much--don't like big-box stores of any kind. And I learned a while ago not to buy cheap ****. But retail is notorious for low-paying jobs. When I do go into a WalMart, Home Depot, Target, etc., I'm generally surprised at the level of customer service on the floor. The people are more than helpful, most of the time.

It will be interesting to see what happens to these stores when Obamacare kicks in. I'm not sure how management of these stores utilize workers. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many/most of them are part-time, by the government's definition.

I was surprised to find that the IRS defines full-time employee, in general, as one who works 30 hours a week or more. It used to be 20. Big difference. Obamacare takes 14 pages to define a full-time employee. (Ha! No wonder it's 2,000 pages.) The reason I was surprised is that the definition used to be (when I owned my business) 20 hours a week. And you counted vacation days, etc., to get there. That governmental regulation change was a gift to Corporate America. Thank you, CongressClowns!!

If people have to pay more to shop at stores that pay their people a livable wage, I'm all for it. I really don't understand how WalMart has avoided unionization this long. But I sense their time is close to coming.

Musing off.

RGacky3 said:

How is it a dodge?

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Your challenge was to support the ‘Most Walmart shoppers…suffer similar conditions’ to which you came back with ‘Most people in American are working to middle class’ which doesn’t address the ‘suffer similar conditions’ assertion…hence the dodge.

Well ... 1. Reagan stopping labor laws being enforced, labor protections havn't been protected for the last 30 years, 2. Giant anti-Union propeganda and Union-Busting from the wealthy and powerful, 3. The Red Scare, 4. Giant power of Capital in the United States, 5. the Democrats abandoning labor.

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So you’re saying that there isn’t as much solidarity or it is not as influential as you initially claimed?

ALso most Americans are progressive based on polls showing most support a public healthcare system (not obama care necessarily, since its a private healthcare system), most supporting being tough on the banks, most supporting more income equality and so on, if you don't believe me I can find the polls, but if you don't, and I show them, I expect an apology, since it unnecessarily takes up time.

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Consider this:

Employing this more calibrated measure, 34 percent of the country identifies as “conservative,”
29 percent as “moderate,” 15 percent as “liberal,” 16 percent as “progressive,” and
2 percent as “libertarian.” After moderates are asked which approach they lean toward, the
overall ideological breakdown of the country divides into fairly neat left and right groupings,
with 47 percent of Americans identifying as progressive or liberal and 48 percent as conservative
or libertarian.

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http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/03/pdf/political_ideology_execsum.pdf
16% progressive OR 47% certainly doesn’t support your ‘most’ assertion but of course you were challenged to support your claim for which you merely posted personal opinion…thank you for that…try again.

That argument has been debunked over and over and over and over again, yet you right wingers keep bringing it up, let me just copy and paste.

And there are more out there ... Either way that argument has been debunked over and over again, so don't talk to me about struggling with issues, since you obviously have no understanding of economics. "

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Ah, ok…more opinion. Take some time and digest this:

Professor Hirsch surveys the literature on unionization and economic performance-mostly from the United States but also from Canada, Japan, and Britain-and concludes that, on balance, the effects of unions upon productivity and productivity growth are small; they do not offset the cost increase resulting from higher union wages…

The broad pattern that emerges from these studies is that unions significantly increase compensation for their members but do not increase productivity sufficiently to offset the cost increases from higher compensation. As a result, unions are associated with lower profitability, decreased investment in physical capital and research and development (R&D), and lower rates of employment and sales growth

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Unionization and Economic Performance

Note how I added links to support my assertions. I feel this more fully substantiates my points...give it a try

Dickieboy said:

“Most Walmart shoppers…suffer similar conditions”? REALLY? Seems like a GROSS over-generalization. I’m sure you can substantiate that…never mind.

They MAY but you assume they would place their compassion for other workers ABOVE their ability to get ‘stuff’. When folks have difficulty getting their ‘stuff’ they exhibit the most basic human nature of self-preservation, unions be damned. Arguing otherwise is simply naive.

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Aren't you the one over generalizing here?

" Most low/middle income folks are typically unaffected by a striking workforce. It is these same folks who are the majority of the shoppers at Walmart. If the strikes spread more of these shoppers will become disgruntled and thusly increasing their dislike of unions which will cause their participation to continue to decline…great plan"

haymarket said:

The Wal Mart syndrome is killing America. The desire for a very small short term gain at the expense of long term more important gain is killing this country as sure as cancer kills its victims.

Many of the people who shop at Wal Mart tend to be blue collar folks who make less than $50K per year. Many work two jobs at low wages. Years ago, many of those same folks would have jobs in unionized plants or warehouses and their lives and those of their family would have been a whole lot better. But in the drive to save a dime off a spray can of deoderant or a nickel off a roll of toilet paper, we are more than willing to embrace cheap goods made from China, buy them in an ugly box store devoid of anything resembling personal service and have most of their employees get little better than minimum wage.

It must stop. The race to the bottom must stop. We need a new economic patriotism that rejects cheaply made Chinese goods and rejects workers being paid wages that they cannot live on and rejects denying them basic rights to organize all in the name of cheaper toiletries.

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Most of your post is true which I agree with. I could argue the ‘lower cost of stuff from China’ allows consumers to spend on other ‘stuff’, hopefully made domestically, but I really don’t want to hijack the thread into an economic discussion.

The underlying assertion avoids the solution. How would you propose to motivate ‘folks who make less than $50K per year’ to spend more for their ‘stuff’?

Dickieboy said:

Your challenge was to support the ‘Most Walmart shoppers…suffer similar conditions’ to which you came back with ‘Most people in American are working to middle class’ which doesn’t address the ‘suffer similar conditions’ assertion…hence the dodge.

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Working in private corporations without unions where you have very little say over the compensation or conditions.

Dickieboy said:

So you’re saying that there isn’t as much solidarity or it is not as influential as you initially claimed?

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I'm saying what I wrote, what I wrote was why unions have declined in power and membership, nothing about solidarity.

Dickieboy said:

http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-c...gy_execsum.pdf
16% progressive OR 47% certainly doesn’t support your ‘most’ assertion but of course you were challenged to support your claim for which you merely posted personal opinion…thank you for that…try again.

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Yeah, but when you poll on the actual ISSEUS, such as public healthcare, war, financial systems, social security, medicare and so on polls show Americans are solidly progressive, issues count more than labels.

Dickieboy said:

Professor Hirsch surveys the literature on unionization and economic performance-mostly from the United States but also from Canada, Japan, and Britain-and concludes that, on balance, the effects of unions upon productivity and productivity growth are small; they do not offset the cost increase resulting from higher union wages…

The broad pattern that emerges from these studies is that unions significantly increase compensation for their members but do not increase productivity sufficiently to offset the cost increases from higher compensation. As a result, unions are associated with lower profitability, decreased investment in physical capital and research and development (R&D), and lower rates of employment and sales growth

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Productivity isn't inflation ... So thats looking at Unionization from the viewpoint of the capitalist who wants higher productivity for less, thats not what you or I were talking about to begin with.

JP Hochbaum said:

Aren't you the one over generalizing here?

" Most low/middle income folks are typically unaffected by a striking workforce. It is these same folks who are the majority of the shoppers at Walmart. If the strikes spread more of these shoppers will become disgruntled and thusly increasing their dislike of unions which will cause their participation to continue to decline…great plan"

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While I understand your point I don't agree. VERY few strikes occur on a national scale that would affect a majority. i.e. the CPS strike had little effect on folks living in the other 49 states hence my generalization.