So were back to this? And we thought worker intimidation was soooooooo last year.

In 2007, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing Wal-Mart’s unionbusting policies and practices in the United States. According to the report, “while many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus.”

That aggressiveness is back in the news, courtesy of a unionizing push in St. Paul, Minnesota:

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 filed unfair labor practices complaints this week with the National Labor Relations Board. The union contends that during meetings with employees at its Midway store in St. Paul, Wal-Mart managers said people who sign union authorization cards would be fired. The union also charges that store managers interrogated employees regarding their union support and whether they had signed cards in favor of the union.

Of course this shouldn’t be very surprising, though it does seem pretty interesting that management staff came right out and told people that they’d no longer be a Wal-Mart employee if they supported unionization. You’d think they would hew closer to the Godfather-esque, vague threat route - we can’t be held responsible if, say, a supporter “had an accident” type thing. They should know that threatening workers’ employment status is illegal, right? Or do they just not care? One thing we do know is that they’ve certainly had problems with labor issues in Minnesota before.

Anyway, we’re attempting to get a copy of the NLRB complaint. In the meantime, feel free to check out video of the Local 789 worker rally after the jump.

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As the New York Times is reporting, a new study by Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner has found that employers threatened to close plants in 57 percent of union organizing drives, and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent.

Unfortunately, it now appears to be that several employers - many of which have had stable relationships with their employees for years - have begun to follow Wal-Mart’s lead and get far more aggressive with employee groups seeking to organize. Bronfenbrenner writes:

What distinguishes the current organizing climate from previous decades of employer opposition to unions? The primary difference is that the most intense and aggressive anti-union campaign strategies, the kind previously found only at employers like Wal-Mart, are no longer reserved for a select coterie of extreme anti-union employers.

The report, titled “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” is being released today by the Economic Policy Institute. From the report:

Overall, 12.4% of U.S. workers are represented by unions, a density far below what would be the case if all workers who wanted to belong to a union could freely do so. In fact, studies have shown that if workers’ preferences were realized, as much as 58% of the workforce would have union representation.

Of course, we know that one of the ways to rectify this would be federal legislation - the Employee Free Choice Act, perhaps??

For more information on the report, including the press release, fact sheet, and the report itself - click here.

Find the New York Times article, plus a video on how when it comes to unions Starbucks has made itself into the coffee drinker’s Wal-Mart, after the jump.

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