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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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It isn’t EFCA, but this week the Oregon legislature took its own step towards ending employer intimidation towards employees seeking to form a union. The Oregon Senate passed Senate Bill 519 - the Worker Freedom Act - by a 16-14 vote. The vote nearly split down party lines, with 16 Democrats voting in favor, and 12 Republicans (plus two Democrats) voting against. The measure now moves to the Oregon House, where a similar bill passed in 2007.

Senate Bill 519, which moved to the House on a 16-14 vote, bars businesses from requiring workers to attend company-organized meetings about politics — including union organizing — and religion. There are exceptions for churches and political parties.

The House bill passed 31-27 in 2007, and five more Democrats have since joined the state house. So, needless to say, the measure’s chance of becoming law are looking pretty good.

With public and legislative support behind the bill - 88% of Oregonians, in a December poll, said they did not think an employer should be allowed to force workers to attend meetings about the employer’s opinion on politics, religion, or union organizing - Oregon’s AFL-CIO President appeared surprised in an April email alert that Republicans were fighting the measure so strenuously. As you will note, the bill doesn’t bar the meetings from taking place - it simply bars employers from taking retribution against employees who choose not to attend meetings on politics, religion or union organizing during work hours.

“SB 519 simply states that an employer can’t discipline or fire a worker for opting out of a meetings on one of these topics. Are our Senators, and are the business associations who opposed this bill, upset that we are limiting their right to fire a worker who disagrees with their political or religious views? That’s all this bill does.”

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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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We’re going to take an ever-so-short break from Wal-Mart and the labor fight to return to the “roots” of the grassroots organizing against the retailer - namely objections to the company’s expansion. To the right is the view from inside a mammoth Wal-Mart Distribution Center. It is big...REAL big. In fact, just a couple months ago, Al Norman laid out exactly HOW big a new Distribution Center in Merced, CA, would be:

This enormous project will consume 270 acres on the southeast side of Merced, a community of roughly 70,000 people. The Distribution Center will pave over 100 acres of prime farmland, to create a 1,200,000 s.f. building—the equivalent of six supercenters under one roof, or 24 football fields. The pavement and parking lot for the facility is 4,353,000 s.f. There is room at the site for 300 parking spaces for tractor-trailers.

Did we mention it’s big? Well what this picture doesn’t illustrate are the environmental concerns of a distribution center beyond simple size - the 24 hours of light affecting local wildlife (and people), the millions of tons of particulates spewed into the air by hundreds of trucks and thousands of cars traveling to and from daily.

As the DC has moved forward, most notably with the release of the City’s draft Environmental Impact Report, opposition has risen as well - see the Merced Stop Wal-Mart Action Team. This week, letters have continued to flow in to local papers opposing the development. These are just a handful of our favorite examples:

Letter: China says ‘thank you’ [Merced Sun-Star]

China says “Thank you, Merced.”

Thank you for building the Wal-Mart distribution center in your town.

Yes, the creation of a few hundred jobs in Merced employed thousands of us to manufacture the cheap stuff you buy at Wal-Mart.

And as your fair city basks in the 24 hours of daylight from the towers of stadium lighting and the comforting hum (visible and audible for miles) of idling trucks, grinding gears, the occasional tooth rattling slam of a load hitting the 100 acres of asphalt, and as your school- children breathe the poison belched from 900 trucks a day, China says thanks and keep supporting the People’s Republic of China by shopping at Wal-Mart.

MICHAEL J. LEONARD
Merced

Check out more after the jump.

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Wal-Mart workers from across the nation are converging today on Capitol Hill for a National Organizing Meeting to brief Senators about wages, benefits and the Employee Free Choice Act. We have Wal-Mart Watch peeps down on the Hill, and will have more updates as the day goes on.

Wal-Mart Workers Holding Historic National Organizing Meeting [UFCW Release via EarthTimes]

WASHINGTON - (Business Wire) Walmart workers from across the nation are converging today on Capitol Hill for a National Organizing Meeting to brief Senators about wages, benefits and the Employee Free Choice Act. Nearly 100 Walmart workers from 17 states are participating in the event. As part of their campaign for a union voice on the job, they will urge lawmakers to level the playing field for working people by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.

“I made the trip into Washington DC to stand with my fellow Walmart workers and to urge my Senators to pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” said Dominique Sloan a Dallas, Texas, Walmart worker. “We need change in this country. All you have to do is look at how all the money goes to CEOs. But when it comes to workers, it’s always the same, no health care or health care that’s too expensive and low wages. We need to change that.”

The National Organizing Committee is made up of Walmart workers from Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

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Workers at a North Miami Beach Wal-Mart Supercenter are hoping to make their store one of the first Wal-Marts in the United States to unionize. The Miami Herald is reporting that workers have gathered signed pro-union cards from 150 of the store’s 476 employees.

If a majority of workers were to vote to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union, Wal-Mart would have to negotiate a contract setting pay, work rules, complaint procedures, health insurance and other benefits for the workers.

The Miami store is the most impressive example of card-signing activity, the movement occurring despite the fact that the Employee Free Choice Act movement remains in neutral in Washington. It isn’t the only unionizing target, however, as the UFCW admitted the North Miami Beach store is only one of about 100 Wal-Mart stores it is working to organize in 17 states, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Meghan Scott, a Food and Commercial Workers spokesman in Washington, said the union increased its organizing efforts after the election of President Barack Obama and the reintroduction this year of federal legislation that would make it easier for workers to gain union representation. “We’ve seen a pretty significant uptick in calls from Wal-Mart workers across the country,” Scott said. “The workers just seem to be emboldened in a way that they have not been in the last few years.”

The Miami store is a continuation of a trend that began earlier this month, when the Wall Street Journal reported on organizing efforts in Texas and Illinois.

‘’If we vote and we get it [union certification], they can’t do nothing but go along with it,’’ (Miami employee) Cheryl Guzman said. ``That’s my hope and prayer.’’

Read more after the jump:

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In the State of Washington, proposed legislation called the Worker Privacy Act would give workers the option of refusing to attend mandatory meetings where employers tell their side on issues of personal conscience, including politics or unionizing. Actually, the bill being considered in both the Washington House and Senate also mentions religion and charitable giving as protected issues, but politics and unionization are the ones getting all the media love. Yesterday, the Washington State Labor Council pointed out the following in arguing in favor of the bill to the House Labor and Commerce committee:

Under current law, companies can force their employees to attend such meetings to discourage union organizing or to press political views, as Wal-Mart did last year when it urged employees to vote against Barack Obama and Democrats.

Indeed, Wal-Mart Watch was intimately involved with the development of an August 2008 story in the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story of Wal-Mart’s “mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies—including Wal-Mart.”

The actions by Wal-Mart—the nation’s largest private employer—reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership. That could lead to higher payroll and health costs for companies already being hurt by rising fuel and commodities costs and the tough economic climate.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don’t specifically tell attendees how to vote in November’s election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

In addition to those stories in the WSJ piece, some of the reports Wal-Mart Watch received were even more egregious - in one example, a worker said they were shown a slide that said “Obama = union” while being told why unions were bad. The Washington legislation would allow workers to elect not to attend such gatherings, without fear of reprisal.

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Wal-Mart has a long history of opposing unionization. Sam Walton was notorious for trying to keep unions out of his stores. In fact, Walton hired union-busting lawyer John E. Tate to quash some of the earliest efforts to organize stores in Missouri. Despite a successful unionization effort in China, Wal-Mart will not budge from its position in the United States and Canada. However, with the election of Barack Obama and the potential passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, Wal-Mart is clearly afraid that its anti-worker practices of the last half century might be coming to a close. Wal-Mart says its associates do not need a union. Wal-Mart Watch, however, believes that after years of low wages, expensive health care benefits, and poor working conditions, Wal-Mart workers can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Wal-Mart and the retail industry have been spending millions slandering the Free Choice Act, saying that it would destroy the “private ballot” in the unionization process. To find out why this simply isn’t true, see Wal-Mart Watch’s latest fact sheet, The Employee Free Choice Act: Wal-Mart’s Last Stand Against Unionization?

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A new Wal-Mart documentary is now available from writer, director and co-producer, Andrew Munger.  The film is titled Wal-Mart Nation and is an in-depth look into why Wal-Mart is the largest, most powerful, and more importantly, most hated retailer in the world.  The film-makers had this to say of the movie, on their website:

“The film is a two-year long journey into a contentious world of protests, pageants, union organizing (and busting), attack ads, dirty tricks, and low low prices. Wal-Mart’s emergence as a global corporate powerhouse has triggered an unprecedented political backlash.  No company has ever faced such angry and organized opposition. The film-makers were granted rare access both to Wal-Mart itself, and the inner-sanctums of its bitterest enemies.”

The film stars 6 union activists, a Jesuit priest, 3 community organizers, almost 20,000 Wal-Mart shareholders, Jessica Simpson, Miss America, and long-time friend and contributor of Wal-Mart Watch: Al Norman. Congratulations, Al! We’ve seen it, and it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s available for purchase here -order your copy today!

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Since the issue of Wal-Mart has been surprisingly muted this campaign season (Wal-Mart Moms?), the retailer has decided to inject itself into the campaign ad fray. Both Obama and McCain have videos running on Wal-Mart’s corporate website. You can find them both here.

Here’s a little summary of the main points of each of the campaign messages you can find on walmartstores.com:

Obama:

Our economy is in crisis, we have two wars, and the American dream is slipping away (starting out on a positive note...nice)
We’re going to fix it by giving a $1,000 tax break to the middle class (YAY!!!! More money to spend at Wal-Mart!!!)
We’re going to allow workers to organize, for better wages, health care, benefits (Organize, YAY...wait, what?!)

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Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, speaking about the Employee Free Choice Act on Meet the Bloggers. On what the EFCA is, and why it would benefit workers:

If we understand what’s happening in America today, the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing pretty wide and pretty fast, which leads to all those foreclosures and other debt problems you talked about. One of the ways American workers used to get a raise was they had a union. And they way they got a union was they could make their own choice about whether they wanted to have an organization to talk to their employer about their wages and their heath care. And over the last 50 years what we’ve seen, is the courts and the corporations begin to eat away at those rights. So the Employee Free Choice Act just modernizes the national labor relations laws of our country, that again allow workers to make their own choice about whether they have a union, and tell the employer “We’ll see you after we have a majority of people who want to talk with you at the collective bargaining table, and until then this is our decision not your decision.

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Judge faults study on Wal-Mart Supercenter [Fresno Bee (Calif.)]

A proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter in north Clovis is being delayed again after a Fresno County Superior Court judge ruled the city did not meet state guidelines in studying water impacts and urban decay.

In a ruling last week, Judge Wayne Ellison said the city of Clovis complied with state guidelines on a host of other issues raised by opponents of the 491,000-square-foot retail center, which includes Wal-Mart and other stores.

But the city needs a revised environmental document that addresses the cumulative effects of urban decay and water availability across a wider area than just Clovis, Ellison ruled.

Ellison will now have to decide whether Clovis can make limited revisions to its environmental report, or will be required to prepare a completely new assessment.

Despite the delays, the project’s developer said the center, at the northeast corner of Herndon and Clovis avenues, will be built.

David Paynter said his company is “committed to the project no matter how long it may take.”

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Firm Sues Over Wal-Mart DC [Traffic World]

A law firm claiming to represent environmental groups is suing the city of Barstow, Calif., over a huge Wal-Mart distribution center planned for the city.

Briggs Law charges in the suit that the Southern California city did not properly prepare an environmental impact statement on the distribution center. The firm says it represents a group called Build Barstow Smart.

Wal-Mart plans to build a facility of greater than a million square feet on the outskirts of the town, which sits at a key road and rail junction about 125 miles northeast of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

An attorney at the firm told the Victorville, Calif., Daily Press that the group is most concerned about emissions and water use at the high desert site. Wal-Mart has said there is enough water in the area for the center.

Officials in Barstow have decried the suit and have said there is no coalition behind the law firm, which the newspaper said has sued Wal-Mart and other developers in the region repeatedly in recent years.

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Wal-Mart coming to Wellsville in 2010 [Wellsville Daily Reporter (N.Y.)]

With Wal-Mart planning to open a superstore in 2010 on the site of the old municipal airport, the Wellsville Town Board Wednesday heard both unfavorable and favorable comments on the project Wednesday.

The Wellsville Citizens for Responsible Development (WCRD) and Wellsville Wants Wal-Mart groups both attended the meeting. The WCRD asked Karen Sawicz, of Albion, in which Wal-Mart built a 156,000-square-foot supercenter, to address the board.

Sawicz told board members Albion had four independent grocery stores, two corporate grocery stores with pharmacies, three independent pharmacies, four independent video stores and three corporate pharmacies at the time the Wal-Mart was built,
“Within nine months of the Wal-Mart supercenter opening, the Orleans (County) community was down to one independent grocery store, two independent pharmacies, two independent video stores, two corporate grocery stores and two corporate pharmacies,” she read from her prepared remarks. “All of the independent grocery store had been open to 25 to 60 years.”
Sawicz said aside from losing grocery stores, Albion lost a way to support fund-raising efforts for its not-for profit groups.

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Wal-Mart pushes ahead with St. Louis area supercenter expansion plans [St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Mo.)]

With gas and food prices soaring, Jan Stalley says she’s thrilled that the Wal-Mart on Telegraph Road is being expanded to a supercenter, adding a full-service grocery.

“I can’t wait,” said Stalley, who lives with her husband and two sons in south St. Louis County. “Wal-Mart is going to make Schnucks and Dierbergs run for their money.”

Those sharing Stalley’s sentiments will be glad to hear that the Bentonville, Ark., retailer is proceeding with expansion plans in the St. Louis area despite cutbacks in other parts of the country. The company plans to open eight of its supercenters through next year, the first being in Fenton next month.

“We have slowed down growth, but it hasn’t affected the St. Louis market,” said Carol Johnston, vice president and regional general manager. “It’s a fantastic market for us. … The time is so right.”

Consumers are finding their budgets increasingly squeezed by rising prices for food and fuel. Reports from the Labor Department on Thursday showed consumer prices have risen 5.6 percent during the last 12 months, and weekly earnings, when adjusted for inflation, are down 3.1 percent.

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Group Mobilizes to Fight Cordova Wal-Mart [Memphis Daily News (Tenn.)]

It’s an old story, and it generally follows the same set of events: Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, pursues a piece of real estate that catches its interest. Opponents of the retail giant gather their forces, develop an organized campaign and attempt to stop the development of a new store in its tracks.

Sometimes Wal-Mart loses. Many times it doesn’t. But there is always another piece of land on which to build another store.

In Cordova, that oft-repeated turn of events is roughly at the midway point. Several nonprofit and community activist groups have banded together under one name and for the purpose of presenting a united front in fighting a planned 151,908-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter coming to Cordova.
Taking a stand

The new group calls itself Citizens for Sustainable Growth and is comprised of groups including the Grays Creek Association, Cordova Leadership Council and Parents and Friends of Macon Hall Elementary School. At the moment, the approval process for the sleek new Wal-Mart store, which will carry the retail chain’s new logo, is in a state of suspended animation.

And the new grassroots activist group is using that to its advantage.

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Law firm, advocacy group sues city over Wal-Mart distribution center [Desert Dispatch (Calif.)]

A law firm has taken the city and its plans to build a Wal-Mart distribution center to court over environmental concerns with the project’s plans.

Briggs Law Corporation, on behalf of an advocacy group named Build Barstow Smart, filed a lawsuit on August 8 at the Barstow courthouse alleging that the city had not properly prepared an environmental impact report for the more-than-1-million-square-foot distribution center proposed along Lenwood Road north of Jasper Road and southeast of the High Desert Estates housing area.

According to the suit, Build Barstow Smart opposes the distribution center and certain actions taken by the city and Wal-Mart and is seeking to void the certification of the environmental impact report and the approval of the center. The City Council approved the report and the project by a unanimous vote at the July 21 meeting.

The suit claims that the environmental impact report failed to address several significant adverse effects the distribution center would have on the area, that alternatives to the project and mitigations to the impacts were not thoroughly studied, that California Environmental Quality Act guidelines were not followed and that the city violated subdivision and zoning laws.

While the suit mentions many negative impacts from the distribution center, Cory Briggs, the San Diego- and Upland-based attorney for Build Barstow Smart, said that he is most concerned about the greenhouse emissions from the center and the center’s water use. Briggs is concerned the facility will suck dry the already scarce supply of water in the area, and in a previous letter to the city, Briggs asked Wal-Mart to consider installing solar panels to offset emissions from the facility.

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County sides with Wal-Mart [The Daily Triplicate (Calif.)]

The Del Norte County Board of Supervisors decided to move forward Tuesday with Wal-Mart’s expansion into a Supercenter.

Supervisors heard passionate comments on both sides of the issue during a public hearing on an appeal of the county Planning Commission’s decision to certify the Environmental Impact Review for the expansion.

In a 3-1 vote (Supervisor Leslie McNamer was absent), the board denied the appeal.

The appellant, the Crescent Heritage Coalition, still has 30 days to challenge the ruling in court. Its attorney, Paul Hagen, said a legal challenge probably would be filed, which could at least stall the expansion.

The expansion would almost double the size of the current store to include groceries and other merchandise.

Hagen told The Triplicate that there are multiple legal problems with the EIR, which he said should be thrown out or re-evaluated.

Local resident Ron Cole, on behalf of the coalition, appealed the planning commission’s decision. He said at the meeting Tuesday the two main issues that are not fully researched in the EIR are urban decay—basically the effects of business closures—and water runoff into Elk Creek.

“Del Norte residents cannot afford to rely on an inadequate (EIR),” he said, adding that it risks the county’s economic development and environment.

Several people said that Wal-Mart has hurt small businesses since it opened in 1992. Patti Pearcey, the owner of the Bookcomber bookstore downtown, said businesses “went down like dominos.”

“We can’t turn back the clock, but expansion is not necessary,” Pearcey said. “We need to support each other. I haven’t seen local government support us.”

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Venice Wal-Mart project gets the critics on its side [Herald Tribune (Fla.)]

In a stunning reversal, neighborhood groups that for nearly a year fought Mike Miller’s 73-acre Wal-Mart Renaissance project on east Laurel Road showed up at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to urge its approval.

After four hours of nothing but positive comments from residents, business leaders, city staff and Council members, the Council did just that and approved the project unanimously.

Miller made a number of changes since Wal-Mart first proposed building a 200,000- square-foot store, which the Planning Commission denied last fall. The Council was scheduled to hear Miller’s appeal of that denial and another issue by neighboring residents of the Venetian Golf and River Club, but both sides announced they had reached an agreement before the Council took up the issue Tuesday.

After a brief recess so City Attorney Bob Anderson could review the agreement and figure out how the Council needed to consider the issue, the Council took up the Renaissance project.

Miller agreed to 10 stipulations that included widening Laurel Road from two to four lanes in front of the development. He also agreed to: add more landscape buffering and a higher berm so the retail store was less visible from Laurel Road; move a park closer to the project’s eastern border with Willow Chase subdivision; create a faux main street with varying roofing pitches and building colors that cloak the big-box store look; add more sidewalks throughout the project and work with an advisory group of residents as outparcels of the project come forward for council approval.

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Council defers Wal-Mart plan [Iowa City Press Citizen (Iowa)]

The Iowa City Council voted at Monday night’s meeting to extend the public hearing on plans for a new Wal-Mart Supercenter to an Aug. 26 meeting.

Several people spoke in favor of and against Wal-Mart’s plans to build an 189,000-square-foot supercenter that will replace their existing building at 1001 Highway 1 W.

In order for Wal-Mart to build at the site, the council must amend a conditional zoning agreement signed when the property was first developed. The agreement states that the property should contain several smaller stores arranged similar to a shopping center.

Wally Taylor, attorney for Iowa City Stop Wal-Mart, said that the plans fail to meet the “essence” of that zoning agreement.

Taylor said the group would consider legal action if the plans are approved.

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