| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 1, 2000 |
|
|
Labor Board Tells Wal-Mart: Stop Tricking Employees, Respect Rights of Hourly Managers to Organize LUBBOCK, TX--One of the cornerstones of Wal-Mart's anti-union strategy will go on trial here as the result of a National Labor Relations Board complaint issued on Halloween stating the discount chain illegally tells hourly-paid department managers in a super-center here that they cannot engage in union activities. An administrative law judge will be assigned to hear the complaint in the near future. The complaint also cites Wal-Mart for unlawfully (1) creating the impression among employees that their union activities are under surveillance, (2) interrogating employees about their union activities, and (3) soliciting employee grievances. "For years, Wal-Mart has tricked hourly department managers into thinking they were part of the management team and, therefore, obligated to report any signs of union activity in their departments so that union-busters from Bentonville can be summoned to put out the fire," said Michael Leonard, a vice president of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). A former hourly department manager in Store #945, 702 West Loop 289, filed the charge in August protesting that Wal-Mart District Manager David Craig told a June 7 meeting of new hourly department managers from several stores in the La Quinta Inn that "by law" they could not be involved in union activity because they were "management". Craig instructed the department managers that they were the company's "first line of defense in protecting Wal-Mart from the union, namely the UFCW," and said they were "obligated to report union activity directly to salary management as soon as [the managers] discovered that it had taken place," according to the complainant. Store Manager Barry Hart later reinforced Craig's message when he illegally interrogated the department manager about union activity he had been involved in on his own time, stating it was "against Wal-Mart policy concerning department managers." Following the meeting, the department manager began looking for another job. Few, if any, hourly-paid Wal-Mart managers meet the threshold tests to be truly "management" under federal labor law because they do not hire, fire, or discipline employees. In large retail operations, like a Wal-Mart super-center, department managers have the closest contact with hourly employees and often have great influence with them. "Wal-Mart tries to hoodwink department managers into spying for the company by telling them that they are management," said Leonard, who is also the UFCW's director of strategic programs. "They use department managers as the shock troops for their anti- union program, which is laid out in three manuals--'A Manager's Toolbox To Remaining Union Free', 'Labor Relations and You', and 'Sam's Club Supervisor's Handbook'." The union is posting all three anti-union manuals on its web site for Wal-Mart employees "so they can read for themselves how the company plots to deceive employees into thinking the union is bad for them, and trains supervisors to express phony concern for their grievances," Leonard added. While the complaint only applies to the Lubbock store, Leonard said it will establish an important precedent for all stores. He noted: "Wal-Mart's M.O. is to test the limits of the law, and to only change its prepackaged anti-union program when it is forced to, which it did when the NLRB previously ruled against a company policy that employees couldn't talk about wages and benefits with their co-workers. That 'policy' statement disappeared from the annual wage-and-benefit statements employees receive in the Spring, although employees tell us it is now communicated orally." |
|
 |
 |
