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Wal-Mart Suppresses Workers' Voices

Wal-Mart Suppresses Workers' Democratic Right
to Choose a Union

Wal-Mart has always said that it is not anti-union, but rather its workers do not want a union. Workers tell a different story--that Wal-Mart intimidates, coerces and harasses employees to prevent them from making their voices heard with a union. Wal-Mart would even close its store rather than acknowledge workers' right to a union.

In February 2005, Wal-Mart announced it was shutting down its Jonquiere, Quebec store where workers had unionized six months earlier to have a voice on the job. Nearly 200 working families will lose their jobs and livelihoods. Rather than reach a fair and impartial wage and benefit settlement with workers, Wal-Mart would rather close stores, eliminate worker's jobs and make the entire community suffer.

Wal-Mart suppresses its workers' democratic right to choose through management techniques, labor busting teams, and unfair intimidation. Federal labor law charges have been filed on behalf of Wal-Mart workers in 25 states. From 1998 through 2003, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed more than 45 complaints accusing Wal-Mart managers in more than two dozen stores of illegal practices, including improperly firing union supporters, intimidating workers, and threatening to deny bonuses if workers unionized. Of those, the board found illegal practices in 10 cases; 8 cases were settled, and the rest are pending.

On April 9, 2005, the Wall Street Journal revealed that former Wal-Mart Board member and Vice Chairman Thomas M. Coughlin, the #2 person at the company, alleged he operated an illegal anti-union slush fund as part of a company program to suppress the democratic freedom of workers to make a choice for a union voice at work. According to the Journal, these revelations, if true, mean that Wal-Mart’s anti-worker, anti-union program “would represent a criminal offense under the federal Taft-Hartly Act,”—a federal felony to pay employees to persuade coworkers to abandon support for union representation.
When he was Wal-Mart Supercenter CEO, Tom Coughlin was among the perpetrators who worked aggressively to prevent Wal-Mart workers from deciding for themselves about union representation. According to NLRB complaints filed in January of 2001, Coughlin "interfered with, restrained, or coerced" employees before an election at Kingman, Arizona store.
When meat cutters at a Jacksonville, Tex., Wal-Mart voted for UFCW Local 540 representation in February 2000, the company refused to recognize the union—and suddenly changed the job functions of the meat cutters with a change to case-ready meat. Wal-Mart believed it had successfully circumvented the UFCW's first victory at one of its stores—until a National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge ordered the company to recognize and bargain with Local 540 over the effects of the change to prepackaged meat. This order comes more than three years after the original union election.
In September, 1999, Wal-Mart's hometown judge -- with more than a half million dollars in Wal-Mart stock --granted the company a restraining order to block the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) from distributing worker information in the retailer's stores. The nationwide restraining order, issued from a Benton County Arkansas court, was sought in a response to the union's efforts to educate workers about their rights in the workplace. When challenged by the UFCW about his Wal-Mart stock holdings, the hometown judge recused himself from the case in December. On July 3, 2003, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed and remanded the nationwide injunction.

Read Wal-Mart's Anti-Union Manuals by Clicking HERE

NLRB Complaints Against Wal-Mart

Workers Speak Out