Worked at Walmart as my first real job for about two years. Have avoided shopping there ever since. And it's not because they fired me for stealing food and magazines from them!
This is the “moment” for unionization on a very large scale. Amazon , Walmart, Starbucks, and other big employers will become very vulnerable during the next four years of tariff chaos . Large scale mobilization of labor . The only thing that can really stop united organized labor is now going to be difficult to pull off . I am talking about a large willing and desperate labor force in the form of immigrants (legal or otherwise) that could step in and take the jobs of striking workers.
Labor is perhaps the only force that can take in the massive economic power of huge corporations.
Labor may be the only way Americans get an improved social safety net , universal health care , child care , elder care , etc. We can not count on the institutions of government to act on our behalf. They have been “captured” by the really big money.
I agree, here's why: some states right now are very ready to push back on Project 2025 -- we should be able to pass supportive legislation that will help pave the way (even if we have to go through NLRB). For example, legislation requiring access to workplaces. I think Washington would be a good start -- decent legislature, union friendly, not huge. California can be next.
Hi Washingtonian here, I completely agree. We are and have been going in the right direction for years. Not perfect of course, but better. I know that Whole Washington (Washington Socialized Healthcare) has been in the works for a while. I read recently that it will be on this years ballot. I feel like a multi industry strike is very plausible here as well. A lot of the people in my area were supportive of Boeings most recent machinists strike.
When seven unions broke away from the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win this was the exact idea publicly expressed ($25 million for a Wal-Mart campaign). . But individual union’s organizing desires overruled the collective Wall-Mart organizing concept. So a lot of work that I’ve been done by UFCW and SEIU to set the stage was diverted to individual unions drives
We Were Wrong to not pursue the campaign. I wonder if anyone will take it up!
This is the kind of article that should be a regular feature in the op-ed pages of the WaPo and NYT. Can you imagine how quickly the conversation would change for the better with a 'campaign' of pieces like this published in the legacy media print giants? It's just a reminder of how much power they have and how much they have squandered that power. The good that they could have done in the position that they are in. It makes me furious. But no, we are just beleaguered by articles by David Brooks, Bill Krystal , and George Will... it's all just a grievance machine for the one percent
I've always boycotted Walmart. And I hope its employees are able to unionize.
"As Rogé Karma lays out in this excellent story in The Atlantic, meticulous new economic research shows that the opening of a Walmart causes incomes to decline in the community where the store opens by more than the amount that shoppers save at Walmart. One research paper says that the average net loss from a Walmart’s opening is about $2,000 per year per person, leading to a 16% increase in poverty locally."
I certainly agree with Hamilton Nolan that Walmart should be targeted for a national multi-union organizing campaign, along with Amazon and Starbucks. Costco is another national retail chain that is only partly organized, and which is showing its true anti-union character in ongoing contract negotiations.
However, while I have spent a lifetime as a union organizer, and firmly believe in the importance of organizing workers in the workplace as key to building the power of the working class, I have come to the conclusion that this is not enough. We have seen the growth of giant mega corporations across every industry and economic sector, to the point that a small class of billionaires, their allies in the professional and managerial class, and their media and political agents, control our society through their economic and political power. One consequence of this is the declining standard of living of the US working class and the growth of poverty, disempowering the majority, while the billionaire class and their allies become an increasingly wealthy and powerful minority.
An additional consequence, related to the influence of the military industrial sector of the corporate oligarchy and the promotion of the ideology of American exceptionalism and hegemony, is the aggressive war-mongering in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and xenophobic attacks on immigrants, many of whom are fleeing social conflicts caused by US blockades, sanctions or interventions.
If we are serious about reversing this trend, it is not enough to organize at the workplace level, or to support the political parties that are both part of and controlled by the ruling oligarchy. The few dissenting voices within the political parties - and they are very few - have no effective political impact, and only support the illusion that we live in a democracy. The working class, including the poor and unemployed, including immigrants and indigenous peoples, need a political organization of our own, not controlled by billionaire and millionaire donors, not part of the corporate oligarchy, and not ideologically bound to corporate capitalism and American exceptionalism.
A weakness of American trade union organizations and the broader working class has been our ideological and political subordination to the oligarchy and the two political parties. The two party system has made it difficult for the emergence of a working class political party - and of course when a radical workers’ movement did arise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was outlawed and repressed. Another important obstacle has been the legacy of American exceptionalism, settler colonialism, and imperialism and its confusion with patriotism, and the legacy of anti-black, anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous racism, which has historically divided the working class.
How do we hope to overcome these obstacles, unite the multi-national, multi-racial and multi-ethnic working class, and build an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-war political movement and political party that can challenge the two-party system and become a powerful force in US society?
That is the question we must try to answer in this space and elsewhere.
The pressure to raise wages at Wal-Mart, as distinct from actually unionizing it, was partly relieved when coastal America passed $15+ state level minimum wages. In big metro areas the UFCW and the unionized stores it represented were now under less pressure from Wal-Mart since the $15 starting wage equalized things a bit. This is hardly a sufficient reason to back off a unionization campaign at Wal-Mart, but it was enough for the stolid UFCW, although many locals are more militant. Also, Obamacare, which Wal-Mart actually supported, finally offered health insurance to many Walmart workers. it was a defacto subsidy to the company. And I wrote a book on much of this: The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business, still relevant after 13 years.
For a haunting immersion into a dystopian Walmazon world, I recommend The Warehouse by Rob Hart (near-future sci-fi.) I keep running across subtle reminders in ordinary daily life of the dehumanized, utterly exploited workers characters in that book. If more could read, the book is all we'd need to get unions going again (so there will have to be a movie.)
Great info...yep, Amazon/Wallyworld...anti-America. FYI, love the book "Dodge County Inc.": how corporate America out to grind everyone down to low wages, no insurance, push farmers out of business, take their land...and we become a third-world country!
I really want to see this happen. However, I'm also concerned for the safety of any potential striking Walmart employees, in so far as quite a few Walmart shoppers are right wingers and/or MAGAs who are knee-jerk anti-union.
Worked at Walmart as my first real job for about two years. Have avoided shopping there ever since. And it's not because they fired me for stealing food and magazines from them!
Happy New Year, Hamilton! Thank you for your work ❤️🔥
This is the “moment” for unionization on a very large scale. Amazon , Walmart, Starbucks, and other big employers will become very vulnerable during the next four years of tariff chaos . Large scale mobilization of labor . The only thing that can really stop united organized labor is now going to be difficult to pull off . I am talking about a large willing and desperate labor force in the form of immigrants (legal or otherwise) that could step in and take the jobs of striking workers.
Labor is perhaps the only force that can take in the massive economic power of huge corporations.
Labor may be the only way Americans get an improved social safety net , universal health care , child care , elder care , etc. We can not count on the institutions of government to act on our behalf. They have been “captured” by the really big money.
I agree, here's why: some states right now are very ready to push back on Project 2025 -- we should be able to pass supportive legislation that will help pave the way (even if we have to go through NLRB). For example, legislation requiring access to workplaces. I think Washington would be a good start -- decent legislature, union friendly, not huge. California can be next.
Hi Washingtonian here, I completely agree. We are and have been going in the right direction for years. Not perfect of course, but better. I know that Whole Washington (Washington Socialized Healthcare) has been in the works for a while. I read recently that it will be on this years ballot. I feel like a multi industry strike is very plausible here as well. A lot of the people in my area were supportive of Boeings most recent machinists strike.
When seven unions broke away from the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win this was the exact idea publicly expressed ($25 million for a Wal-Mart campaign). . But individual union’s organizing desires overruled the collective Wall-Mart organizing concept. So a lot of work that I’ve been done by UFCW and SEIU to set the stage was diverted to individual unions drives
We Were Wrong to not pursue the campaign. I wonder if anyone will take it up!
This is the kind of article that should be a regular feature in the op-ed pages of the WaPo and NYT. Can you imagine how quickly the conversation would change for the better with a 'campaign' of pieces like this published in the legacy media print giants? It's just a reminder of how much power they have and how much they have squandered that power. The good that they could have done in the position that they are in. It makes me furious. But no, we are just beleaguered by articles by David Brooks, Bill Krystal , and George Will... it's all just a grievance machine for the one percent
Just wanted to mention that an Amazon warehouse in Laval is actually unionized, so it's entirely possible to unionize at Amazon. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/laval-amazon-warehouse-union-accredited-1.7202192) It's a first in Canada and a first for Amazon.
I've always boycotted Walmart. And I hope its employees are able to unionize.
"As Rogé Karma lays out in this excellent story in The Atlantic, meticulous new economic research shows that the opening of a Walmart causes incomes to decline in the community where the store opens by more than the amount that shoppers save at Walmart. One research paper says that the average net loss from a Walmart’s opening is about $2,000 per year per person, leading to a 16% increase in poverty locally."
I certainly agree with Hamilton Nolan that Walmart should be targeted for a national multi-union organizing campaign, along with Amazon and Starbucks. Costco is another national retail chain that is only partly organized, and which is showing its true anti-union character in ongoing contract negotiations.
However, while I have spent a lifetime as a union organizer, and firmly believe in the importance of organizing workers in the workplace as key to building the power of the working class, I have come to the conclusion that this is not enough. We have seen the growth of giant mega corporations across every industry and economic sector, to the point that a small class of billionaires, their allies in the professional and managerial class, and their media and political agents, control our society through their economic and political power. One consequence of this is the declining standard of living of the US working class and the growth of poverty, disempowering the majority, while the billionaire class and their allies become an increasingly wealthy and powerful minority.
An additional consequence, related to the influence of the military industrial sector of the corporate oligarchy and the promotion of the ideology of American exceptionalism and hegemony, is the aggressive war-mongering in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and xenophobic attacks on immigrants, many of whom are fleeing social conflicts caused by US blockades, sanctions or interventions.
If we are serious about reversing this trend, it is not enough to organize at the workplace level, or to support the political parties that are both part of and controlled by the ruling oligarchy. The few dissenting voices within the political parties - and they are very few - have no effective political impact, and only support the illusion that we live in a democracy. The working class, including the poor and unemployed, including immigrants and indigenous peoples, need a political organization of our own, not controlled by billionaire and millionaire donors, not part of the corporate oligarchy, and not ideologically bound to corporate capitalism and American exceptionalism.
A weakness of American trade union organizations and the broader working class has been our ideological and political subordination to the oligarchy and the two political parties. The two party system has made it difficult for the emergence of a working class political party - and of course when a radical workers’ movement did arise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was outlawed and repressed. Another important obstacle has been the legacy of American exceptionalism, settler colonialism, and imperialism and its confusion with patriotism, and the legacy of anti-black, anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous racism, which has historically divided the working class.
How do we hope to overcome these obstacles, unite the multi-national, multi-racial and multi-ethnic working class, and build an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-war political movement and political party that can challenge the two-party system and become a powerful force in US society?
That is the question we must try to answer in this space and elsewhere.
tl;dr
The pressure to raise wages at Wal-Mart, as distinct from actually unionizing it, was partly relieved when coastal America passed $15+ state level minimum wages. In big metro areas the UFCW and the unionized stores it represented were now under less pressure from Wal-Mart since the $15 starting wage equalized things a bit. This is hardly a sufficient reason to back off a unionization campaign at Wal-Mart, but it was enough for the stolid UFCW, although many locals are more militant. Also, Obamacare, which Wal-Mart actually supported, finally offered health insurance to many Walmart workers. it was a defacto subsidy to the company. And I wrote a book on much of this: The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business, still relevant after 13 years.
For a haunting immersion into a dystopian Walmazon world, I recommend The Warehouse by Rob Hart (near-future sci-fi.) I keep running across subtle reminders in ordinary daily life of the dehumanized, utterly exploited workers characters in that book. If more could read, the book is all we'd need to get unions going again (so there will have to be a movie.)
Great info...yep, Amazon/Wallyworld...anti-America. FYI, love the book "Dodge County Inc.": how corporate America out to grind everyone down to low wages, no insurance, push farmers out of business, take their land...and we become a third-world country!
I really want to see this happen. However, I'm also concerned for the safety of any potential striking Walmart employees, in so far as quite a few Walmart shoppers are right wingers and/or MAGAs who are knee-jerk anti-union.
Easy response: "Police and fire fighters can have unions, but I can't?"
I like it.
Ah yes epically own them with facts! and logic! that'll do it