Organizing via Facebook in the Age of Union-Busting

by Ryan Chittum

Columbia Journalism Review
June 15, 2011

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/organizing_via_facebook_in_the.php

The New York Times's Steven Greenhouse has an interesting
report today on a group of Walmart workers who are
organizing-just not in the traditional sense.*

The vehemently anti-union Walmart crushes any attempt to
unionize (at least in the U.S. and Canada), so a group
called OUR Walmart is starting a social networking presence
intended to pressure Walmart for better wages and treatment.
But it won't try to collectively bargain on behalf of its
members.

It's trying to emulate other groups formed at places like
IBM that have been hard to organize.

Walmart has so destroyed any possibility of unionizing its
stores, and the political climate has shifted so much
against labor, that unions, and people who hope to create
them, are reduced to using Facebook and PR campaigns as
tools to "negotiate" with Walmart. That's pretty pathetic
when you think about it.

They can't strike, so they'll push "like." (And don't get me
wrong, I'm not denigrating their efforts, I'm just saying it
shows what they're up against.)

The Times is good to point to signs of astroturf:

    Although the Web site of OUR Walmart depicts the
    organization as a grass-roots effort by Wal-Mart
    workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers has
    provided a sizable sum - the union will not say how much
    - to help the group get started. The union has also paid
    hundreds of its members to go door to door to urge Wal-
    Mart workers to join the group.

    In addition, the organizers are receiving help from ASGK
    Public Strategies, a consulting firm long associated
    with David Axelrod, President Obama's top political
    strategist.

But what really makes the story are the great quotes the
Times gets from some awfully brave workers:

    "I'm hoping that OUR Walmart will make a difference in
    the long run," said Margaret Van Ness, an overnight
    stocker at a Wal-Mart store in Lancaster, Calif., about
    60 miles north of Los Angeles. Ms. Van Ness earns $11.40
    an hour after four years of working there.

    "The managers at our store and others are running over
    their associates as if they didn't exist," she said.
    "They treat them like cattle. They don't seem to care
    about respect for the individuals. We need to bring back
    respect."

And this:

    "Someone has to stand up to say something," said Deondra
    Thomas, a shoe department employee at a Dallas Wal-Mart,
    who earns $8.90 an hour after three years there. "So
    many people have been quiet for so long. A lot of us
    think Wal-Mart is an awesome company, but as far as the
    employees, they treat us like dirt."

As a journalist, sometimes it's good to stop and admire the
willingness and bravery of sources who consent to be on the
record. These women make $23,000 and $18,000 a year,
respectively (assuming they get forty hours a week, and
that's a big assumption), and they don't have union
protection, but they're willing to go on the record in The
New York Times to speak truth to power.

Put it this way: I was in a newspaper union for nearly six
years, and I don't think there were more than two or three
brave souls who ever went on the record on our many fights
with management. There were plenty of anonymous snipes made
it into the press, though.

Let's hope Van Ness and Thomas still have jobs after this
story, something that would be worth Greenhouse keeping an
eye on.

Good work by him and the Times.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/business/15walmart.html

[Moderator's note: Yesterday's story in the New York Times
by Steven Greenhouse
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/business/15walmart.html
also was distributed by Portside:
http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=PORTSIDE;f56d291b.1106c ]

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