Update | By Martin Michaels
Strikes at Wal-Mart stores have spread to 12 additional stores this week, increasing the push for reform within the world’s largest retailer. Nearly 100 Wal-Mart workers at stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Dallas, among other cities, walked off the job in an unprecedented push to improve working conditions and wages. While striking workers have not formally demanded unionization, they have been working closely with the United Food and Commercial Workers in an effort to oppose Wal-Mart’s efforts to “silence and retaliate against workers for speaking out for improvements on the job.”
(MintPress) – Dozens of workers at Wal-Mart locations across Southern California staged a one-day work stoppage Thursday — the first action of its kind in the retailer’s 50 year history. The workers join 30 Wal-Mart warehouse workers in Illinois who have been on strike for weeks protesting unsafe working conditions. The Wal-Mart protests signal a growing discontentment with the world’s largest retailer, long maligned for underpaying workers and opposing union organizing.
The Wal-Mart actions across the U.S. occur at the same time as major anti-austerity protests across Europe and growing protests in the developing world. In Indonesia, for example, 2 million workers successfully shut down the capital, Jakarta, in a protest of national laws endorsing employers right to outsource jobs to part-time and “freelance” workers.
The gradual liberalization of trade as a result of free trade pacts and regional economic integration has, at times, resulted in the loss of jobs and a “race to the bottom,” as employers have more opportunities to outsource jobs as part of cost measures. These policies, coupled with national cuts to critical spending programs have resulted in similar, reactionary protests to government austerity and eroding workers’ rights.
Wal-Mart strike
Organized labor in the U.S. was dealt a major blow earlier this summer when unions and pro-labor groups failed to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in a statewide recall election. Walker had previously endorsed laws limiting the right of unions to collectively bargain while significantly cutting public sector employee benefits.
However, workers were vindicated last month when a Wisconsin judge struck down Act 10, the state law limiting collective bargaining. Although it is not clear whether the ruling will have a permanent effect on striking down Walker’s law, the ruling was heralded as a victory for public sector workers and unions in the Midwestern state.
Conversely, Wal-Mart workers are not unionized because the Arkansas-based retailer has taken a strong stance against union organization. However, the work stoppage Thursday at several Wal-Mart locations across Southern California is a first in the retailer’s history. The workers joined hundreds of supporters for a mass rally outside a store in Pico Rivera, demanding fair wages and improvements to working conditions.
Wal-Mart has been accused previously of not paying federally mandated minimum and overtime wages. Five thousand lawsuits are brought against Wal-Mart each year, including claims, in some cases, of racial and sexual discrimination.
“I’m excited, I’m nervous, I’m scared,” said Evelin Cruz, a Pico Rivera Wal-Mart employee. Cruz, one of the striking workers, expressed her support for the strike, saying, “I think the time has come, so they take notice that these associates are tired of all the issues in the stores, all the management retaliating against you,” said Rivera.
Rivera and other store managers have complained that stores are understaffed and ill-equipped to handle the workload. Strikers have also broached the once taboo discussion of unionization.
In 2005, Wal-Mart closed a store in Jonquiere, Quebec after the location’s 200 workers came close to securing union representation. Wal-Mart representatives claim that the closure was necessary because the store would not have been profitable if workers were allowed to unionize.
However, Michael J. Fraser, national director of UFCW Canada believes that the move was a punitive one against workers’ right to collectively bargain. “Wal-Mart has fired these workers not because the store was losing money but because the workers exercised their right to join a union. Once again, Wal-Mart has decided it is above the law and that the only rules that count are their rules,” said Fraser in a written statement.
Today, none of Wal-Mart’s stores across North America are currently unionized. However, Wal-Mart employees in Southern California have been organizing OUR Wal-Mart, an employee initiative to push for labor reforms and perhaps unionization at a later date.
OUR Walmart has been endorsed by the United Food and Commercial Workers union but has not made explicit demands for Wal-Mart management to recognize their right to unionize.
Wal-Mart has previously cracked down on similar protests, including the ongoing work stoppage at a major distribution center in Illinois. Thirty warehouse workers supported by approximately 600 activists successfully shut down the Elwood, Ill. center this week, a move that workers believe has cost Wal-Mart several million dollars in lost revenue.
Seventeen were arrested in the non-violent action earlier this week, as riot police moved swiftly in an attempt to subdue the action. The unprecedented action by Wal-Mart workers some believe, signals a shift in American working class consciousness as massive anti-austerity protests sweep Europe and similar labor demonstrations grow in developing countries, like Indonesia.
European anti-austerity continues
Ongoing anti-austerity protests across European cities have grown considerably in size, at times leading to violent clashes with police. In Spain, for example, more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets this week to protest the latest round of government austerity measures.
The government’s 2013 draft budget released last Friday will cut overall spending by $51.7 billion, while freezing the salaries of public workers. The budget also lays out plans to cut spending for unemployment benefits, a particularly contentious point given the 24.6 percent unemployment rate, the highest of any Eurozone country. Among Spanish youth under the age of 25, unemployment is a staggering 53 percent, according to national statistics.
Protests erupted last week after the Spanish government set the 2013 national budget. The cuts to public spending, unemployment benefits and a freeze on public service salaries drew widespread condemnation from unions, public sector workers and students.
Similarly, tens of thousands of Portuguese protesters surrounded the parliament in Lisbon earlier this week, decrying government plans for tax hikes and cuts to spending on social programs. Portugal suffers a 16 percent unemployment rate, one of the the highest of any country in the Eurozone economy.
While conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho promised that the measures would help to curb unemployment while cutting the national deficit, the leftist political opposition denounced the plans, believing that Coelho’s commitments to austerity would exacerbate the current economic crisis.
While the plight of Wal-Mart workers and anti-austerity protests in Europe may appear unrelated, consistent government policies of deregulation and privatization prevail in the U.S. and EU countries, a trend that has led to a decidedly corporate friendly environment at the expense of the common worker.
In Indonesia, national policies dictating the structure of employment have led to massive protests dwarfing those in the U.S. and Europe.
Indonesian protests
More than 2 million Indonesian workers went on strike earlier this week in one of the largest strikes in the Southeast Asian country’s history. Workers brought the capital, Jakarta, to a halt as strikers protested what has been called a government “cheap labor policy.” Under the current law, employers can outsource work and hire freelance, non-unionized employees to work for lower wages and fewer benefits.
Companies using freelancers are allowed to pay less than the minimum wage, one of the most contentious policies for striking for protesters.
“We are going to strike until we get what we want. If there is no deal today and the government is not willing to negotiate, then we will continue,” said Obon Tabroni, a labor union leader in a recent Al Jazeera interview.
All protests, whether in the U.S., Europe or Indonesia, have occurred in close succession as workers still reeling from the global economic recession struggle to maintain a voice in governments more and more willing to embrace austerity as a means to cut deficits and boost private sector employment.
Additionally, the interconnected, increasingly globalized economy has resulted in fewer trade restrictions allowing employers to outsource work internally, as in the case of Indonesia, or internationally, as is commonly the case in the U.S.