Walmart Document Leak: Management Expectations On Strikes

 

 

 

SEE THE WALMART DOCUMENT HERE.

 

From Huff Po: Walmart launched a large-scale response this week to a series of unprecedented labor strikes, according to a confidential document obtained by The Huffington Post.

The seven-page internal memo, issued Oct. 8, is intended for salaried employees only, and contains instructions on how to respond to strikes by hourly workers that spread to 28 Walmart stores in 12 cities earlier this week. The strikes were the first by Walmart retail employees in the company’s 50-year history.

The memo makes clear that Walmart, the world's largest private employer, views the labor protests as a serious attack, a message that runs contrary to the company's public comments that the strikes are mere "publicity stunts," as Walmart's vice president of communications David Tovar told The Huffington Post Tuesday.

"As you know,” the memo opens, “activists or union organizers have been trying for years to stop our Company’s growth and to damage our relationship with our customers and members. One of the activists’ or union organizers’ tactics is to try to disrupt the business by urging our associates to participate in a walkout or other form of work stoppage.”

The majority of the memo is aimed at instructing managers not to violate workers' legal right to engage in concerted activity, or non-union labor organizing. Managers are directed not to “discipline” employees who engage in walkouts, sit-ins or sick-outs.

Legal experts said the confidential memo shows an unprecedented level of caution from a company that has taken harsh stances towards employee attempts to organize in the past.

“Walmart probably has in mind that the Obama NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] often sides with unions over management,” said Lance Compa, a labor law professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations in Ithaca, N.Y. “So they’re being extremely cautious.”

The memo is peppered with Walmart management jargon, offering a window into the secretive corporate culture built by founder Sam Walton. Managers are reminded over and over of the acronym TIPS (Threaten Intimidate Promise Spy) when dealing with potential labor organizing by hourly-wage "associates." The widely used human resources term serves to remind managers that they cannot, by law, threaten or intimidate workers who organize, promise them benefits if they stop organizing, or spy on their activities.

What managers can legally do, however, is what Walmart calls FOE -- offer workers Facts, Opinions, and Personal Experiences about labor organizing. Walmart offers a sample opinion that says, "I don't think a walkout is a good way to resolve problems or issues." According to Compa, this is a boilerplate tactic for companies looking to discourage unionizing without breaking the law.

The historic retail worker strikes began last Friday in Los Angeles, when 60-some people walked off work, and they quickly spread across the country. Earlier in September, workers at warehouses owned by Walmart in Illinois and California also went on strike.

Striking workers are demanding that Walmart end retaliatory practices against employees who attempt to organize by Nov. 23, Black Friday. If not, they will strike again on the biggest shopping day of the year, according to Colby Harris, a Walmart worker from Dallas, who participated in Tuesday’s strike.

Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman said the strikes were largely publicity stunts. "We've seen the unions hold these made for TV events outside our stores for about ten years now," he told HuffPost, "and they want the publicity to help further their political and financial agendas. There is a very small number of associates raising these concerns, and they don't represent the views of the vast majority of our 1.3 million associates."

According to Compa, the memo reflects Walmart's concern over the 20-some charges of unfair labor practices that Walmart workers filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the past 8 weeks in concurrence with the strikes.

The charges include dozens of allegations from employees who claim they were subjected to harassment, cut hours and other disciplinary actions when Walmart higher-ups learned that they supported OUR Walmart, the United Food and Commercial Workers-backed worker group that organized the recent strikes. If the NLRB sides with the workers, Walmart may eventually be forced to pay a huge settlement in back pay, the specific amount of which would vary for each individual case.

Fogleman said the company has "very strict policies against retaliation. If an associate feels that they have been retaliated against, we want to know that. That allows us the opportunity to look into it and take appropriate action."

Politics may also play a role in the company's newfound caution. Top positions at the NLRB are appointed by the president, and Democrats have traditionally been more sympathetic to labor organizers.

Notably, the leaked memo lacks many of Walmart’s famously tough labor policies.

In the past, internal Walmart documents instructed managers to remind employees that they could be permanently replaced if they went on strike, as well as provided talking points on the false guarantees unions make to workers, according to a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch that examined 292 NLRB charges against Walmart. The new document bears no mention of replacing employees.

At one point, Walmart is even more cautious than the law requires. The document does not instruct managers to evict employees conducting a sit-in on company property, as is within their legal right, according to Compa, who also serves as a consultant to Human Rights Watch.

Still, a few of the strategies that made Walmart famous as a union-buster rear their heads in the document. Tacked onto the end of the memo is a definition of the term, “Coaching By Walking Around” (CBWA), or “when managers walk through their facility or department everyday just to visit with associates,” as Walmart explains it. While it may sound benign, the verb "to coach" in Walmart lexicon also means to discipline employees. According to workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Walmart managers have used CBWA as a surveillance tactic to monitor and deter labor organizers.

Fogleman, the Walmart spokesman, defended the CWBA, saying that management uses it as a tool to "remain engaged with everyone working for them and with environment. It helps foster the channels of open dialogue that set us apart as an employer."

It remains to be seen whether the new directives will have a long-term impact on Walmart managers. "I think it's one thing to get a piece of paper, but in practice that's not what people have experienced in these stores," said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a nonprofit workers rights group. Gupta cautions that one document is unlikely to alter five decades of anti-union corporate culture. “What I worry about is that our experience with Walmart management is they say they'll respect workers, and then their actions tell a different story."

Walmart also could have ulterior motives for considering workers rights, such as covering itself in upcoming Unfair Labor Practice proceedings. “Walmart could say, in effect, 'Look, it says right here, we told our supervisors ‘don’t retaliate’ –- so we must be innocent,” said Compa, the law professor. Compa noted that this is a possible motivation for Walmart to have put such “extremely circumspect” manager instructions down on paper at a time like this.

For Dan Schlademan, director of the UFCW’s Making Change at Walmart campaign, the motives of the memo are less important than its overall effect on workers. "I've been doing this work for 20 years, and I've never seen a document like this.”

"What's important about this piece of paper is that it solidifies what people saw for the first time during the strikes, which is that Walmart employees were able to walk out in protest, and the next day were able to return to work. For many of them, that was amazing to see."

via www.huffingtonpost.com

 

Comments

[Spritzy]

Threaten, Intimidate, (empty) Promise, Spy....actually instructing management to do that just makes me feel sick. Things like that make for a untrustful and harmful work environment and gives them a power trip to do whatever they want.

[The Last Archimedean]

If Wal-Mart was REALLY smart, they'd openly encourage the employees to unionize and have their shift supervisors be the union leaders, with the managers working closely with the shift supervisors to, um, work with the union to find a mutually beneficial solotion for all. You never win by fighting these things, but you can guide them in a direction you like...

[Skittles]

@The Last Archimedean most if not all unions do not allow management at any level into union membership. Also if they did that and it was discovered the resulting lawsuit and fines would be monumental. To top that off unions can censor people who spy for management or try to bend the union to managements way of thinking. Censoring essentially means that person is no long part of the union and will not be backed by the union in any way.

This story keeps getting more awesome. What I really hope happens is that Walmart ends up being unionized and more retail workers start following suit. Just think of how amazing it would be if retail workers didn't have to put up with dehumanizing from management and crusties, because there was a union to back them up. What about retail workers having real benefits and sick days that they could take when they needed them without fear of losing their jobs?

[The Last Archimedean]

I don't know about Wal-Mart but when I worked for a [different] giant retail store a shift supervisor wasn't "management", it was an hourly worker who was thought more reliable than the other ones and got 25 cents per hour more to try and keep their fellow hourly workers from slacking off too much. Maybe things have changed.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the whole idea of a union was to work WITH management to make positive changes in the working environment, not to always be engaged in a fight. It does take two to tango, but if management is willing to work with the union to implement changes that benefit all and make the company stronger, why should their ideas be rejected merely because a manager instead of a worker thought of it? After all, if the company starts floundering and goes bankrupt, no one wins. [Not that Wal-Mart is going to go bankrupt, but the point is that it's a lot better for the company to be unified and work on selling their products to customers rather than have a ton of useless infighting between management and the union -- ideally, they'd find a way to work together that makes everyone happy.]

And yes, it would be lovely if this became a trend and big retailers were all unionized so workers' rights, with the help of understanding and competent management working WITH the union, were protected and the companies strengthened by the mutually beneficial exchange of ideas between the union and management.

[Skittles]

@TLA the point of the union is to make workers jobs better and safer while protecting their rights. From my experience management rarely has that in mind. I work at a non-profit for instance and numerous times have had to get involved with the union rep to save peoples jobs. They people being fired had followed managements instructions and were being fired for the results of following management instructions. The other issue with management being involved directly with the union is trying to make side deals to favorite workers and give them perks for doing what management wants at the expense of their co-workers. There is a time and a place for union and management to sit down and negotiate things and that is when they are putting the contract together or resolving a complaint. You also need to keep in mind that having management in a union meeting could intimidate workers, as management can and will single people out to punish if they know they are causing 'issues' like making sure workers are getting their breaks when they should. To be fair not all companies are like this and idealy management and union have an amicable relationship. The real problem is that quite often people who get into low level management have power issues and feel like they should be able to issue commands regardless of whether it puts employees at risk or dehumanizes them. sorry my reply might be a little confused I am tired lately.

[The Last Archimedean]

Your reply didn't seem confused at all.

There are always a few idiots, among both workers and managers, who spoil it for the rest of the people by acting like arseholes [for workers, being a lazy bastard, and for low level managers, going on a useless power trip.] Proper discipline by high-level management nips this in the bud, but if unchecked it can cause the problems you describe.

Things work best for the company when top executives have brains enough to cooperate with the workers to make the company's operations run smoothly. I don't know in the specific case of Wal-Mart whether the executives have a collective brain that works or not, but for everyone's sake I hope they do.

I'm lucky enough to work at the moment for a company that does have the management cooperate with the workers to the point where we haven't even bothered trying to unionize because we already have good, clear lines of communication with management and don't need a union to guard our rights. Sure, there's the occasional bad apple, but higher-level management overrules any dumb decisions made by idiotic low level managers before it becomes a big problem.