Labor: Wal-Mart Coercing Workers to Vote Republican August 15, 2008

In a twist of more appalling conduct from Wal-Mart, the chain is apparently rallying workers through “mandatory meetings”, coaxing them to vote Republican this November, for fear that the Democratic candidate would make it easier for them to unionize:

The AFL-CIO and three other labor-rights groups have asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether Wal-Mart Stores Inc. unlawfully pressured employees to vote against Democrats in November because their party would help workers to unionize.

The groups — which include Change to Win, American Rights at Work and WakeUpWalMart.com — say in a complaint processed on Friday with the FEC that “there is reason to believe” Wal-Mart broke federal election rules by advocating against Democratic candidate Barack Obama in meetings with employees…The labor organizations based their complaint on a report earlier this month from The Wall Street Journal. The report said Wal-Mart held mandatory meetings with store managers and department supervisors to warn that if Democrats prevail this fall, they would likely push through a bill that the company says would hurt workers.

Mandatory meetings. What exactly went on at these meetings is the subject of the FEC investigation, and, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Meanwhile, new details are emerging that show Wal-Mart managers leading the meetings are spreading inaccurate information about the Employee Free Choice Act, according to a digital recording of a Wal-Mart meeting made by a Wal-Mart employee and reviewed by the Journal.

In the hour-and-a-half meeting, held for managers in a Southern state, the leader tells employees that their wages may be reduced to minimum wage for up to three months before a contract is negotiated, that union authorization cards violate workers’ right to privacy by including their Social Security numbers on them and that if a small unit within a store votes to unionize, the entire store will be unionized.

“If you have 10 associates in a photo lab and six sign union authorization cars, now the store is unionized,” the meeting leader told employees. “Six people can make a decision for 350 people,” which is about the average number of workers in a Walmart supercenter.

The official text of the complaint is available from JURIST.

While critics of the Employee Free Choice Act say that the bill will, among other things, force employees into more decisions than it will enable, obviously Wal-Mart is going about this the wrong way. Calling Obama’s election prospect “scary” and making emotional appeals to workers — who, obviously, as the result of the issue of partisan voting being called on at a “mandatory meeting”, are going to make the connection: “my job depends on this” — is, perhaps the most underhanded way of going about this.

Another example of the rising cost of low prices.