Is it time to start organizing labor via secret societies again?

[gordonzola]

I read the paper every day but I try not to let it get to me. I fully believe that the capitalist press exists in part to demoralize us. Still, there was a quote in the article about a failed organizing drive at Wal-Mart that got to me.

Cody Fields, who earns $8.10 Per hour after two years at the garage, said he originally backed the union "because we need a change" but said the antiunion videos* were effective. "it’s just a bunch of brainwashing, but it kind of worked," he said.

Sigh.

Oddly, this quote only appears in the print edition of today’s Chron. Not in the online version or the NY Times online version where it was syndicated from.



*Shown as part of a daily anti-union campaign by Wal-Mart’s full-time anti-union organizers.

Comments

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

One possible definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again, and expecting different results.

The UFCW keeps to trying to organize Wal-Mart on the basis of single stores (as in Jonquiere) or worse yet, tiny departments within a single store. Then Wal-Mart either closes store/department in question as punishment for a successful campaign, or points to the closing as a warning of what can happen if you let the evil unions in.

Yet the UFCW keeps up this organizing strategy, hoping that somewhere they'll end up with an exemplary success.

Conclusion: the UFCW leadership must be completely crackers.

Organizing Wal-Mart will take a strategic strike at multiple stores. It will not be a get-rich quick scheme; it will take years of preparation, some amount of clandestinity, and a cultural revolution of sorts in at least a section of the U.S. working class.

I don't exactly see the institutional leadership that took a hatchet to P-9 during the Hormel strike pulling that off, do you?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

No, I completely agree with you here. Locally, their was a lot of support work for the UFCW because of the grocery workers strike down south and the threatened local one here. Our co-op, though not UFCW affiliated, was donating to the strike fund and sponsoring some events with their "young workers" group. But it hurt a little. I wanted to sign the letter of support we sent with "Remember P-9!" or "Cram your Spam" but didn't.

It's just the sad state of recognizing you are being manipulated and knowing that it's the best option, short term, to go along with the manipulation that is so depressing. What a world.

I don't know if the UFCW is just doing this to say that it's "working hard" to organize Wal Mart ,or if they're working on a beyond hopeful "maybe these workers will be the martyrs we need" theory because they're so bereft of ideas.