Workers confront abusive practices at Walmart

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by the valiant Palestinian people, who can only be ex­ pected to resist with whatever means are available.

Their development of a united leadership that aims at the creation of a democratic secular Palestine in the place the original Palestine, had a semblance of cred­ original pre-partition Palestine, where people of all ibility, at least in the eyes of those who believed that nationalities and religions could live together in peace, the forcible and colonial expulsion of Palestinians from is increasingly seen as the only viable alternative. This their historic homeland was legitimate. Today the “two perspective was originally championed by the Palestin­ state” solution is interpreted, at best, as essentially the ian Liberation Organization in 1973, and included the forced imposition on the Palestinian people of an eco­ nomically unviable series of disconnected apartheid- Coupled with the mobilization of the Arab masses in style “Bantustans,” bereft of even a semblance of nation­ the entire region for liberation from neo-colonial and hood and relegated to permanently dependent enclaves capitalist oppression, the struggle for Palestinian lib­ of demoralized and abandoned people. At worst, and eration is inseparable from the emergence of a socialist more and more emerging as Israeli’s prime objective, federation of the Middle East. The upsurge that swept is the scenario in which virtually all Palestinians are to the region during the Arab Spring offered a glimpse of be driven out of Gaza and the West Bank and dispersed a brighter future for the long oppressed Arab masses. forever—perhaps to poverty-stricken refugee camps Achieving that “music of the future”—the potential for massive social change—is today on the agenda of all se­ This “final Zionist solution” has long been recognized rious class-struggle fighters. n SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2012 5 During the course of the past two months, retail super-giant Walmart, notorious for its low wages, unfair la­ bor practices, and union-busting agen­ da, faced the first strikes in the United States since the company’s founding in 1962. In September, warehouse work­ ers contracted in Walmart’s supply chain walked off the job in Illinois and California, demanding safer working conditions and unpaid wages they were owed. By October, strikes and other ac­ tions protesting Walmart’s labor abuses had spread to a dozen states, including Arkansas, Washington, and Michigan.

The showdown began on Sept. 12 in Inland Empire, Calif., when warehouse workers struck over grueling working conditions and unpaid wages. Their strike culminated in a dramatic six-daylong, 50-mile march to City Hall in Los Angeles. The workers withstood gruel­ ing Southern California heat, as ther­ mometers reached 108 degrees during the march; but they proclaimed that the high temperatures paled in comparison to those they faced on the job.

These workers, mostly Latin@ im­ migrants, face appalling job conditions in Walmart’s distribution chain. Tem­ peratures can reach 120 degrees in the metal-box containers that low-wage contractors fill with products destined for retail stores and distribution cen­ ters. The warehouses themselves are open structures, with no walls to shield employees from elements such as dust, heat, and precipitation. The pallets of boxes, which are moved via carts, range up to 250 pounds and often collide with the shins of unsuspecting workers, re­ sulting in bruises and other injuries. In addition, employees are often forced to work through breaks and meals and can face harassment from management for even stopping to fill up a bottle of water during their shift. Many are also called into work early and are required to stay late without pay.

On Sept. 28, after being on strike for over two weeks, the California ware­ house employees returned to work, having secured key demands for safety improvement in the workplace. Their struggle garnered national and interna­ tional recognition, with workers from countries such as South Korea, Chile, and Bangladesh sending messages of support to the Walmart strikers.

Simultaneous with the walkouts in California, warehouse workers in El­ wood, Ill., employed by RoadLink, a third-party distribution company hired by Walmart, presented a petition to their management on Sept. 15 demand­ ing better conditions on the job. Im­ mediately, management responded by firing four leaders of the petition drive and threatened layoffs against others who dared to organize. This tipped off a strike that would last for three weeks, drawing in community support for the ... Israeli credibility (continued from page 12: “Credibility of Zionist Israel unravels”) across the region and beyond. workers’ struggle.

On Oct. 1, nearly 650 people amassed outside the distribution center in El­ wood, leading to a shutdown of opera­ tions that Walmart claims cost it $8 mil­ lion. Police donning riot gear loomed over the demonstration while the protesters showed solidarity with the warehouse workers. Seventeen people were arrested for civil disobedience, as they temporarily blocked a road.

By Oct. 6, after presenting a petition with 100,000 signatures to Walmart management in Chicago the previous day, the Elwood warehouse workers won their key demands and returned to work. Their victory included full com­ pensation for the duration of the strike, installation of ceiling fans in the ware­ house, shin guards and other protective gear provided by management, and a series of other protocols designed to create a safer work environment. Retail workers walk out The modest victories secured by Walmart supply workers in Illinois and California inspired others to take action. On Oct. 5, sixty retail workers went on strike at Walmart in Los Ange­ les. Within a week, the retail employee strike, organized by the UFCW-affiliat­ ed group, OUR Walmart, spread to over a dozen states and encompassed hun­ dreds of workers. As many as 200 retail employees held a protest at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., on Oct. 10, demanding that the multina­ tional corporation give attention to their grievances.

While most of the warehouse work­ ers in Walmart’s distribution chain are hired through temp agencies or thirdparty contractors, the retail associates, totaling 1.4 million workers, are em­ ployed directly by the company. Most of these employees barely scrape by on the wages paid by Walmart, with the average wage being less than $9/hour. Meanwhile, according to The Huffington right of return of the Palestinian diaspora. Post, the Walton family, who owns the Walmart chain, is worth $89.5 billion, or the equivalent of the poorest 41.5 percent (nearly 125 million people) of Americans combined.

As we go to press, retail employees are threatening to strike on Black Friday (Nov. 23), which is the biggest shop­ ping spree day of the year. According to OUR Walmart’s website, forrespect. org, the group’s members “are coming together from across the country and are refusing to work on Black Friday in protest of Walmart’s continuing re­ taliation against Associates who speak out for better pay, affordable health­ care, improved working conditions, fair schedules, more hours, and most of all, respect.”

Direct action: substitute for unions?

One factor that makes these strikes significant is that the workers do not have a labor union; many are organized in workers’ centers instead. The three main workers’ centers involved in the movement are Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ), affiliated with the union UE in Illinois; Warehouse Work­ ers United (WWU), part of the Change to Win Federation in California; and Or­ ganization United for Respect or OUR Walmart, which is associated with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW).

Workers’ centers play an important role among unorganized employees and the community. They promote labor advocacy, build ties with com­ munity groups, organize protests and “direct actions,” and perform important support roles for low-income working people. Many of these groups have ties or explicit support from various labor unions.

However, when it comes to organizing on the job there is no substitute for col­ lective action and unionization. Work­ ers’ centers can serve as an important preliminary to union organizing on the job, and some groups certainly do have this perspective—for in­ stance, the United Electrical Work­ ers (UE). However, the Walmart strikes have prompted some com­ mentators to argue that workers’ centers can replace the need for organizing a labor union in the workplace.

Barry Eidlin, a postdoctoral fel­ low at UW-Madison, wrote in Counterpunch: “The workers are not striking for a union contract. They are not even strictly speak­ ing trying to join a union. They are organizing with the help of groups like the Organization Unit­ ed for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), Warehouse Workers United, and Warehouse Workers for Justice. These groups are union funded, but organizationally au­ tonomous. They do not engage in collective bargaining. ... In com­ bining the risky and disruptive tactics of old with new organizational forms, the latest round of organizing at Walmart could be just the ticket.”

Workers’ centers certainly play an important role and are useful in build­ ing support for labor struggles; but ultimately, if working people expect to solidify the gains they’ve secured in the workplace, all their co-workers must be organized together to bargain and take action as a unified front.

A great example of the power that workers can exercise through unions, when they have a leadership oriented to class struggle and collective action, is the recent teachers’ strike in Chicago. When Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Democratic Party went on the offensive against Chicago’s teachers, cancelled previously negotiated salary increase, demanded changes to evaluations and pay structures, and fought for the im­ plementation of many other austerity measures aimed at crushing the union, the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) organized a militant strike to defend against the onslaught.

Through a broad campaign to build community support for the strike, with picket lines and rallies outside the schools and an effective educational campaign, highlighting that teachers were fighting for better schools, the CTU was able to beat back the offensive.

Class-struggle unionism must also elevate workplace struggles to the po­ litical level. The need for a labor party, based on workers and democratic unions ready to fight for the interests of the working class as a whole, is be­ coming more evident with each new struggle that erupts and each new con­ cession forced on the 99 percent by the capitalist class.

A labor party could unite the struggles of Chicago teachers, Walmart employ­ ees, and all other workers into a fight for a better livelihood, which is neces­ sarily a political struggle. n Tony Savino / Socialist Action

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Tony Savino / Socialist Action Wikileaks documents, published by Haiti Liberté newspaper and The Na­ tion magazine, partially reveal the con­ certed pressure of the Obama admin­ istration on parliament to keep wages low.

The 2009 law contained huge give­ aways to the assembly bloodsuckers. The law stipulated that prior to Oct. 1, 2012, all workers except those do­ ing piece work in the assembly indus­ try would receive a minimum wage of about $5 US (200 Haitian gourdes) a day—not per hour. Assembly work­ ers were to receive only about $3 a day (125 gourdes) until October 2011, when it increased to about $3.50 a day (150 gourdes). A 2011 AFL-CIO study concluded that the needs of a typical family of four was an incredible nine times the minimum wage for a 48-hour, six-day work week.

The new Oct. 1, 2012, minimum for assembly workers is about $7 US a day (300 gourdes). But it is being ignored by bosses, Yannick Ettienne, a union organizer for the leftist Batay Ouvriye (BO), told Socialist Action. The bosses imposed nearly impossible production quotas for 300 gourdes, although the law clearly states that workers must receive “at least” 300 gourdes for eight hours.

The Obama administration, the UN, and the U.S.-dominated World Bank