Andy Stern says that he wants the AFL-CIO to commit $25 million to organizing Wal-Mart. I don't know if he gets his wish (we'll know in February), but, supposing that he does, how should that money be spent? Over the last several years, unions have hired hundreds of young activists (mainly former student activists), but unions have used most of them as researchers or traditional organizers, not as salts. Unions can continue to hire such young activists from the middle strata but can use them as salts instead. Also, Black and Latino urban communities have very high rates of youth unemployment: "The jobless rates for young women (12.7 percent), young whites (10.1 percent), young blacks (26.6 percent), young Asians (8.6 percent), and young Hispanics or Latinos (12.7 percent) showed little or no change from a year earlier" (" Employment and Unemployment Among Youth Summary," <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/youth.nr0.htm>, August 18, 2004). Those are the communities that the US Army targets for recruitment -- what if organized labor sought them (especially Black youths, who are more unemployed and more in favor of unions than youths of other races) out, trained them as organizers, and salted Wal-Mart distribution centers, while establishing alliances with longshoremen, port truck drivers, railway workers, etc?
>>The point is to attack the supply chain strategically -- it
>>represents a much smaller number of workers than all Wal-Mart store
>>clerks, and yet controlling it gives you more leverage than
>>controlling all stores.
>
>Duh.
>
>When you've worked to the point of exhaustion on an organizing drive
>that took over 5 years and millions of dollars for your employer to
>defeat -by running to the great protection racket we call the State-
>let me know.
You would do a great service to other activists and organizers if you related what you learned from the defeat: what worked and what didn't, how much the union spent on what, etc.
If organized labor wants to organize Wal-Mart distribution centers as legal bargaining units and win the first contracts in a traditional fashion, it can't take five years. Wal-Mart's turnover rate is still something like 44% (down from 60-70% several years ago). If unions envision long-term campaigns that take longer than 2-3 years, they need to adopt a different goal than establishing legal bargaining units -- winning concessions from Wal-Mart without them. -- Yoshie
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