Wal-Mart, $640 million in back wages, would never have happened if the employees were represented by a union

<–Martin Luther King died in the midst of supporting workers in a struggle to form a union

Writer, producer and director for over 3 decades explains the need for the Employee Free Choice Act–>

Had the employees of Wal-Mart been represented by a labor union, the company wouldn’t be forced to pay $640 million in back wages to employees who were cheated out of that money. It never would have happened. Period.– David Macaray

I’ve noticed that Wal-Mart has been pushing it’s advertisements every 10 minutes or so here in New York, could it be the Black Friday death at the local Valley Stream store? Or could it be the fact that unbeknown to many, Wal-Mart got caught cheating it’s employees out of $640 million US dollars and quietly settled without much ado.

Good olde’ Wal-Mart, it wouldn’t want any bad publicity , but our friend David Macaray has posed this note, that the very employees that Wal-Mart brain washes into their team mentality would have never gotten ripped off if they were represented by a union, so heres a clip from a David Macaray article at CounterPunch called “The Economics of Cheating: Wal-Mart Caught Stealing” from 1/9-11/09:

But there’s one thing we can be absolutely certain of. Had the employees of Wal-Mart been represented by a labor union, the company wouldn’t be forced to pay $640 million in back wages to employees who were cheated out of that money. It never would have happened. Period.

Things in the workplace fall through the cracks all the time; they get dismissed, put off, overlooked, rescheduled, piled up, mishandled, etc.. But in a union shop, no one—and that means no one—fails to get paid. You can ask union people to work harder, to work safer, to work quicker; you can ask them pretty much anything, and they’ll do it. Just don’t ask them to work for free.

Predictably, even though Wal-Mart clearly got caught with its hand in the cookie jar (the settlement was the result of 63 class-action lawsuits), the company has tried to put a happy face on it, claiming that the whole thing was rather “complicated,” and that the incidents in question occurred “a long time ago” and are in no way indicative what the company stands for today.

An employer trying to cut corners by cheating workers out of their pay isn’t really that “complicated” a concept to grasp. It’s pretty basic, actually. Moreover, it’s a form of what is commonly known as “theft.” And Wal-Mart did it knowingly and for the basest of reasons: they wanted to save money, and thought they could do it without getting caught. But they got caught. That’s why they’re paying $640 million.

Of course, the biggest shocker in all this is the fact that, despite Wal-Mart’s history of stinginess and deceit, the company’s employees are still independent. The world’s largest retailer, with over 1.4 million employees, remains immaculately non-union (at least in the U.S.). Given that labor unions, across-the-board, offer superior wages, benefits, and working conditions, that circumstance is absolutely astonishing. Over 4,000 stores in the U.S., and not one of them is unionized? That is mind-boggling.

David continues:

After all, look at the facts. If a company spends millions of dollars trying to keep the union out, and preaches to its employees that unions are bad—that they’re unnecessary, that they’re a hindrance, that a union wouldn’t help them—and then turns around and steals wages from the very people who are loyal to that company and who can barely make a living on the wages they’re already being paid, what does that tell us?

Corporations cheat all the time. They cheat the competition by engaging in illegal or unethical business practices, they cheat the public through false advertising and poor quality, and they cheat Uncle Sam by not paying their fair share of taxes. The public has become inured to it

But when a corporation steals from its own people—especially ones as fiercely loyal as Wal-Mart employees—doesn’t that cross the line? Doesn’t that totally blow their minds? What’s it going to take for these Wal-Marters to realize they’re being exploited?

I really don’t understand it at all, are they that fucking stupid? It amazes me how many of these employees in big box/corporate structered chains consider themselves associates, team members or partners.

Joe the Plumber: Hey, Joe by David Macaray

He’s a non-union craftsman using a respected union logo. In some places, that would still get you a well-deserved ass-kicking. Union credentials, especially in the skilled trades, are hard to obtain and really count for something. You hire a union plumber, electrician or mechanic, and you know that you’ve hired a competent worker, an expert.

Directly from the pages of CounterPunch:

McCain’s Latest Blunder

Hey, Joe

by DAVID MACARAY

By now, most people have heard of Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio plumber’s assistant whom John McCain chose to promote as a symbol of working class Americans who will be victimized by Barack Obama’s announced tax plan. Talk about a clumsy promotion. During the course of Wednesday’s presidential debate, “Joe the Plumber” was mentioned a staggering twenty-five times.

Leaving aside Wurzelbacher’s personal views on politics—which turn out to be a mixed bag of knee-jerk homilies, including calling the Iraq occupation a “good thing,” railing against people who “criticize” America, arguing that social security should be privatized (after the latest Wall Street debacle, wouldn’t we all be broke?), and declaring that no one should have to pay taxes—his work background needs to be examined.

After all, this guy was yanked out of obscurity by the Republican Party’s nominee for president, and held up to the country on national television as a representative of America’s hard-working plumbers. He’s Joe the Plumber, the poster boy for the country’s blue-collar skilled workers. It’s important we know who he is and what he does.

First of all, Joe the Plumber is not a plumber, at least not a licensed one. His job title is “plumber’s assistant.” He works for Newell’s Plumbing and Heating, a two-man outfit in Toledo, run out of a garage behind Al Newell’s house. The way McCain portrayed Joe the Plumber, he was this budding entrepreneur looking to buy his own company, only to have that dream in danger of being destroyed by Obama’s confiscatory tax plan.

In 2003, Joe the Plumber applied for a plumber’s apprentice program and took adult education classes to that end. He never finished the program and never received a license from the city of Toledo or Lucas County, Ohio. As a plumber’s assistant, he’s not required to have a license, so long as his boss has one (which Al Newell does). But Joe the Plumber is also not allowed to call himself a “plumber.” Joe the Plumber is a fiction.

Second, the reference to Newell’s business as being worth between “$250,000-$280,000,” is very likely another falsehood. Because Al Newell does little fix-it jobs (repairing toilets, leaky pipes, etc.), local plumbing companies in and around the Toledo area estimate his business to be worth a fraction of the amount mentioned by McCain’s people, who needed the higher figure as a basis for making their case.

Third, while no one can say for certain, it’s improbable that Joe the Plumber is in a position to buy Newell’s business, modest as it is. Not only did the single father with a 13-year old son earn about $40,000 last year, he has a $1,182 lien against him from the state of Ohio for failure to pay back taxes. Also, isn’t there that little matter of a major credit crunch going on with the banks?

Fourth, as has been noted by the media (and reluctantly acknowledged by Joe himself), Joe the Plumber’s biggest beef with Obama—that under his plan he’d have to pay additional taxes—is baseless. In truth, under the Obama tax plan he would actually have his taxes lowered. Ah . . . so he had it totally backwards. Sort of like the White House had it on WMD in Iraq. I guess that’s why they call them “low information” voters.

Fifth (and this is the one that’s freaking out union workers all over the country), despite the fact that Joe the Plumber is not a licensed plumber or a union member, and despite the fact that Al Newell does not run a union shop, on his MySpace page Joe the Plumber has the balls to use the union logo from Columbus Local 50 of the United Assn. of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry.

He’s a non-union craftsman using a respected union logo. In some places, that would still get you a well-deserved ass-kicking. Union credentials, especially in the skilled trades, are hard to obtain and really count for something. You hire a union plumber, electrician or mechanic, and you know that you’ve hired a competent worker, an expert.

Making this whole thing even more gruesome, not only is Joe the Plumber posing on his website as a union member, but Local 50 has already formally endorsed Barack Obama for president. Ouch.

So, whom do we blame here? Joe the Plumber for being a knuckle-head, or the McCain campaign for not properly vetting the guy? Maybe it’s a little of both.

Let’s not forget that McCain’s brain trust is the same team who didn’t know that Sarah Palin’s daughter had gotten knocked up, that her husband wanted to secede from the United States, and that Palin herself was mired in a messy political scandal. Compared to that stuff, I suppose Joe the Fake Plumber doesn’t look too bad.

David Macaray, a playwright and writer in Los Angeles, was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

David Macaray: Labor, management and the adversarial relationship

Cross-posted from CounterPunch with permission from the author

The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Labor, Management and the Adversarial Relationship

By DAVID MACARAY

There’s a well known anecdote involving Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. After Douglas had given a long, flowery speech during one of their public debates, Lincoln asked the audience a simple question: “How many legs does a horse have?” “Four,” the audience answered in unison. “And how many legs would a horse have if you called his tail a leg?” The audience answered in unison, “Five.”

“Wrong,” Lincoln said. “Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it true.”

Unfortunately, that same illogic applies to the startling trend we see in the field of labor relations. Apparently, some seminar creature stood on his hind legs 25 years ago and declared that the time had come for management and labor to recognize that their relationship was no longer “adversarial” in nature, that they were, in fact, both looking to achieve the same goal.

Since then, everyone’s been parroting that glib assertion, as if the mere repetition of it makes it true. Moreover, when one tries to suggest that the characterization is not only inaccurate, but, perhaps, part of a deliberate corporate effort to co-opt the labor movement, he’s treated—even by some union officials—as a militant or cynic or, worse, a defeatist.

This is not an attack on capitalism. It is no more an attempt to demonize or excoriate the “profit motive” than acknowledging the presence of fangs and venom is an attempt to demonize a rattlesnake. It’s simply pointing out the obvious, which is that management and labor clearly do not want the same thing. They want two distinctly different things. And it’s been that way for, well, a millennium or so.

If management and labor wanted the same thing, Exxon Mobile executives, in the face of record oil profits (more than $10 billion in a single quarter), would have instantly sought ways to reward its hourly workers. If both sides wanted the same thing, Exxon execs would have said, “Hey, we really need to share some of this obscene oil wealth we just lucked into.”

Another example: When the Big Three automakers were rolling in money, back in the 1960s, the UAW (United Auto Workers) still had to claw and scratch and occasionally go on strike to get the pay raises the membership deserved. As wildly profitable as they were, Ford, Chrysler and GM nonetheless tried their hardest to keep that revenue out of the hands of the hourly employees who helped earn it.

And another example: When a celebrity like Barbra Streisand receives, say, a lucrative recording bonus, does anyone really think she says, “Great, now I’ll be able to increase the pay of my gardener, housekeeper and that guy who walks my dog”? No. This is where Barb’s Malibu “liberalism” peters out, and her sense of economic self-interest kicks in. The more they make, the more they resent parting with it.

But these observations shouldn’t surprise anyone. Corny as it sounds, this is the way of the world: supply and demand, charging as much as the market will bear, and paying employees no more than required to keep them from quitting—these phenomena are de facto laws of economics. We’re all big boys and girls. We know how it works.

Still, the one thing that sticks in our craws and makes us want to collectively puke is when corporate America pretends it’s otherwise. When accountants and executives pretend we’re on the same “team,” when they preach that labor unions are obsolete and that workers need only trust their employers to look out for them.

By saying we want the same thing, they mean, of course, that we all want and need a stable and profitable environment. We need jobs . . . they need workers . . . and therein lies the magic of symbiosis. That’s why, when a new business enters a community, its public relations people are quick to remind everyone that the company is there to improve the economy by providing jobs.

But businesses do not view the workforce as a benefit; they never have and never will. Rather, they see labor for what it is . . . pure “overhead.” And in their relentless effort to reduce costs, American corporations are investing billions of dollars in the development of robotics. Demoralizing as it is, they want those remaining jobs that can’t be shipped overseas and done by Third World beggars to be done by ‘droids.

Now imagine the poor shmuck who just found out he’d lost his job to a Malaysian factory worker (or to a relative of R2-D2), who pleads with his bosses to recall what they’d told him in company seminars—that we all want the same thing and are all on the same team. Sorry, but this guy would be escorted out by security guards and drop-kicked over the front gate (ten years from now, it will be robots doing the escorting).

So, what’s all this have to do with labor unions? Can a union prevent jobs from being outsourced or mechanized? Probably not. And Congress certainly isn’t courageous or imaginative enough to pass laws that would punish companies for leaving American soil or replacing live people with machines. After all, this is the same craven group of politicians who sneaks themselves pay raises at 2:00 a.m., so as not to draw attention.

However, if 30% (instead of the current 12%) of the jobs that can’t be sent overseas or readily replaced with robots were unionized, we’d have an improved, more dynamic economy. We’d have a more equitable economy. We’d have the beginnings of a resurgent middle-class. And, as “noble adversaries,” we wouldn’t have to hear anymore of that management tripe about being on the same team.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and writer, was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net