Leaked internal Walmart documents published by Occupy Wall Street reveal a centralized, coordinated effort to deter workplace organizing.
Last night, Occupy Wall Street published secret internal documents from Walmart revealing the company’s highly coordinated efforts to chill workplace organizing among employees.
The files are rife with misleading claims about OUR Walmart, the association of current and former Walmart employees who have gained attention through recent protests demanding better wages, adequate hours and respect on the job. One document clearly instructs supervisors to immediately report “early warning signs” such as “speaking negatively about wages and benefits” to the company’s so-called Labor Relations Hotline.
These latest leaked memos illustrate a company-wide effort to prevent employees from associating with OUR Walmart. They lend further credence to the federal government’s case against the company for alleged unlawful retaliation against employees exercising their rights. As shown in our recent report, Walmart workers that have spoken out have been met with unlawful disciplinary action, including firings.
While one memo clearly states that threatening employees is illegal, the company doesn’t seem to discipline the managers and company executives that do. The National Labor Relations Board specifically charged that Walmart spokesperson David Tovar, when he appeared on national television in November 2012, illegally threatened associates with potential disciplinary action if they engaged in actions on Black Friday. Far from disciplining Tovar, Walmart promoted him to vice president of corporate communications.
The documents were published shortly after well-known hackers Anonymous announced their intention to target the retailer and can be viewed here:
How would they know if Union people showed up at someones home?
Rats, spies and moles. I’ve seen people pretend to be in favor of a union to obtain lists of who else is interested, who is meeting who and when, etc. and when they have enough info it’s off to management to sing like a bird.
The use of undercover agents to infiltrate anything that looks like a labor movement is widespread and growing. This is corporate practice and government as well — the government now has 40 different agencies conducting undercover operations, resulting in the farce of agents actually being at guns drawn with one another before discovering that they’re both working for (different) government agencies. It’s pretty appalling, really — it’s hard to build trust and cooperativity when you know any meeting of this sort is guaranteed to have infiltrators present. Not that this should stop anyone, it’s just something people need to be aware of.
“Walmart!” ..because the American Dream is only good for some!
Union’s are not the answer, take a look at education in this country. Teachers are doing things they should not be doing and the school districts cant fire them because they are part of a union.
That’s completely false.