Tag Archives: coalitions

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Wal-Mart Watch: SEIU’s Fight for the Future Blog, maintained by President Andy Stern, has engaged an admirable and urgent project: an extended discussion across the web and beyond on the challenge Wal-Mart and Wal-Martization pose to good jobs, and the strategies and coalitions neccesary to fight them. Over spring break, I had the pleasure of a very-late-night multi-hour discussion about what such a strategy would look like with some amazing organizers from different parts of the country. I’m hoping to contribute something soon; should you, fair reader, wish to do so, e-mail your thoughts, or a link to them, to blog@seiu.org. Meanwhile, some highlights from Andy’s posts this week:

Monday:

Some people think we should follow the “Wal-Mart only” strategy — Wal-Mart is making the global business rules, and so changing their business practices changes everything. But others say we have to tackle more than just Wal-Mart. Why?

1) Wal-Mart is the trendsetter, affecting how other corporations do business. Tomorrow, we’re going to hear from a worker about how Intel’s been following in Wal-Mart’s footsteps. So we need to start telling and spotlighting the wrong behavior of more companies and send a message we won’t take Wal-Mart as an excuse anymore.

2) The “Wal-Mart plus” strategy proposal says that Wal-Mart is the toughest nut to crack. Campaigns need victories along the way — victories that don’t just stop a company but actually change its and others’ behavior. If we only take on Wal-Mart, it’s hard to see how we’ll sustain our enthusiasm to keep going.

The “Wal-Mart only” strategy says that the world’s largest corporation is making the global business rules, and changing their business practices changes everything.

Tuesday:

Wal-Mart, Target, and other corporations now use subcontractors for janitorial services. And just like global outsourcing, they squeeze these subcontractors to bid lower and lower to get the subcontracted work. To stay competitive, honest subcontractors are often forced to drop their wages and benefits to poverty levels. Dishonest contractors don?t let minimum wage or overtime law stand in the way. When these subcontractors get caught, Wal-Mart and other rogue corporations pass the buck…

Our first strategy in this campaign is challenging corporations to adopt the Justice at Work Principles for responsible subcontracting. By signing the principles, companies agree that they and their subcontractors will provide decent wages, health and retirement coverage, and working conditions. They also pledge to respect workers? right to form unions to win a voice on the job. To ensure these commitments are carried out, companies will give independent organizations the authority to interview workers and audit payroll records.
Wednesday:

With a little self-organizing, if we figure it out right, we could help folks crank up the activism as mutual fund shareholders, big time. We can challenge Wall Street right at the heart of their business ? supposedly working in the interest of shareholders. We can force the giant banks and financial service companies that run mutual funds to take a long-term view of the companies they invest in, to reward companies that treat workers well, and to punish those, like Wal-Mart, that cut wages and benefits to the bone.

Today:

…why don’t more workers fight back in court? Partly because workers fear that filing a lawsuit could get them fired. But the other problem — the one we can help solve right now — is that it takes a lot of work to find a lawyer who will take these kinds of cases.

So, SEIU wants to help. Working with law firms and legal centers, we’ll develop a state-by-state strategy for helping workers get in touch with lawyers when their rights have been violated. What do you think about a nationwide Wal-Mart Justice at Work legal network of volunteer and paid lawyers…

Lawsuits aren’t a long-term solution. Ultimately, workers need a direct voice on the job through a union so they can defend themselves every day. But as a first step on that road, we can help workers use the legal system to ensure that corporations treat them with at least the minimal respect they are due under the law.

Also, check-out previous editions of the LWB Wal-Mart Watch here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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This afternoon, a coalition of fifteen Yale undergraduate groups came together to call on Yale to make a fair-share contribution to New Haven and to discuss how such a policy would affect them as members of their groups – the Black Student Alliance at Yale, the Muslim Student Association, MEChA, Social Justice Network, Jews for Justice, Women’s Center Political Action Committee, Peace by Peace, Early Childhood Educators, Yale Coalition for Peace, Yale Coalition to End the Death Penalty, Climate Campaign, Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, the Student Legal Action Movement, the Progressive Party, and the Undergraduate Organizing Committee – and as members of the Yale and New Haven communities. It was a powerful event and a strong kick-off for a coalition that will keep organizing and mobilizing for real partnership between this city and this University.

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The ACLU of Pennsylvania has successfully torpedoed the over forty ammendments Rep. Jerry Birmelin filed on House Bill 345, a bill to ease the process of adoption of children with special needs. All of Birmelin’s amendments were devoted to disenfranchising queer couples and single people from parenting; last Monday he withdrew all of them. How did the ACLU do it? By building a progressive alliance, the Value All Families Coalition, whose member groups include AFSCME and SEIU locals, the Clergy Leadership Network, PA churches, the Support Center for Child Advocates, Citizens for Consumer Justice, the National Association of Social Workers, Freedom to Marry, the Human Rights Campaign,the Support Center for Child Advocates, and the Log Cabin Republicans – along with several dozens more. It’s a model others should follow.

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Earlier this week I got the chance to hear League of Conservation Voters President Deb Callahan present an impressively self-aware critique of the operation of LCV and other American environmentalist groups, in which she compared the 11 million Americans in environmental groups to the 13 million in unions and asked why the latter had representation that was so much more effective than the former. Her answer, in large part, was that the environmental movement needs to shift its resources from soft money campaigning into grassroots organizing. Amen to that. During the question period, I asked Callahan why a movement fighting injustices which disproportionately target people of color has membership and leadership that’s so overwhelmingly white. Her answer was part rationalization, part apology, and part putting forth the beginnings of a program to build a movement based around the people who, she argued, should be its real base: Harlem families whose kids all have athsma rather than wealthy liberals in San Francisco.

One step she mentioned was the funding and organizing LCV has invested in the past week in Barack Obama, the black state senator and former community organizer running in the heated Democratic Senate primary this Tuesday. Obama, who’s also been endorsed by SEIU, UNITE, and Jesse Jackson Jr., is a real progressive who’s pulled ahead of more conservative millionaires and demonstrated a strong chance of becoming the only African-American in the Senate come November. Check out his website here.

As Harold Meyerson argued Friday in the Washington Post, electing this man, according to all signs, would be a major victory not only for Illinois but for a revitalized Democratic party and America.

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Mother Jones has an excellent piece on Grover Norquist, the Washington’s premier deregulatory guru. It’s further demonstration that while many in the Democratic party have forgotten how to build broad-based political coalitions which stake out strong stances on difficult issues, the Republicans certainly haven’t.