Organized Crime

Beginning in the 1990s it became an article of faith among countless college students (and many others) that Walmart was an evil institution that no decent person should ever do business with. Guest speakers appeared on campuses all throughout America to denounce Walmart’s alleged oppression of the poor and the working class. It was all a part of a union-organized smear campaign directed mainly at non-union Walmart employees. It is part of an attempt to either pressure Walmart to unionize or to destroy it as a low-priced competitor to higher priced, unionized stores.

The seemingly never-ending propaganda campaign against Walmart is what is known as a “corporate campaign” in the academic literature on labor unions. There are very few strikes by unions these days, since striking workers can so easily be replaced by replacement workers. So-called “corporate campaigning” has taken the place of strikes as labor unions’ weapon of choice.

There are several rationales for corporate campaigns. For one, they are a way of unionizing a workforce without involving the workers, who may not wish to be unionized. The idea is to use every means possible to impose costs on a company and scare away its customers with negative propaganda, portraying the company as some kind of social outlaw. One tactic is to issue thousands of written complaints about the company to regulators, who must then investigate the complaints, forcing the company to spend huge sums on legal fees. The union will also issue press releases about how many complaints have been made about the company, never mentioning that it—the union—was the source of the contrived complaints! This can cost a company a large portion of its customers if the publicity is bad enough. In the 1990s a corporate campaign against another non-union seller of groceries, Food Lion, caused the grocery chain to shut down dozens of stores. The stores were subsequently reopened after customers discovered that the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union’s (UFCW) slanders against Food Lion were untrue.

In the state of Maryland the demonization of Walmart by the UFCW gave the state legislature enough “cover” to pass a law forcing Walmart—but no other corporation operating in the state—to increase the amount of health insurance that it provides for its employees.

The ultimate goal of corporate campaigns, such as the one waged against Walmart, is to get the company to sign a union contract without ever involving the employees, a process that labor union scholars call “pushbutton unionism.”

The UFCW has been at the forefront of the corporate campaign against Walmart because Walmart’s grocery prices are significantly lower than all of the unionized grocery stores. The “problem” facing the UFCW is that as more and more customers shop at Walmart for groceries, employment in the grocery industry will also shift from the higher-priced, unionized grocery chains to non-union Walmart, causing the union a loss of membership and, most importantly, a decline in the union dues revenues that are necessary to pay the exorbitant salaries and perks of the union bosses.