Walmart, John Tate, and their anti-union America
Lichtenstein, Nelson
Walmart, John Tate, and their anti-union America - 2012.
13
Hostility to trade unionism infused the corporate culture of Walmart, whose revolutionary transformation of the retail industry in the United States made it, for a time, the nation’s largest and one of its most dynamic companies. A product of the rural South, Walmart required an ideologically sophisticated strategy to stymie union organizing when it began to open its stores in metropolitan America. Employment lawyer John Tate proved his worth in this regard. The anti-union strategist’s ideas had been shaped by his clients, some of the most intransigent anti-union employers of the textile South and the small-town Midwest. In the early 1970s, Tate codified for Walmart and other service-sector firms the key elements of a successful union avoidance strategy: construct a business ethos that mimics the sense of community found in monoracial, small-town America; deploy a pension scheme that rewards loyalty for a core of longtime employees; and use the “free speech” rights of employers to paint unions as corrupt and self-serving institutions incapable of improving the wages or working conditions of employees. He proved to be successful: there are no unions at any of the 5,000 plus Walmart stores in the United States and Canada.
Walmart, John Tate, and their anti-union America - 2012.
13
Hostility to trade unionism infused the corporate culture of Walmart, whose revolutionary transformation of the retail industry in the United States made it, for a time, the nation’s largest and one of its most dynamic companies. A product of the rural South, Walmart required an ideologically sophisticated strategy to stymie union organizing when it began to open its stores in metropolitan America. Employment lawyer John Tate proved his worth in this regard. The anti-union strategist’s ideas had been shaped by his clients, some of the most intransigent anti-union employers of the textile South and the small-town Midwest. In the early 1970s, Tate codified for Walmart and other service-sector firms the key elements of a successful union avoidance strategy: construct a business ethos that mimics the sense of community found in monoracial, small-town America; deploy a pension scheme that rewards loyalty for a core of longtime employees; and use the “free speech” rights of employers to paint unions as corrupt and self-serving institutions incapable of improving the wages or working conditions of employees. He proved to be successful: there are no unions at any of the 5,000 plus Walmart stores in the United States and Canada.
Réseaux sociaux