On the eve of Black Friday, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is organizing hundreds of anti-Walmart protests across the country. The UFCW is a member of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), whose president, Richard Trumka, emailed supporters on Monday to rally participation in the protests. Trumka wrote of Walmart, “While the retailer rakes in $16 billion a year in profits, it pays low wages and many of its workers have to rely on public programs, like food stamps, to survive.”
It’s a sad story, but it isn’t true.
Research shows that large chains and establishments, such as Walmart, Whole Foods and Costco, are paying higher wages than local mom-and-pop retail stores. Average wages for non-managers at retail stores with 100-499 workers are $16.34 an hour, compared to $13.61 an hour at stores with fewer than 10 employees. Large retail stores also give more opportunities for promotion to positions with higher pay and managerial experience.
That research was conducted by Brianna Cardiff-Hicks and Kathryn Shaw of Stanford University, as well as Francine Lafontaine of the University of Michigan. Their calculations account for differences that may affect average wages, such as worker experience and gender. To be fair, their data was unable to include fringe benefits, such as health insurance. However, it’s more likely that a growing chain store would offer more fringe benefits than a struggling mom-and-pop store, so this implies that the numbers understate worker compensation at stores like Walmart.
If unions don’t officially represent Walmart workers, then why are they organizing protests? Union leaders are hoping to build public support against Walmart until the retailer caves to demands and acquiesces to the unionization of its employees. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the private sector unionization rate has been cut by more than half since 1983, from 16.8 percent to 6.7 percent, and unions are looking for ways to stop the bleeding.
Manufacturing used to be the lifeblood of unions, but there are five million fewer jobs in manufacturing today than in 2000 — a 30 percent decline. Even among the remaining jobs, the unionization rate has fallen from 14.9 percent in 2000 to 10.1 percent in 2013. In retail, employment levels are roughly the same today as in 2000, but retail unionization rates have fallen from 6.4 percent in 2003 to 4.6 percent in 2013.
High turnover in the retail industry would make it cash cow for unions. Initiation fees and strike fees are collected when an employee starts a unionized job. Especially in non-right to work states — where an employer can mandate union membership as a condition of employment — unions could collect millions from people in part-time jobs from initiation and strike fees alone, in addition to membership dues deducted from paychecks.
By targeting Walmart, unions hope to add hundreds of thousands of dues-paying members who cannot easily quit their union — there are no such gains to be made by targeting lower-paying small businesses. That’s why you’ll see those UFCW-organized protestors at Walmart this weekend, and not at stores that pay their workers less.
