OUR Walmart, the union-funded activist group that targets the Arkansas-based retail chain, has split into two competing factions due to internal friction over the group’s direction and effectiveness. Both groups are claiming the name Our Walmart.
The nonprofit organization, whose name stands for Organization United for Respect at Walmart, was initially founded in 2011 by the United Food and Commercial Workers. UFCW also founded a related group called Making Change at Walmart. The union funded and ran both as part of a public relations campaign against Walmart, which is non-union. UFCW represents workers at many of Walmart’s rivals, such as Giant and Kroger’s.
On Thursday, activists that had been involved in the UFCW campaign announced that Our Walmart was “relaunching,” saying it was now a “truly financially independent organization.” When a reporter at the event asked whether the relaunched group was still the same organization that UFCW launched, the organizers said they were having technical difficulties and abruptly ended the press conference, having taken only three questions.
The union told Reuters earlier that day that it still ran OUR Walmart. “Recently, we had a group split from us,” said Barbara Getz, spokesman for the UFCW-affiliated version of OUR Walmart. She added that union was “unwavering” in its support for its version of the activist group.
At the re-launch event activists spoke at length for the need for economic justice for Walmart workers but made no reference to union organizing. The new group is backed by several liberal activist groups such as Demos, the Restaurant Opportunities Center, Color of Change and Jobs With Justice, among others.
An activist at the event who identified herself as Ann said the new group’s status, “allows us to use resources that we weren’t able to before. We had to walk a fine line sometimes. It also gives us more flexibility and freedom.”
At press time a spokesperson for the new group had not responded to a request for comment. UFCW had not responded either.
The split follows reports of internal friction at UFCW over the anti-Walmart campaign. Anthony Perrone, who succeeded Joe Hansen as UFCW president in 2014, was reportedly an internal critic, arguing the union had spent enormous amounts while having negligible success in recruiting Walmart associates. UFCW has not disclosed how much it has spent on the effort, but in August the pro-union publication In These Times put it at between $7 to 8 million annually.
In April, the Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported the that union had cut funding for both activist groups by 50 percent. In These Times reported in August that the cuts were 65 percent. In June UFCW fired Dan Schlademan and Andrea Dehlendorf, who had been directing the campaign. Schlademan and Dehlendorf both hosted the relaunch event.
Our Walmart has organized numerous protests at store locations across the country, including annual ones on the Friday following Thanksgiving, in the hopes of disrupting the stores’ holiday sales during one of the busiest shopping days of the year. However, protests have been notably lacking in actual Walmart employees, with UFCW often bussing in labor union members and other activists from elsewhere to fill out the crowds.
Prior to last year’s post Thanksgiving protest, OUR Walmart’s mid-Atlantic branch promised to have 50 Walmart employees from Washington DC metropolitan area stores taking part in an event in front of a downtown DC store. Afterwards, organizers said that only one worker from that store took part in the event along with 30 from other metro area stores. There are 22 Walmarts in a 25-mile radius of the downtown store, meaning that the protest attracted at most about one and a half employees per store in the region, assuming OUR Walmart’s claims were accurate.
Part of the problem for UFCW was a 2013 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency. The board ruled that OUR Walmart was a subsidiary of the union and therefore could not protest the store for more than 60 days without ceasing the events and launching an official bid to organize the retailer’s workers. OUR Walmart instead continued the protests under the guise of being a workers’ benefit group. Its announcements stated that it was not trying to organize and the NLRB said that was sufficient to allow the protests to continue. However, this apparently limited UFCW’s ability to capitalize on the nonprofit’s efforts.
At the relaunch event, activists claimed to have won victories on behalf of workers, taking credit for the retailer’s announcement last year that it would raise workers’ wages to a minimum of $10 an hour by next year, a claim the retailer disputes.
Walmart spokesman Brian Nick said they had no comment on the apparent split, saying they had no knowledge of the internal politics at work. He dismissed the broader anti-Walmart effort, saying the vast majority of the company’s employees were not onboard with it.
“While the unions and their allies spend time and union dues attacking a company that employs 1.4 million Americans, we’ll continue to focus on our commitment to spend a $1 billion this year alone to not only raise wages but provide additional skills-based training and other opportunities to build great careers,” Nick said.
