But my ret­i­cence to make such cri­tiques pub­lic has now been over­rid­den by oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions. For one thing, the campaign’s weak­ness­es are and were nev­er a secret. Wal­mart boss­es have been well aware of the campaign’s prob­lems and lack of sup­port among workers.

With­in the labor move­ment, we nev­er want to share pub­licly cri­tiques of our work that might be uti­lized by our class ene­mies — in this case, Wal­mart. I appre­ci­at­ed the ener­gy and excite­ment among the par­tic­i­pants in the OUR Wal­mart cam­paign and observers who saw it as a poten­tial renais­sance moment for labor. I did­n’t want to be per­ceived as an old crank piss­ing on a new parade that did­n’t fit my mea­sure of what work­er orga­niz­ing should be. And I have long thought the cam­paign was help­ing cre­ate a nation­al cli­mate for an increase in the min­i­mum wage for all work­ers. That cer­tain­ly was a good thing.

Sec­ond, the OUR Wal­mart mod­el is not unique. Oth­er cam­paigns based on it include the Fight for 15 cam­paign and the Restau­rant Oppor­tu­ni­ties Cen­ter (ROC). It is a mod­el that needs to be care­ful­ly exam­ined and chal­lenged if we are going to suc­cess­ful­ly orga­nize mass­es of workers.

I hope my crit­i­cisms can serve as con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion on the way for­ward. I have no desire to par­tic­i­pate in the game of crit­i­cism that snipes at those doing the work in the field; nor am I insti­tu­tion­al­ly involved in one-or-anoth­er of the points of view dis­cussed here. I’m sim­ply a long­time labor orga­niz­er who wants to see a cam­paign against Wal­mart win some­day — and I’m con­vinced that the cam­paign we’ve seen against Wal­mart thus far is not a path to victory.

OUR Wal­mart 2.0?

As I watched the ​“relaunch” of the OUR Wal­mart cam­paign in mid-Sep­tem­ber, I was remind­ed of those moments when a roman­tic rela­tion­ship comes to an end, but one or both of the par­ties, long­ing to keep the spark alive, talks about how they will remain friends — or at least get togeth­er for cof­fee every once in awhile. Often nei­ther per­son wants to con­front the fact that the rela­tion­ship is over. The rit­u­al is always laced with a lot of pro­found emo­tion and tears flow freely.

The same seemed true of the new OUR Wal­mart 2.0. At the relaunch, I count­ed 12 Wal­mart work­ers, most­ly Lati­na and African-Amer­i­can women, most of whom had been fired, present for the event. Sprin­kled between procla­ma­tions of sup­port from com­mu­ni­ty groups, reli­gious lead­ers, phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions and politi­cians were their state­ments of com­mit­ment. With­out fail, the work­ers broke into tears while speak­ing about their dis­charge and their hope for the cam­paign. I was close to tears as well, admir­ing the brav­ery behind the actions they had taken.

But I also felt we were watch­ing the bur­ial of a cam­paign — not a relaunch.

The orga­niz­ers of OUR Wal­mart felt com­pelled to relaunch the cam­paign because it had been dra­mat­i­cal­ly defund­ed by the Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW) union, which had bankrolled the ini­tia­tive since its begin­ning five years ago. The union’s new Pres­i­dent, Mark Per­rone, had decid­ed to focus more on region­al orga­niz­ing work and give up the direct orga­niz­ing of Wal­mart workers.

With­out the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar annu­al bud­get from UFCW, any true nation­al orga­niz­ing project around Wal­mart sim­ply isn’t pos­si­ble. At the re-launch, orga­niz­ers talked brave­ly about con­tin­u­ing the cam­paign. But the truth was, the cam­paign was already in decline — and had been strug­gling even with UFCW fund­ing. The campaign’s orga­niz­ers admit­ted that the lev­el of actu­al work­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in strikes had declined between Black Fri­day 2012 and Black Fri­day 2013.

There will prob­a­bly be lin­ger­ing attempts on future Black Fri­days to cre­ate a media mirage of activ­i­ty. But expe­ri­enced orga­niz­ers can count and so can Wal­mart man­agers. Face­book hits and likes do not make a real orga­niz­ing pro­gram. Real peo­ple risked-and at times lost-their jobs wag­ing the Wal­mart cam­paign. Work­er fir­ings and casu­al­ties might cre­ate good social media and a pub­lic cli­mate for improved wages, but they aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a pos­i­tive for orga­niz­ing more work­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly when there is no orga­ni­za­tion built that can have a rea­son­able chance of defend­ing those workers.

OUR Wal­mart was not the first attempt at tak­ing on the giant retail­er. Both SEIU and UFCW had fund­ed ini­tia­tives large­ly aimed at dam­ag­ing the brand name and pre­vent­ing Wal­mart from estab­lish­ing stores in key urban mar­kets, thus pro­tect­ing union­ized employ­ers and work­ers from the down­ward eco­nom­ic pres­sure of Walmart’s low cost mod­el. ACORN, with fund­ing from UFCW and SEIU, had orga­nized retail work­ers in Cen­tral Flori­da in 2005. The UFCW had orga­nized the Tire and Lube depart­ment at a Wal­mart store in Que­bec in 2008, which closed in response. The meat depart­ment of 10 work­ers in a Texas store was orga­nized and prompt­ly closed in retal­i­a­tion in 2000.

But OUR Wal­mart, launched in 2010, was the first nation­wide attempt to orga­nize the work­force. The new ini­tia­tive was launched with a goal of orga­niz­ing 1% of the work­force (10,000) work­ers in one year. After half a decade and mil­lions of dol­lars, this mark was nev­er met. Wal­mart knew that the cam­paign had no sub­stan­tial base among their employ­ees as they watched ​“strikes” in which a hand­ful of work­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in com­mu­ni­ty actions at stores employ­ing over 300 work­ers. OUR Wal­mart chief strate­gist Dan Schlade­man was quot­ed in the New York Times in Octo­ber 2012 say­ing his union rep­re­sent­ed 88 employ­ees that were on strike at 28 stores in 12 states — a small drop in the buck­et of Walmart’s 1.3 mil­lion employ­ees and 4,618 stores.

While the few work­ers would return to work suc­cess­ful­ly after this strike and oth­ers, the cam­paign was unable to defend them months lat­er when the com­pa­ny canned them for oth­er alleged vio­la­tions. These minor­i­ty actions were often glo­ri­fied as an exam­ple of the ​“mil­i­tant minor­i­ty” strat­e­gy employed by the fledg­ling UAW against the giant auto man­u­fac­tur­ers in the 1930s. While it is true that much of the suc­cess­ful orga­niz­ing of the auto indus­try was done by a mil­i­tant minor­i­ty, it was a mil­i­tant minor­i­ty of thou­sands of strate­gic work­ers posi­tioned to inflict real dam­age on the pro­duc­tion chain — not a hand­ful of sym­bol­ic ​“strik­ers.”

OUR Wal­mart was a pub­lic rela­tions irri­tant to the com­pa­ny, but it nev­er was a strate­gic chal­lenge to Walmart’s pow­er or its busi­ness mod­el. Per­haps the cam­paign con­tributed to recent increas­es in min­i­mum wages; per­haps it con­tributed to the grow­ing nation­al con­ver­sa­tion about increased inequal­i­ty; per­haps Walmart’s recent increase in its start­ing hourly wage to $10 was result of this cam­paign (though it may also have been the result of tight­en­ing labor mar­kets because oth­er employ­ers have raised their wages as well).

But none of these is ​“orga­niz­ing,” and none builds a pow­er­ful union.

Scale orga­niz­ing

To explain why this is, let’s return to the auto indus­try orga­niz­ing exam­ple. The orga­ni­za­tion of the auto indus­try was built on many years of tri­al and error and the pres­ence of com­mu­nists and social­ists and inde­pen­dents in the auto plants that had orga­nized and agi­tat­ed to build a base among work­ers for decades. No such expe­ri­ence or pres­ence exist­ed in Walmart.

Fur­ther, the UFCW, fac­ing its own mar­ket chal­lenges, was not a nation­al fight­ing machine of com­mit­ted mem­bers who were ready to take on Wal­mart. This is a seri­ous prob­lem because long-term ded­i­ca­tion to a cam­paign like OUR Wal­mart can­not sim­ply be dic­tat­ed from top union lead­er­ship on high. If the mem­bers whose union dues are bankrolling a cam­paign are not firm­ly com­mit­ted to it, even­tu­al­ly there will be elec­tion con­se­quences and new lead­ers will come to pow­er, and they will cut fund­ing and use it for more mod­est ventures.

Sec­ond­ly, the OUR Wal­mart cam­paign nev­er real­ly orga­nized around the company’s strate­gic weak points. OUR Wal­mart orga­nized brief mini-strikes most­ly among Wal­mart retail work­ers, but the company’s real strength as a com­pa­ny is its logis­tics mod­el. Edna Bonaci­ch and Jake B. Wil­son write about Walmart’s busi­ness mod­el in their essay ​“Hoist­ed By Its Own Petard” in New Labor Forum:

Giant retail­ers like Wal­mart are no longer sim­ply the out­lets for the goods pro­duced by oth­er com­pa­nies. Rather, they exer­cise increas­ing con­trol over sup­pli­ers, shap­ing every aspect of their pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion, includ­ing their pric­ing and labor prac­tices. Although their stores and sales are the most vis­i­ble aspect of the com­pa­ny to the pub­lic, there is a whole under­bel­ly of pro­cure­ment and logis­tics that rarely receives the same notice.

If we real­ly seek to build pow­er among Wal­mart work­ers, it will require the orga­ni­za­tion of their sup­ply chain.

Orga­ni­za­tion of retail work­ers at stores is not sus­tain­able with­out the company’s pro­pri­etary dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters (DCs). The Ware­house Work­ers Unit­ed effort in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (which was fold­ed in late 2012) evolved into orga­niz­ing Wal­mart third par­ty logis­tics (3PL) providers. These are inde­pen­dent com­pa­nies that giant big box retail­ers hire to han­dle a piece of their sup­ply chain man­age­ment. Wal­mart relies on 3PLs for gross car­go moves, but the order ful­fill­ment for par­tic­u­lar stores is done in over 200 Wal­mart-owned mil­lion square foot DCs, often locat­ed in semi-rur­al areas. These ware­hous­es do not pri­mar­i­ly use temps and Wal­mart direct­ly hires its own truck dri­vers for the trans­port of goods from the ware­hous­es to the stores. These work­ers are bet­ter com­pen­sat­ed than 3PL con­tract­ed temps, and they have ben­e­fits. Wal­mart knows where the strate­gic work­ers are in their oper­a­tion and they take care of them to try to mol­li­fy dis­con­tent. This is where pow­er lies in the Wal­mart model.

Pen­e­trat­ing this work­force takes time and patience, but these work­ers are not bought-off aris­to­crats. They make wages in the high teens but suf­fer from speed-up and forced over­time. They are con­stant­ly rac­ing against the clock to ful­fill pro­duc­tion quo­tas. They are not as quick to move as the temps, but with time and com­mit­ment by orga­niz­ers, they can be moti­vat­ed to take action. OUR Wal­mart nev­er made this a seri­ous priority.

Crawl before you walk, walk before you run

The UFCW present­ly bar­gains region­al­ly with nation­al super­mar­ket chains and retail phar­ma­cies. These chains are often very prof­itable and pow­er­ful, despite the pres­sure Wal­mart exerts upon them. There is no lack of hero­ism and grit among UFCW locals on a region­al basis — see the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia super­mar­ket strike of 2002 – 2003 as a prime exam­ple. But the bat­tle against nation­al chains must be orga­nized and fought nation­al­ly to avoid being whip­sawed by giant corporations.

Many region­al and eth­nic mar­kets remain non-union. UFCW Local 770 and 324 in Los Ange­les are engaged in a mul­ti-year cam­paign to orga­nize El Super gro­cery stores. This is a region­al chain in the South­west with 56 stores cater­ing to the Lati­no mar­ket and owned by the Chedraiu Group, the third largest retail­er in Mex­i­co. This bat­tle has gone on for three years and could ben­e­fit from the nation­al focus and atten­tion that Wal­mart got.

If we can’t win El Super, how do we win Wal­mart? Why not build up your orga­niz­ing mus­cle and build up the pas­sion and com­mit­ment of the mem­bers who see the strength of their union and can be apos­tles to Wal­mart workers?

Wal­mart and labor’s rebirth

The idea of res­ur­rect­ing the labor move­ment by orga­niz­ing Wal­mart res­onat­ed with many labor lead­ers and activists. With union den­si­ty in decline and Wal­mart on the rise, vic­to­ry at Wal­mart would sig­ni­fy rebirth. But we should ask some hard ques­tions about this assumption.

Do we have a base and pow­er with the orga­niz­ing tar­get? Are some of their facil­i­ties already union­ized? Are their logis­tics providers union­ized and the work­ers and their unions sup­port­ive, in the case of retail? Have we built a base among the work­ers in logis­tics? Does the union fund­ing the orga­niz­ing have a com­mit­ment among its mem­bers to the project? Have the mem­bers been will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in bar­gain-to-orga­nize strate­gies (BTO) that use their exist­ing bar­gain­ing strength to grow? Are the mem­bers com­mit­ted to an addi­tion­al assess­ment on their dues that funds such an ambi­tious cam­paign? Have they signed on to put in their own vol­un­teer time to orga­nize exter­nal­ly? Are there small­er ini­tia­tives where we can build up our pow­er to lat­er slay the big­ger drag­ons? Are there small­er fea­si­ble tar­gets that build our strength and expe­ri­ence to take on the big prizes like Wal­mart? OUR Wal­mart nev­er seemed to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er such questions.

The allure of the big orga­niz­ing prize is attrac­tive. I was involved in the attempt to orga­nize the Los Ange­les man­u­fac­tur­ing work­force, made up most­ly of immi­grant work­ers, in the 1990s under the ban­ner of the Los Ange­les Man­u­fac­tur­ing Action Project. LAMAP inspired unions to think big and dream. Ten unions par­tic­i­pat­ed in fund­ing strate­gic research in mul­ti­ple indus­tri­al sec­tors in the LA basin. In 1994, the first year of the project, there were one mil­lion man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers in LA Coun­ty. Over half of the work­force was immi­grant Latinos.

Unions drooled over the poten­tial for labor revi­tal­iza­tion, and while the project was ulti­mate­ly the vic­tim of AFL-CIO pol­i­tics and Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Team­sters (IBT) upheaval, there was not enough atten­tion giv­en to the issue of exist­ing base, union mem­ber com­mit­ment and strate­gic lever­age, and how all three could have been used to win the campaign.

The one moment that held real promise for the cam­paign was the deci­sion to go all in with a 10-week strike in 1995 by tor­tilla deliv­ery dri­vers at Grupo Mase­ca, the own­ers of Mis­sion Guer­rero tor­tillas. These work­ers had been pre­vi­ous­ly orga­nized by the IBT and were in their sec­ond con­tract cycle. The Team­sters asked LAMAP for help, and LAMAP’s Orga­niz­ing Direc­tor Joel Ochoa cor­rect­ly pre­dict­ed that there was no future for LAMAP if we didn’t win the Mis­sion Guer­rero strike.

The sub­se­quent vic­to­ry ensured the sup­port of the pow­er­ful IBT Local 63 and was the beach­head for real orga­niz­ing among the 1,000 pro­duc­tion work­ers at Mis­sion. The IBT inter­na­tion­al and Local 63 were all in for this project, but the tur­bu­lence at the top of the union that top­pled Team­sters for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union-backed reform pres­i­dent Ron Carey meant the end to fund­ing and sup­port for LAMAP and the demise of the project. The idea of orga­niz­ing immi­grant indus­tri­al work­ers would have been real­ized in the tor­tilla sec­tor, but only because of the exist­ing base and the com­mit­ment of the local union.

Win­ning cam­paigns are often char­ac­ter­ized by bold actions based in strate­gic strengths. The Jus­tice for Jan­i­tors cam­paign is an illus­tra­tive exam­ple. It com­bined an indus­tri­al strate­gic vision with com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the pub­lic in many urban mar­kets. But it was not ​“blank slate” orga­niz­ing. The union had thou­sands of mem­bers in the major metro mar­kets of New York, Chica­go and San Fran­cis­co. There were excel­lent labor agree­ments with many of the same com­pa­nies that were to be orga­nized in the non-union mar­kets. These three urban cen­ters were the well­springs of sup­port and lever­age for the program.

Oth­er exam­ples exist of using strate­gic strength to orga­nize new work­ers. In 2013, UNITE HERE com­plet­ed mul­ti­ple years of bar­gain­ing with the Hyatt Cor­po­ra­tion that result­ed in bar­gain­ing rights at for­mer­ly non-union prop­er­ties around the coun­try. The Unit­ed Autowork­ers are hav­ing suc­cess in the orga­ni­za­tion of auto parts work­ers in their tra­di­tion­al strong­holds in the Mid­west, but also in the new auto pro­duc­tion com­plex­es spring­ing up in the new­ly indus­tri­al­ized South. In April 2014, work­ers at a Tole­do auto parts com­pa­ny sup­ply­ing parts to Jeep struck for an eight-hour shift and won union recognition.

All these cam­paigns have in com­mon exist­ing assets of work­ers and con­tracts that can be deployed strate­gi­cal­ly in the ser­vice of new organizing.

Wal­mart is a big prize and because of that it is very allur­ing as a tar­get. Suc­cess at Wal­mart will come with a deep com­mit­ment on the part of the UFCW and its mem­bers to a win­ning pro­gram. That com­mit­ment will come through edu­ca­tion, inter­nal orga­ni­za­tion and the con­fi­dence from win­ning small­er fights against region­al and niche mar­kets. It is not too soon to start think­ing about a long-term salt­ing plan for Walmart’s ware­hous­es, as these are the pow­er nodes of the Wal­mart mod­el. Some of the mil­lions that have been spent on the exter­nal cam­paign need to be invest­ed in the fun­da­men­tals of long-term inter­nal orga­niz­ing in prepa­ra­tion for con­tract fights with exist­ing employ­ers so that there is readi­ness for exter­nal organizing.

Grow­ing the labor move­ment in strate­gic sec­tors is a long and plod­ding process. There are no short­cuts. PR bril­liance and social media slick­ness are no sub­sti­tutes for the patient and large-scale labo­ri­ous one-on-one approach.

I once dis­cussed the OUR Wal­mart bat­tle with a com­mit­ted cam­paign­er in the midst of the campaign’s hey­day. I sug­gest­ed that the Wal­mart owned dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters need­ed to be focused on. He respond­ed that these work­ers are ​“too slow to move, that it will take to long.” Well, that was over three years ago, and the cam­paign went on for anoth­er three years. It’s now over, and what do we have to show for it?