For years, the world’s retail behe­moth, Wal­mart, has seemed imper­vi­ous to orga­niz­ing attempts. Unions, specif­i­cal­ly the Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW), have attempt­ed to orga­nize retail work­ers at the com­pa­ny — long known for both its low prices and pover­ty wages — but the company’s aggres­sive union-bust­ing has always won the day.

If, over the next several months, Walmart does not systematically retaliate against these striking workers, it will show other workers that they can stick their necks out. It will embolden other workers to do the same thing.

So it comes as a sur­prise to many to hear, seem­ing­ly out of the blue, that work­ers in both the retail and dis­tri­b­u­tion arms of the com­pa­ny have walked off the job in Illi­nois, Mary­land, Dal­las, Cal­i­for­nia, and else­where over the last month. Strik­ing ware­house work­ers have orga­nized with Ware­house Work­ers Unit­ed in Cal­i­for­nia and Ware­house Work­ers for Jus­tice in Illi­nois; retail work­ers around the coun­try with OUR Wal­mart—all orga­ni­za­tions affil­i­at­ed with unions, but which aren’t unions themselves.

In These Times asked labor his­to­ri­an Nel­son Licht­en­stein to shed some light on the recent wave of Wal­mart work­er unrest. Licht­en­stein, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for the Study of Work, Labor and Democ­ra­cy and a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara, has long observed both Walmart’s busi­ness prac­tices and work­ers’ attempts to orga­nize there. He is the author of The Retail Rev­o­lu­tion: How Wal­mart Cre­at­ed a Brave New World of Business.

There have been past attempts by unions to orga­nize Wal­mart work­ers that haven’t gained much trac­tion. What has changed?

Ten years ago, the UFCW went the ortho­dox orga­niz­ing route. There were work­ers who signed union cards, includ­ing majori­ties in some places. But Wal­mart was extreme­ly good at using exist­ing labor law, which is extreme­ly pro-cor­po­rate, to squash it. The UFCW real­ized that that wasn’t going to work. So OUR Wal­mart [Orga­ni­za­tion Unit­ed for Respect at Wal­mart] is a kind of return to labor for­ma­tions of the 1930s. It’s an asso­ci­a­tion – they aren’t look­ing for legal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, they don’t claim to rep­re­sent every­one. They’re a minor­i­ty that is will­ing to stick their necks out.

It’s a demon­stra­tion strike. For every one work­er who actu­al­ly goes out­side and holds a pick­et sign, you can be sure that 25 work­ers inside the store or in oth­er stores feel the same way but are afraid to be pub­licly identified.

What’s remark­able is that this cur­rent of pissed-off work­ers has always exist­ed. But in the past, you could be cer­tain that when a work­er, or even an assis­tant man­ag­er, didn’t tow the Wal­mart line, they would be fired. Not imme­di­ate­ly, to stay on the right side of labor law, but with­in the year, you could be cer­tain they’d be gone.

If, over the next sev­er­al months, Wal­mart does not sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly retal­i­ate against these strik­ing work­ers, it will show oth­er work­ers that they can stick their necks out. It will embold­en oth­er work­ers to do the same thing. These actions could real­ly be the tip of the iceberg.

Both the retail and the ware­house work­ers engaged in unfair labor prac­tice strikes—a fair­ly risky tac­tic with a high chance of failure.

Well, what’s fail­ure and what’s suc­cess? If the strikes are very vis­i­ble, and work­ers iden­ti­fy them­selves on the pick­et line out­side of Wal­mart, and those work­ers keep their jobs for, say, a year after­wards, and there’s no vis­i­ble retal­i­a­tion, that’s success.

Now, sure­ly the UFCW knows that they can’t just aban­don these work­ers, and let them be picked off one by one by man­age­ment over the next year. They need to be right there on top of Wal­mart, so if peo­ple have their hours cut or are put on a lousy shift, they can come back and say, ​“You are retal­i­at­ing against con­cert­ed pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty. These work­ers are pro­tect­ed by labor law — you can’t retal­i­ate against them.”

These retail strikes are hap­pen­ing imme­di­ate­ly after Wal­mart ware­house work­ers in Elwood, Ill., announced a big vic­to­ry from their strike: 30 work­ers who walked off the job in Sep­tem­ber returned to work on Sat­ur­day with full back pay. How impor­tant is it that these efforts are focus­ing on Walmart’s dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem and retail stores simultaneously?

The com­pet­i­tive advan­tage of Wal­mart is their superb dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. There are lay­ers of sub­con­trac­tors, but it’s all one sys­tem. It’s a mass sweat­shop, where pres­sure is put through sub­con­trac­tors to squeeze labor. The indus­try is the sup­ply chain, regard­less of who is the tech­ni­cal employer.

One of the com­pet­i­tive advan­tages of Wal­mart is their abil­i­ty to deploy labor in ways that they refer to as ​“flex­i­ble.” Come in tonight, work three hours tomor­row, etc. For the work­ers, this is chaos. So a seri­ous orga­niz­ing suc­cess would be if, in the next six months, work­ers get more pre­dictable shifts, or if store man­agers think twice before mov­ing some­one around from shift to shift.

When work­ers vot­ed in a union in Que­bec and they were actu­al­ly forced to nego­ti­ate with a union, the union did not ask for wage or ben­e­fits increas­es. They sim­ply want­ed to give work­ers pre­dictable shifts — to make it pos­si­ble for work­ers to have lives. Instead of doing this, Wal­mart shut the store down. Wal­mart was say­ing, ​“We can­not oper­ate when work­ers are sure of a reg­u­lar shift.”

In an inter­view for Salon on the strikes, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Dori­an War­ren said that the old attempts to orga­nize the com­pa­ny ​“had been so pre­dictable from Walmart’s point of view,” but that these new forms of orga­niz­ing to dis­rupt the dis­tri­b­u­tion chain are a game-chang­er. Do you agree?

I do. I think if Wal­mart doesn’t know that these strikes will reap­pear every so often, that changes things. They have to ask them­selves, ​“Are we going to just have anoth­er press release, or are we actu­al­ly going to change work­ing con­di­tions?” And as I said, if these work­ers can get away with no retal­i­a­tion, that will embold­en oth­er work­ers in the future. Lots of labor his­to­ry takes place in the absence of a union, with infor­mal, sub­tle pres­sures. And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing here.

Wal­mart has empha­sized, often aggres­sive­ly, in some of its PR cor­re­spon­dence that it doesn’t feel threat­ened by these actions, that this is just busi­ness as usu­al between them and the UFCW. Do you think the com­pa­ny is feel­ing the heat?

For many years, there has been a kind of rhetor­i­cal war between lib­er­als and Wal­mart about whether the company’s record on a num­ber of issues, from sweat­shops in Chi­na to the envi­ron­ment. But now, you’ve got actu­al work­ers out on strike.

This adds a lot of legit­i­ma­cy of the cri­tique of Wal­mart. You need actu­al Wal­mart work­ers, with names and faces, to argue the case against the com­pa­ny. Because that puts the focus right where it should be: on the work­ers and their lived conditions.

Lib­er­als have always lev­eled some­what abstract cri­tiques of Wal­mart; this strike can make those cri­tiques more concrete.

Yes. The strike takes things beyond the lib­er­al cri­tique of Wal­mart — which is a fine cri­tique, but it’s not going to solve these prob­lems. Oth­er issues like the envi­ron­ment are impor­tant, but the core issue is, what is the char­ac­ter of work at Wal­mart? Work­ers aren’t on the pick­et line because of Walmart’s envi­ron­men­tal record, or because of sweat­shops in Chi­na, both of which are hor­ri­ble. They’re try­ing to trans­form their dai­ly exis­tence. And that’s the core of what the labor move­ment does.