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The union is undeterred. “Walmart is grasping at straws,” said UFCW Communications Director Jill Cashen. “There’s nothing in the law that gives an employer the right to silence workers and citizens.”

Protests and rallies outside Walmart stores around the country and other actions such as flash mobs have been orchestrated by groups including OUR Walmart, a coalition of thousands of current and former Walmart workers that wants to collectively push for better wages, benefits and working conditions.

There’s nothing in the law that gives an employer the right to silence workers and citizens

“Wal-Mart is in effect firing a shot across the bow of the UFCW, essentially saying ’Look, you can expect this and more unless you desist,”’ said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in labour issues.

Filing with the NLRB suggests that the protests have caught the attention of Wal-Mart, which has no union-represented workers in the United States.

OUR Walmart and another group, Making Change at Walmart, are affiliated with the UFCW, which represents more than 1 million workers including many at retailers that compete with Walmart. According to a filing with the labour Department, OUR Walmart was a subsidiary of the UFCW as of 2011.

Walmart worker and OUR Walmart member Mary Pat Tifft told Reuters that OUR Walmart is an independent organization that gets technical support from the union but that the UFCW has no stake or controlling interest in the group.

“The fact that Wal-Mart is responding in such a public way is itself both unusual and indicative that they truly don’t want to see this spread,” Shaiken said.