Our Walmart, one of the country’s most promising alternative labor groups, has split from its union backer. And there’s a fight brewing over who controls the movement.
"Clean Walmart" user / Flickr / Via flic.kr
Our Walmart, a labor group campaigning to improve pay and working conditions at the retail giant, has split from its union backer, with its leaders saying they will work instead with a coalition of alternative labor groups operating outside of the traditional union movement.
It is those alt-labor groups, Our Walmart's leaders said Thursday, "who are really the leaders out in the world of making deep, transformational social and economic change in this country."
And in a dramatic twist, the original backer of Our Walmart, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, released its own strategic plan for the campaign Thursday, insisting that it remains the true driver of Our Walmart, even as the group's original board and leadership said otherwise.
While the saga may seem like another episode of labor movement infighting, it also reflects the new dynamics of organizing workers in a world where legacy unions are in sharp decline: a powerful but shrinking union is losing control of the innovative, online-focused workers' group it incubated. The independent Our Walmart is now aligning itself firmly with other alt-labor organizations, and promising to rally workers with unconventional organizing techniques made possible by social media.
But with two separate groups claiming to be the true leaders of the movement, workers and onlookers will be left asking: Whose Walmart is Our Walmart?
J Pat Carter / AP
Jess Levin, a UFCW spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News the union-backed effort remains legitimate and strong. "Together with Walmart workers, our campaign is the Our Walmart campaign. We're committed to changing Walmart for the better," she said. As for the independent group? "We're not sure what they are doing."
The union's message was contradicted by Our Walmart's long-running board members and organizers at a relaunch event for the organization in Manhattan on Thursday. They said the group was always explicitly founded to be independent of the union — and will now remain so, drawing on a more diverse funding model and set of partners.
For months, Our Walmart had been in a quiet limbo after the union allegedly cut funding for the campaign (the union denies this) and fired two senior organizers it employed to run the organization. The majority of the executive board followed them out the door, and at Thursday's event, they said the independent organization will be funded primarily by worker contributions and grants.
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