As Strike Looms, Walmart Launches Pre-Black Friday Deals Online

All eyes are on Walmart this week as various Black Friday issues loom for the world’s largest retailer. From the retail side, Walmart’s incursion into Thanksgiving evening for Black Friday sales will be scrutinized, and its guaranteed availability of selected doorbusters mark a new spin on Black Friday specials.

But Walmart’s repositioning of Black Friday solidly into Thanksgiving night has also become a galvanizing issue for a variety of groups. They include consumers who want to preserve holiday tradition, workers forced to swap family plans for Thanksgiving work hours, and the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union that’s tapping into controversial Black Friday work hours as a rallying cry for a nationwide walk-off in protest of wages, hours, benefits and overall working conditions for Walmart associates.

Walmart took the threat of a Black Friday strike at Walmart locations around the country seriously enough to file its own complaint last week with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), seeking an injunction to prevent workers from striking at the end of this week. By statute, the agency must make a charge of illegal picketing a priority over all other cases, and the agency has an internal goal of processing those charges within 72 hours, Nancy Cleeland, NLRB director of public affairs, told Consumer Electronics Daily. This case, however, is “factually complex” and presents “some unique legal issues” that could require more time, she said. The NLRB sent staff to Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., Monday, “taking affidavits,” and is in touch with the UFCW for its response, Cleeland said.

In its charge, Walmart alleges that UFCW is orchestrating picketing at Walmart stores in order to seek recognition as a union, Cleeland said. Under applicable laws, such “recognitional picketing” can’t go on longer than 30 days, she noted. “The key questions in this investigation are: 1) was there picketing, and if so, 2) was it done with the intent to gain recognition for a union?” Cleeland said. She said the NLRB “will look at the relationship” between UFCW and OUR Walmart (The Organization United for Respect at Walmart), which is urging Walmart employees to refuse to work on Black Friday.

Walmart alleges in its charge that in the last six months the UFCW, OUR Walmart and other “affiliated organizations” violated Section 8(b)(7)(C)of the National Labor Relations Act by “picketing and threatening to picket” Walmart headquarters and numerous Walmart stores and other facilities in various states. Those groups also staged “mass demonstrations,” intimidating Walmart customers and employees, Walmart said. The purpose of those actions was to force Walmart “to recognize and/or bargain with the Union as the representative of Walmart employees, or forcing or requiring Walmart employees to accept or select the UFCW as their collective bargaining representative, without being certified as such,” the retailer said. Such “picketing and threats to picket, including the aforementioned unprotected activities, have been conducted without a representation petition being filed within a reasonable period of time from the commencement of such picketing, threats, and misconduct,” Walmart said.

Cleeland said there are currently about 20 charges filed against Walmart stores by individual employees and OUR Walmart alleging “a number of illegal acts, including retaliation for protected activity,” she said. No complaints have been issued on these yet, she said.

For its part, OUR Walmart’s website is urging a strike by workers Friday “in protest of Walmart’s continuing retaliation against Associates who speak out for better pay, affordable healthcare, improved working conditions, fair schedules, more hours, and most of all, respect.” Further, the pledge says, “Walmart has intimidated, threatened, and otherwise retaliated against Associates nationwide for having the moral courage to see issues within our workplace and to organize for constructive change. Together,” it said, “we can show Walmart that we truly are the family they claim to be through peaceful protest."

Among the groups standing with OUR Walmart are Making Change at Walmart, Occupy Wall Street and Corporate Action Network. Supporters plan protest events for Black Friday at numerous Walmart stores around the country including Kalamazoo, Mich.; Dallas; Boynton Beach, Fla.; Salt Lake City; Richmond, Va.; Boothwyn, Pa.; Secaucus, N.J.; Indianapolis; Carson City, Nev.; Windsor Heights, Iowa; Allentown, Pa.; Easton, Pa.; Milwaukee; Hyattsville, Md.; San Francisco and Chicago.

Questions to OUR Walmart and UFCW regarding whether their Black Friday volunteer strike terms apply to Thursday as well, number of strikers expected, goals of the strike and the relationship between the two organizations weren’t answered by our deadline.

On the looming strike, Kory Lundberg, Walmart’s director, national media relations, told us by email, “We are preparing to have a great Black Friday across all of 4,000 locations in the U.S.” Lundberg said more than a million Walmart employees will be working throughout the upcoming holiday weekend, “and they're excited about our Black Friday plans this year.” Lundberg called Black Friday “the Super Bowl for retailers,” adding, “We're ready.” Walmart’s Black Friday plans have been in the works for almost a year he said, adding, “We care about our associates and our associates care about providing a great customer experience on Black Friday. We're confident that’s what our associates will deliver for customers this year at Walmart."

Lundberg downplayed the scope of the strikes, which he called “UFCW made for TV events.” He said, “The reality is that there are only a handful of associates, at a handful of stores scattered across the country that are participating.” Most of the numbers of people the UFCW claims at their events “aren’t even Walmart workers,” he said. “They are union representatives and other union members.” The first Walmart associate walk-outs were held Oct. 9 in Dallas, Seattle, Miami, the D.C.-area, Sacramento, Calif., and the Bay area.

"The super majority of our 1.3 million associates are excited about Black Friday and are ready to serve our customers,” Lundberg said, claiming many store employees have urged management “to do something about the UFCW’s latest round of publicity stunts because they don’t think it’s right that a few associates that are being coerced by the UFCW are being portrayed by the media as representative of what it’s like to work at Walmart."

Walmart has “hard data that tells a completely different story than what a few associates may think,” Lundberg said. Walmart has 250,000 associates that have worked for the company for more than 10 years, it promoted 165,000 hourly associates last year, its 37 percent turnover rate is lower than the retail industry average of 44 percent and nearly 75 percent of those on store management teams started out in hourly positions, he said. A fifth of people hired by Walmart in 2011 were rehires, who “decided to leave and concluded they were getting a better deal at Walmart so they came back,” he said.

According to a news release issued by Making Change at Walmart, Walmart employees and community leaders have been calling on Walmart and Chairman Rob Walton to address “take-home pay so low that Associates are forced to rely on public programs to support their families and understaffing that is keeping workers from receiving sufficient hours.” The release said Walmart “has not only refused to address” concerns affecting Walmart associates across the country, it has “attempted to silence those who speak out and has retaliated against workers for raising concerns that would help the company, workers and the community."

Lundberg of Walmart said, “The fact is, our pay and benefits plans are as good or better than our retail competitors, including those that are unionized.” In 2011 the company received 5 million job applications, he said, adding Walmart surveys its 1.3 million associates annually “to gauge their job satisfaction and those numbers have been increasing over the past few years."

Walmart respects the right of associates to express their views, Lundberg said, “but if they are scheduled to work, we expect them to show up and do their job. If they don’t, depending on the circumstances, there could be consequences.” Walmart will take every situation on a case by case basis,” he said. “If associates repeatedly have unexcused absences, if they purposefully disrupt the store, or create an unsafe working condition for our customers and associates, those issues will be addressed and there are a range of disciplinary actions that will be considered depending on the nature of the misconduct."

That said, Walmart doesn’t expect the actions of “a very small minority of our associates (less than .0003 percent) at a handful of stores to have any impact on our stores or our customers’ shopping experience on Black Friday,” Lundberg said. The retailer is moving ahead with Black Friday plans for opening at 8 p.m. for toy and video game deals such as a $149 Xbox bundle, and at 10 p.m. for electronics deals, including a $179 Compaq Presario laptop, a $38 iLive soundbar and a Philips 5.1-channel home theater in a box system for $128. The company instituted a one-hour “in-stock guarantee” for a $399 iPad 2 with a $75 gift card, a 32-inch Emerson TV for $148 and a $38 LG Blu-ray player. If a store sells out of those three items, shoppers in line at a store between 10-11 p.m. on Thanksgiving night will receive a “guarantee card” that locks in the price for a pre-Christmas product pickup, the store said (CED Nov 9 p1).

Walmart isn’t waiting for Thanksgiving evening or Black Friday to start the dealing. On Monday it launched a “Pre-Black Friday Online Only” event, led by a $429 50-inch Sceptre LCD TV, 160 GB PlayStation 3 bundles starting at $249 and a free accessories kit thrown in with the purchase of a regularly priced $499 iPad with Retina display, according to the company’s splash page. A 32-inch Samsung LED-lit LCD TV was marked down from $379 to $248 and PC bundles for a laptop, case, printer and flash drive started at $288. The pre-Black Friday event runs through Wednesday.

Walmart also initiated “home free” shipping on eligible products valued at $45 or more and free site-to-store shipping on all purchases, according to the website. Products are marked according to shipping policy on the website; ship-to-home products arrive in 3-5 days, the company said.