Anonymous on the Employee Free Choice Act
“Myself and a bunch of other people at my store were told that we had to attend a Leadership/Diversity class. The class started out with this lady talking about discrimination, stereotyping, sexual harassment, etc. I felt I was surrounded by a bunch of morons. These people were supposed to be supervisors, but they interrupted the instructor every other sentence, to ask what a word meant (stereotype, nepotism, indulgence, etc). I was started to get impatient because the class was boring and it was mostly common sense stuff that we shouldn’t have to have a class about. We went to lunch around 11:00.
“When we came back the lecture suddenly became about a completely different topic. On the board she had written the words ‘Employee Free Choice Act.’ Suddenly it became clear to me why it was necessary for her to tell us at the beginning of the class that our discussions were confidential and we were not supposed to talk about this class at work. She began to tell us how Obama is all for the EFCA and that we need to be wise when it comes to voting for the next president. She asked us if we had had any experiences with unions and seemed to be disappointed when no one seemed to have a negative experience. Then she proceeded to tell us how wrong unions would be for Wal-Mart associates and what we needed to do to fight unions, etc. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this.
“I don’t appreciate the deceptive tactics. Someone actually asked how this pertained to leadership and diversity and the instructor stuttered and said, ‘It’s a diversity/leadership/union class.’ It made me so sick to see other people, some from my own store, buying all this and asking what they needed to do if an associate talked to them about unions. These people actually bought in to all that the instructor was saying and seemed to have not noticed the deceptive way in which we were dragged into this anti-union lecture. That’s why I don’t think Wal-Mart will ever have a union: there are too many people too ignorant or too afraid to ask any questions. There are too many people, most of whom are new to Wal-Mart, who accept everything management tells them no matter how f—ked up it is. I honestly think we were sent to this class because a few people, including some MS’s in my store have been talking about going to work for a union grocery store in our town. We had a meeting in which our store manager told us that if we wanted to go work for that store we were free to do so but we should keep quiet about it. All of a sudden we were told we were signed up for this class and we had to go. They think we are a bunch of idiots. I don’t care who comes to me with a union card. I’m not going to wait around for them to throw the thing in the trash, pick it up and give it to management. I would probably pick it up and put it in the break-room for everyone to see. These people think we’re such idiots and that we love Wal-Mart so much that we would screw someone out of a job over a union card. Not me.”
