Eight hundred workers at a Walmart distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario, succeeded where others have not: they are now working under a two-year contract with North America’s largest logistics giant. The landmark collective bargaining agreement went into effect on July 1, nearly two years after workers won union representation, joining Unifor Local 252, motivated by low wages and unsafe working conditions. As punishment two years ago, Walmart bumped the pay of every logistics worker in Canada—except those who unionized. This was an effective maneuver to halt further union drives.
  • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    1 个月前

    An early mentor of mine when I was a young adult was a man named Mike Barkley. I met him when I was in college. At that time he was an organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers local 73A (a now defunct local from Wisconsin). This is a bit of a tribute to keep his memory alive.

    After high school he become a paper mill worker in the northern part of the state and was an ardent union activist. When the mill was shut down he got a part time staff job with the union, but to make ends meet and take care of his family he also had to get a job at Walmart. He was still a union activist and started organizing a union, but he lost an NLRB election after an aggressive anti-union campaign, and if I’ve got the details straight on this, he got fired.

    I met him when I was a college student. He was recruiting other community activists and organizers to work on Walmart related campaigns. I learned a lot from him and he encouraged me to put myself out there as an activist. When I was finishing school he advised me to apply to the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute.

    Through the organizing institute I was assigned to salt in a large factory that was being targeted for a possible organizing campaign. After I got a job there I went to give Mike a call on his office number (~2003-2004, cell phones weren’t ubiquitous yet). I asked to speak to Mike, and I was told that he was dead. He had a stomach aneurysm on a picket line outside a Tyson chicken processing plant.

    His final act in life was to help lead and support a long strike at a poultry plant, that ultimately brought a bit more power and dignity back to the workers of the world, right where it belongs.

    He would’ve loved to see this news. When I was in a union organizing campaign at work just last year I could feel his spirit visiting me. Rest in power, my brother.