Wal-Mart using fear tactics in warning against Democratic electoral gains

From this mornings Wall Street Journal,

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

The actions by Wal-Mart -- the nation's largest private employer -- reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership.

Their fears that the labor movement is being invigorated are not unfounded. Last year saw the first positive growth in private sector union membership in quite some time. It was a minimal increase but an increase nonetheless. Given the economic straights that many working class families are finding themselves in after decades of conservative economic dominance and the gutting of the labor movement it's not a difficult for workers to understand that their economic interests are best served when they are organized.

Unionized workers receive better pay and better benefits and work in safer environments. These are indisputable facts. The decline of the American middle-class tracks with the decline of the American labor movement, this is not a coincidence.

As labor refocuses on new industries and rebuilds its base of support we will see more of these scare tactics from big business. They will lie, distort and intimidate in order to keep their work places free of organized workers. We've entered a 2nd Guilded Age over the last several decades. Conservative economic and social policy has left the rich much richer and stagnated wages for working Americans. Big business has to try and hide from this record if they want to convince their workers that it's they and not the unions that have the workers best interests in mind. I think the workers are smart enough to see through that smoke screen.

The pendulum may finally be swinging back.