How Walmart Organizers Turned the Internet Into a Shop Floor

[Omaha Steve]

http://inthesetimes.com/article/16116/how_walmart_organizers_turned_the_internet_into_a_shop_floor/




Web Only / Features » January 16, 2014

BY Sarah Jaffe

The basic tools of labor organizing haven't changed in hundreds of years. There's no substitute for face-to-face conversations about working conditions and what can be done to change them. Organizers still make home visits, and workers still talk to one another in the break room or the parking lot.

But in the new wave of low-wage worker organizing that has swept the country in the past two years, some labor groups have begun to use the Internet to facilitate the kinds of personal conversations that lead to workplace action. As unions, community organizations, workers centers and even “netroots” groups like MoveOn.org pour resources into organizing a massive, diffuse fast-food and retail workforce that had often been written off as unorganizable, the web has provided a cheap, effective tool to reach low-wage workers in ways that are both personal and lasting. In particular, the United Food and Commercial Workers-backed groups OUR Walmart and Making Change at Walmart have enthusiastically experimented with web tools in their recent efforts to make a difference at the nation’s biggest retailer.

As Jamie Way, an online organizer with Making Change at Walmart, puts it, “We're never going to match [Walmart] in terms of resources, we're never going to have an organizer or a community supporter on the ground in every one of their [more than] 4,000 Walmarts.” To combat this, the campaign has created online spaces for organizers to reach workers and for communities to support local efforts. And those online connections can, in turn, drive offline actions.

Of the estimated 1,500 Walmart protests that occurred across the country on Black Friday last year, many were planned online, organized either directly by OUR Walmart or using its templates and tools. Much of that turnout came from the kind of efforts that have become commonplace in recent years—creating Facebook event pages, for example, or posting links to event websites on Twitter.

FULL story at link.

[madrchsod]

1. wisconsin set the standard for social media reporting and action.

i have at least ten facebook pages i read everyday from wisconsin. those pages list to at least one or two other facebook pages, blogs,or news reports. the entire state has social media pages from lake superior to the illinois border.