Organizing at Walmart: Lessons from Quebec's Women (original) (raw)

The job market has undergone fundamental changes over the last thirty years. The decline in permanent, stable, full-time employment and an increase in the number of non-standard workers transformed workers' collective organization and union representation. Based on a study of the collective struggles of women employed at Walmart in Quebec and taking into consideration the interrelated effects of non-standard workers' work and living conditions, the paper explores the ways in which organized labour can adapt to the new context. Two types of data were used: newspapers and academic literature and the results of a study in which eleven women working at Walmart were interviewed between 2010 and 2012. This case study is divided into three parts. In the context of the tertiarization of Quebec's employment market, the effects of the flexibilization of labour at Walmart are first presented through statistical evidence and the comments of the women interviewed. The next section provides an overview of the UFCW's union battles with Walmart, including some of the more successful campaign strategies. The final section focuses on participant testimonies to examine what can be learned from these union experiences in the hopes of contributing, insofar as possible, to the discussion on union renewal. The job market in the province of Quebec, as elsewhere in the western world, has undergone fundamental changes over the last thirty years. Two complementary phenomena stand out: a decline in permanent, stable, full-time employment and an increase in the number of non-standard workers. 2 The 'new productive model' has introduced a centrifugal movement of jobs towards peripheral markets (Durand, 2004) and a proliferation of employment statuses has led to increasing numbers of jobs that are poorly paid, offer only partial eligibility for private benefits, and provide limited access to public benefits, union representation, and collective negotiation (Noiseux, 2008). Furthermore, these upheavals in the job market have a greater impact on specific categories of individuals according to class, ethnicity, age, and sex (Crespo, 2009). These transformations are neither random nor the effect of 'laissez-faire' policies. Rather, they are the result of decisions made by States and companies consistently guided by the principle of competition (Dardot and Laval, 2009), and these decisions affect not only employment conditions, but living conditions as well. Workers' collective organization and union representation needs, thus transformed, are the focus of this analysis. Based on a study of the collective struggles of women employed at Walmart and inspired by the approach proposed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2004), this article attempts to document worker's workfloor experiences and to mobilize their practices and knowledge in order to contribute