DSA was one of 120 local and national organizations that endorsed and participated in the Tuesday, November 21 National Day of Action at Wal-Mart stores. This Day of Action was organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCWU). Nationally, DSA was able to provide support at about 20 demonstrations.

The Day of Action was organized around eight demands:

1. Pay their associates a living wage so they can afford basic living expenses such as a home, health insurance, and modest savings for children's college and retirement.
2. Provide affordable health care.
3. Treat injured workers fairly and provide prompt and complete medical attention for workers injured on the job.
4. Stop illegal interference with associates' right to organize, cease all coercive, threatening and bullying tactics to discourage organizing, and let the workers freely decide.
5. Adopt less cut-throat, more cooperative policies that respect established commercial districts and avoid pricing out small businesses.
6. End employment practices that discriminate against workers who are women, people of color, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
7. Truly respect all associates as individuals irrespective of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
8. Respect the environment.

All of these demands are based on the experiences of employees and of the communities where Wal-Mart stores are located. The list of discrimination lawsuits against Wal-Mart and unfair labor judgements against it reads like a gangster's rap sheet. About a month after the Day of Action, a federal jury ruled that Wal-Mart was guilty of violating federal and state wage laws. That particular suit had been filed by two store managers from Salem, Oregon, and was joined by 400 other employees in 24 states. 39 other class-action lawsuits said to involve hundreds of thousands of employees are currently pending against the company in 30 states.

In the Chicago area, demonstrations were planned for stores in Rolling Meadows in the northwest suburbs and in Bridgeview in the near southwest suburbs. Nationally, the demonstrations were planned from late afternoon through early evening so that people could participate after school and after work. In the Chicago area, these plans were complicated by the fact that the UFCWU locals 881 and 1546 were in the midst of contract negotiations with Jewel and with Dominick's. As a consequence, the times locally were moved up, making it more difficult for others to participate. The negotiations with Dominick's turned into an ugly game of chicken. UFCWU Local 881 cancelled the Bridgeview action and asked that people instead turn out for a demonstration at a Dominick's on Chicago's near southside. This action in turn was cancelled when Dominick's and the union reached a last minute agreement.

Tuesday, November 21 was wet and as chilly as could be without actually freezing. The drive out to Rolling Meadows was on roads of suspended spray. What we found there summarizes the problems facing the UFCWU neatly. The store is in a mall: private property. The parking lot was swarming with Rolling Meadows police and private security. Where was the demonstration?

After some wandering, we eventually discovered that the UFCWU had managed to set up a tent and generator in the parking lot of a strip mall several hundred feet away: "next door" in suburban terms. There was a small crowd that steadily grew to somewhat more than a hundred.

The rally was harangued by a number of speakers, including DSA member Libby Frank who was representing the Northwest Suburban NOW chapter. The demonstration was then allowed to march past the Wal-Mart to another far corner of a parking lot for another brief rally (covered by a cable network, I believe) then back to the original site where the demonstration rapidly dispersed, hours early.

I don't mean for this to sound like a delusory effort. This is a serious business with consequences for the workers that UFCWU already represents. There's no limit to the areas of retailing that Wal-Mart may go into (groceries in particular are an immediate concern), and this could easily drive union shops out of business or degrade the contracts in those shops to fig leaves.

Not only does the union face an over worked (and now, with Dubya in control, hostile) National Labor Relations Board, but the stores are all surrounded by moats of "private" property, often guarded by hostile courts. The Day of Action included rallies in 100 towns and cities in 40 states but not Wal-Mart's "home" state of Arkansas. A state judge had issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the union from soliciting inside Wal-Mart buildings and stores.