Radicalizing Walmart-Dont know what to do

[Tolstoy]

Two months ago, I scored a job as a Produce Associate at Walmart, putting aside my Socialist dialectics because I needed some extra cash while studying in school (as a Philosophy major, im quite used to jokes about how I should "get used to working at Walmart").

Anyways, ive always liked the idea of a strike happening at work because frankly, for many workers conditions are rather deplorable. Pay is low, hours are often cut, work is often on holidays, poor benefits for people with medical issues, awful christmas music playing everyday since black Friday, the list goes on and on and on.

Anyways, I really do wish my fellow employees would rise up and do something about all of this, but in my rare political dialogues with them, I have found that most of them are very conservative, and are much more furious about people on welfare coming in and buying Takis and the ACA, than they are the way big business treats them.

I really do understand why they detest the people on welfare, because I can imagine it is easy to view that life as easy when all you see of poverty when you work at Walmart is the large quanitites of food bought on the first of the month, all of which being very unhealthy (thus ignoring the fact that hot cheetos are much less expensive than salad stuff)

Anyways, I dont know how to change my coworkers minds. Im definitely not going to try and start a strike or protest or anything, because ultimately, I am a college kid who lives with his parents of relative privilege and dont know what its like to raise kids on 8 bucks an hour, and my trying to tell said people what to do would be stupid. I would like to intoduce Socialist ideals covertly, when managements not around, but im not sure of the best way to go about it

[G4b3n]

I was raised in a working class family, I now work a petty-bourgeois position at my university. The pay is garbage but there is essentially little to no authority in the workplace and I have creative control over things. I can really relate to your last line as all of my friends are employed in working class positions and I am hesitant to introduce such ideas as I know that I enjoy a much more privileged position and I have something to fall back on.

However, I have come to notice that people naturally realize these things (that workers have a right to autonomy, hierarchy in the workplace is undesirable and so forth). I would recommend introducing these ideas without any political rhetoric what so ever, especially the words "socialism" or "communism" (you have more than likely shot yourself in the foot if you use these words), people love the ideas not the rhetoric because that is all that bourgeois propaganda can ever manage to demonize.

[Tolstoy]

I was raised in a working class family, I now work a petty-bourgeois position at my university. The pay is garbage but there is essentially little to no authority in the workplace and I have creative control over things. I can really relate to your last line as all of my friends are employed in working class positions and I am hesitant to introduce such ideas as I know that I enjoy a much more privileged position and I have something to fall back on.

However, I have come to notice that people naturally realize these things (that workers have a right to autonomy, hierarchy in the workplace is undesirable and so forth). I would recommend introducing these ideas without any political rhetoric what so ever, especially the words "socialism" or "communism" (you have more than likely shot yourself in the foot if you use these words), people love the ideas not the rhetoric because that is all that bourgeois propaganda can ever manage to demonize.
I was thinking something along the same lines. Ive found people like my great grandmother saying really Socialist things like "Its so awful that some people make so much money, spread it around!" and even regular joes talking about killing the rich, so I know the ideas are there and could be developed

[G4b3n]

I was thinking something along the same lines. Ive found people like my great grandmother saying really Socialist things like "Its so awful that some people make so much money, spread it around!" and even regular joes talking about killing the rich, so I know the ideas are there and could be developed

It is certainly a great political crises that we must over come. It seems to me that anarchism is the least rhetorically damaged tendency because rather than being savagely distorted and attacked as was the case with the state communist tendencies, the rhetoric as been appropriated ("libertarianism", "anarcho" capitalism, etc), so I believe it is an easier task on the part of anarchists in appealing to workers and not shooting themselves in the foot with their own rhetoric.

As for non-political and practical approaches you can take, keep a close eye on management and be sure to vocalize (among workers of course) the blatant inequalities and arbitrary nature of bourgeois power.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Anyways, ive always liked the idea of a strike happening at work because frankly, for many workers conditions are rather deplorable. Pay is low, hours are often cut, work is often on holidays, poor benefits for people with medical issues, awful christmas music playing everyday since black Friday, the list goes on and on and on.

Anyways, I really do wish my fellow employees would rise up and do something about all of this, but in my rare political dialogues with them, I have found that most of them are very conservative, and are much more furious about people on welfare coming in and buying Takis and the ACA, than they are the way big business treats them.As maybe partially informed speculation I'd guess that there are lots of divisions and different opinions in such a large workplace with a lot of turnover. Some people who've been around a while and maybe have been able to get relatives or friends jobs there may be more inclined to let shit slide and accomodate because they don't think there's much better that can be done, so better with the devil you know (and employment). The precariousness of work like this (at-will, no avenues for grievences, management intimidation and incoptetance and CYAs) in our era tends to make people less willing to fight and struggle and just want to hold onto what they have. But a many people will have grievances (this is natural in any workplace to some degree and a pretty big degree in places like Walmart) but many of those people will be isolated from each-other (different shifts, people get fed up and quit, people talk back or refuse unreasonable requests beyond their job and are fired) or just underconfident because when no one is talking about something, we tend to blame ourselves or think "it's just me, I need to get over it". Hell, I'm a marxist, but jobs I've had have led me to blame myself for things that on another level I know are actually due to the nature of the job and the impossibility of doing the task without loosing your temper or whatnot... but still I sometimes feel a knee-jerk self-loathing when, for some reason, I feel like shit after standing for 8 hours while people treat me poorly.

But anyway, I think the first modest step forward (really at most non-union jobs) is to try and break through some of that isolation, talk about gripes at the job (which usually comes easily even if the gripes are unpolitical or mis-directed). It sounds like you are already trying to figure out how to do this.

Consciousness isn't generally at a level in the US right now where you can just say, "hey we should strike" (although in my experience you will often get a lot of passive support for making comments like that) and organization is even worse off... especially in a notoriously hard place to organize like WalMart. If people don't have much class consiousness, then socialist or revolutionary consciousness is probably also going to be low (or non-existant).


I really do understand why they detest the people on welfare, because I can imagine it is easy to view that life as easy when all you see of poverty when you work at Walmart is the large quanitites of food bought on the first of the month, all of which being very unhealthy (thus ignoring the fact that hot cheetos are much less expensive than salad stuff)


Anyways, I dont know how to change my coworkers minds. Im definitely not going to try and start a strike or protest or anything, because ultimately, I am a college kid who lives with his parents of relative privilege and dont know what its like to raise kids on 8 bucks an hour, and my trying to tell said people what to do would be stupid. I would like to intoduce Socialist ideals covertly, when managements not around, but im not sure of the best way to go about it

Again some speculation: in my experience, when you work in customer service, hating the customers is an expression of alienation. In that position (almost literally if you're on the register) customers are for you what assembly lines are to factory workers... except widgets on a manufacturing line don't generally look down on you or act rudely. At my job (and walmart workers can probably relate) I'm supposed to say hello to everyone if they walk by... maybe one in six even aknowledge my hello. I've worked service in jobs where the customers were poor, working class, and yuppies. They are all terrible but terrible in different ways IMO. Workers are not saints and people in hard poverty are certainly not saints and when I worked in a place with a lot of people who were on assistance of some kind, I got the impression that they would be demanding because it was one of the few places where they could actually be demanding to someone or disrespect someone... or they were just bitter (yeah, probably that, now that I think about it). Yuppies are just fucking entitled morons often who don't know shit but act like they do (I just had a guest at the hotel I work at complain last night about how the shower was broken and there was no hot water... "see, no hot water he shouted" as he moved the lever up and down rapidly. I reached over to the other side and turned on the other lever... the one labeled "hot". He's honestly a visiting professor by the way.). They treat people like things.

At any rate, I think a lot of anger at the shoppers probably comes out of some form of that kind of resentment... "I'm struggling to get by and there's this moron who's probably on welfare treating me like crap!". Everything we are taught and most of what is officially reflected in culture tells us the rich are better and more clever and deserving than the poor... so many people find it much easier to kick the person below than to challenge the person above. I think this is also a tendency in the neoliberal era because mid-century pop culture tended to have a lot of semi-populist ethos around "the little guy" and "not picking on those worse-off"... current common sense from the mainstream is that those worse-off deserve it and deserve less than they have already. The 1930s populist Superman is an anachronism while 1980s vigilante Batman is the model for today's US.

But luckily current events creates some openings for this very issue:


This issue has become more known as we learn just how far some companies have gone in putting their employees on public assistance. According to one study (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-15/mcdonalds-low-wages-come-with-a-7-billion-side-of-welfare), American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion dollars in public assistance. As it turns out, McDonald's has a “McResource (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-25/a-help-line-voice-saying-what-mcdonalds-wont-fast-food-workers-need-aid)” line that helps employees and their families enroll in various state and local assistance programs. It exploded into the public when a recording of the McResource line (http://lowpayisnotok.org/mcvideo/) advocated that full-time employees sign up for food stamps and welfare.


Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private sector employer, is also the biggest consumer of taxpayer supported aid. According to Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, in many states, Wal-Mart employees are the largest group (http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-taxpayer-costs)of Medicaid recipients. They are also the single biggest group of food stamp recipients. Wal-mart’s "associates" are paid so little (http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/12/wal-mart-pay-raise/), according to Grayson, that they receive $1,000 on average in public assistance. These amount to massive taxpayer subsidies for private companies.


So this provides an opening to flip the script and when someone talks shit about welfare, you can turn it around and talk about how the media uses the same rhetoric about people on welfare as they do for "lazy" low-wage workers who are too dim to get good jobs. You can use things like the news story I quoted above to talk about how Walmart creates poverty by paying people shit and being a model for the whole economy right now.


christmas music since black fridayLOL! I feel your pain on this! It's torture that's bad enough as a customer in a place for 20 minutes... but for 8 hours it becomes basically the same technique the FBI used to flush the Branch Dividians out of their compound (oooh I guess I'm dating myself with that ref.).

I also wouldn't worry about being a college student. If you were the most prol-y person there, not one can just "call" a strike in situations like that. It would take a group of people, organizing, pulling together their own social connections at work, putting in a lot of time trying to win trust and confidence in the project of challenging conditions in the shop. It's patient and frustrating work. It can sometimes take small leaps forward though and the OURWalmart thing can maybe help bring some attention to the idea of organizing, the wildcat-ish action at the Florida WalMart and other things. Even things like Astin Kutcher getting in a flame-war on Twitter with WalMart's twitter can be an organic opening to talk to people about issues there.

[Venas Abiertas]

Yeah, remember, you can't do everything all by yourself. Your relatively new there and won't be around for too long. Maybe the best you can do is plant seeds. Agitating probably won't get you anywhere at this point. Just don't back down in a discussion. Stay calm and reasonable and make the right wing side seem foolish. Conservatives almost all have a Hitler complex and get furious when you don't agree with them, and start calling you names and talking about "your president, Obama" and repeating stuff ad nauseum from Bill O'Reilly or Anne Coulter. Don't respond back the same way. State your opinions and defend them with facts.

This creates a certain responsibility on your part, too. If you're going to argue rationally, you have to read and study and keep up with the news in order to be able to refute their arguments. Having control of the hard facts in the argument will give you confidence and allow you to stay in control. You probably won't unionize the place all by yourself but your co-workers will remember you and your ideas and how you weren't afraid to stand up for them, even if you had to stand all alone. This will make a definite impression on them and help prepare them for the next step, whether this comes through another co-worker in the future or something they read or see on TV.

Remember, you don't have to plow the field, plant the seeds, water and weed and fertilize the crops, harvest the crops, take them to market, process them, and sell them all by yourself. If you can accomplish even one step in that process you will have achieved a lot more than most.

[Venas Abiertas]

I forgot to say that you might even want to keep in touch with some of your coworkers after you leave there, maybe with an exchange of phone numbers or through some social networking site.

And always listen to what they have to say. Conservatives feel entitled to shout everybody down, because they're so sure that they're right all the time. A revolutionary is humble. He or she listens to what others have to say in an effort to understand their needs and concerns. Your ideas and tactics will grow and change along with theirs, and this will make you a more effective organizer in the long run. They will teach you as much or more as you will teach them and this meeting of the minds is what creates true solidarity, where everyone can meet as equals. Your contribution will be the theory that you have learned that maybe they haven't had the time or inclination to explore.

[consuming negativity]

Be careful and understand what you're getting into. Wal-Mart is ridiculously anti-union and if they suspect you of anything serious they will go to war. Of course, I mean, the only thing you can really lose is the job at Wal-Mart, but they will fire you and even stick surveillance on you. If you and/or your fellow employees intend to be successful and keep your jobs, you need to maintain a relatively low profile, at least during the beginning.

[KurtFF8]

You should see if there is a UFCW local near by, or an OUR Walmart near by and contact them for support

[Pawn Power]

Dido KurtFF8. Check out the Our Walmart campaign. http://forrespect.org/

And then, let us know how it goes!

[Logical seal]

Just keep on cracking in jokes at the upper-class, And generally just joke about things about the right wing in a happy matter

Jokes lead to habits, Habits lead to charather.


Charather leads to destiny.