Thinking outside the NLRA

One tactic we've used in the past is to leaflet big-box stores that open stores in our community but import non-union labor from out-of-town.

Rather than using the union/NLRA approach against the big-box rat-built stores in our area, we have used a community approach, asking people to boycott the store --not because they do the work non-union or at lower-than-community standards--but instead because they imported workers from other cities to do the work and don't hire local people as the managers.

There are a few advantages to this--
1) It's not a secondary labor boycott
2) It engages non-union as well as union people
3) It focuses the struggle on the big-box store's employment/contracting policies, instead of more arcane union issues with which the public is generally unfamiliar;
4) The entire debate takes place in the free-speech arena, rather than the labor law arena.

Interestingly, one of the things we learned from our leafletting is that almost all the management for a new big-box store comes from out-of-town, and the locals are usually hired only at the lower wages and ranks. Many of the new-hires are somewhat disgruntled to discover this.

The leafletting is done by a volunteer group of concerned citizens--not the building trades unions. Our volunteer group is CLAW, which stands for Citizens'League for Area Workers.

Some of the big-box offenders are Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, Meijer, and our old favorite--WallMart.