By Rick Wartzman
Source: Literary Hub
If there is one thing that runs as deep in Walmart’s DNA as its devotion to keeping costs down and prices low, it would have to be its antipathy toward organized labor.
The company’s open-door policy, Sam Walton maintained, was the perfect avenue for hourly employees to bring any complaints they might have to management’s attention, and he didn’t want some third party wedging itself between Walmart and its workers. “We resent outsiders coming in and saying things which aren’t true and trying to change the company that has meant so much to all of us,” Walton said.
Whether Walton was also worried that a union contract would force him to pay his workers more, he never said. But whatever his mix of motives may have been, this much was certain: every time there was so much as a flicker of union activity at his company, Walton and his sidekicks would rush in and do everything they could to snuff it out.
