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WalMart Works With FBI, MIC To Spy On "Problem" Employees
Earlier this year, Wal-Mart had some “plumbing” problems.
As regular readers might recall, the retailer shuttered five geographically distinct locations across the country citing intractable and persistent “clogs and leaks.”
The story gave birth to a variety of conspiracy theories including the contention that the closures were part and parcel of a plan to use the locations as internment camps in connection with the US SpecOps command’s Jade Helm 15 drills.
Another plausible explanation was that the closures were connected to the company’s desperate attempt to preserve margins in the wake of what now looks like an ill-advised decision to implement an across-the-board wage hike. Raising wages for the retailer’s lowest-paid associates led directly to a mad scramble aimed at extracting more savings from suppliers and ultimately resulted in a stunning guidance cut in October that sent the company’s shares plunging. Predictably, the pay raises also led to layoffs in Bentonville and fewer hours for employees. The store closures, we suggested back in April, could simply be another attempt to offset the cost of the wage hikes.
Finally, some contended that at least one location may have been closed for its connection to organized labor. As we documented extensively in “Did WalMart Close A California Store To Punish Employees Who Protested Wages And Working Conditions?,” the Pico Rivera, California store had been a hotbed for wage and labor protests over the years. It was among the locations that were closed on short notice.
First, a little background.
When we began to look into each of the locations marked on the map shown above, we came across something rather interesting involving the Pico Rivera, CA store. As it turns out, it’s been the site of wage and working condition protests on a number of occasions, the most recent of which was late last year.
Almost exactly one year prior to the latest picket, the Pico Rivera store was (along with multiple other locations across the US) the site of protests alleging that the company did not pay enough to keep many of its workers from seeking government assistance to supplement their meager wages (recall that 73% of those receiving public assistance in the US come from working families).
And just a little over a year before the 2013 Black Friday protests, more than 200 workers at Pico Rivera went on strike and protested in front of the store waving signs that read “On Strike for the Freedom to Speak Out,” suggesting the company was retaliating against those who fought for better wages and working conditions.
What's especially interesting here is that one of the groups which has consistently backed protests at the Pico Rivera store is the The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union or, UFCW.
The UFCW has a history with the company. Back in 2004, when workers at the Jonquiere, Quebec location voted to join the organization, WalMart closed the store six months later noting that "you can’t take a store that is a struggling store anyway and add a bunch of people and a bunch of work rules." This case ended up before the Supreme Court in Canada and just last year, the high court ruled against the company.
So here is a WalMart location which has staged protests each and every year dating back to at least 2012, the latest of which led to two dozen arrests and these protests are backed by the same organization which was involved in a Canadian Supreme Court case against the company for closing a store where workers had agreed to adopt the UFCW as their representative.
For those who might have missed it, here's a hilarious anti-union training video that leaked online:
Now, thanks to documents produced in discovery ahead of a National Labor Relations Board hearing into OUR Walmart’s (and offshoot of UFCW) allegations of retaliation against employees who joined protests in June 2013, we have an idea of just what lengths WalMart is willing to go to when it comes to keeping an eye on potential "problem" stores and associates. The documents, provided to Bloomberg, contain some "1,000 pages of e-mails, reports, playbooks, charts, and graphs, as well as testimony from its head of labor relations at the time."
"Walmart considered OUR enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group," Bloomberg reports. Here's more:
During October 2012, OUR Walmart members and supporters began a series of walkouts and protests across the country to increase pressure on the retailer before the holiday shopping season. The group called a National Day of Action for Oct. 10 and sent a few people to Bentonville, where Walmart executives were meeting with Wall Street analysts. Two hundred calls to the labor hotline from almost as many stores were logged around that time.
Some calls betrayed the paranoia of beleaguered managers.
2:30 p.m., Store 5880 in Fairfax, Va.: “A customer began talking to a cashier about the strikes at Walmart this week, and the cashier responded that maybe she should go on strike. AM [assistant manager] feels the cashier was joking when she made the comment.”
4:19 p.m., Store 3893 in Zion, Ill.: “Three associates made comments surrounding the ‘strikes’ in other stores to Grocery ZMS [zone merchandising supervisor]. Grocery ZMS shared his opinion but didn’t state our philosophy. He will do so the next time the associates are at work.”
The last call in the log, on Oct. 15, came from Yuma, Ariz.: “An associate asked what would happen to associates if they walked out on Black Friday.”
Walmart was watching Colby Harris. He was a full-time employee in the produce department in Store 471 in Lancaster, Texas. He joined protests in California, picketed stores in Dallas, and showed up in Bentonville for the analysts’ meeting. In November 2012, he said he had given more than 45 interviews to journalists. “People want to hear from us,” he said.
On Oct. 17, Casey, the labor relations executive, sent an e-mail to one of her senior staff: “Colby Harris, what’s his story?” Casey said in her testimony that she asked about Harris because he had appeared in press accounts of the walkouts, and Walmart’s media relations group asked her for information about him. She also said that Walmart tracked associates “who may be engaged in the demonstrations and strikes to figure out who was working and who wasn’t.”
And here’s where the story gets particularly unnerving:
As momentum for the Black Friday protests was building, the Delta team raced to respond. The Black Friday Labor Relations Team Daily Meeting had its own acronym: the BFLRTDM. An e-mail on Oct. 24 from a member of the labor relations team to four executives had the subject line: “Blitz Planning (Re-visited due to new information).” The document they updated—the Labor Relations Blitz/Black Friday 2012 Plan—noted some of the latest tactics they expected from OUR Walmart: “work stoppages, mic checks, 1 post of a human chain, social media calls for boycotts and Sponsor a Striker for Black Friday food card program.” It also included this request to Walmart’s Analytical Research Center: “When does Lockheed provide more analysts?”
The Analytical Research Center, or ARC, is part of Walmart’s global security division. Ken Senser, a former FBI officer, oversees the entire group. The executive responsible for ARC was Steve Dozier, according to Casey’s testimony. He was director of the Arkansas State Police before he joined Walmart in 2007. “When we received word of potential strikes and disruptive activity on Black Friday 2012, that’s when we started to ask the ARC to work with us,” Casey said during her testimony. “ARC had contracted with Lockheed leading up to Black Friday to help source open social media sites.”
Lockheed Martin is one of the biggest defense contractors in the world. Although it’s best known for making fighter jets and missile systems, it also has an information technology division that offers cybersecurity and data analytics services. Tucked into that is a little-known operation called LM Wisdom, which has been around since 2011. LM Wisdom is described on Lockheed’s website as a tool “that monitors and analyzes rapidly changing open source intelligence data … [that] has the power to incite organized movements, riots and sway political outcomes.” A brochure depicts yellow tape with “crime scene” on it, an armored SWAT truck, and a word cloud with “MAFIA” in huge type.
In mid-April 2013, Walmart executives began hearing about plans for “Ride for Respect,” a bus caravan that would arrive in Bentonville during the weeklong annual shareholder meeting in June. About 14,000 people—hand-picked associates, managers, shareholders, investors, the Walton family—would be in town. Elton John was performing. It was a time of particularly uncomfortable scrutiny for Walmart.
A Delta team began operations. When global security heard that members of the Occupy movement might join the protests at corporate headquarters, they began working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces.
“With some assistance from LM [Lockheed Martin] we have created the attached map to track the caravan movements and approximate participants,” Kris Russell, a risk program senior manager, wrote to colleagues on May 30. The map showed the predicted routes for five buses. By then, 96 associates had announced their intent to strike. Another 115 “uninvited guests” were expected in Bentonville.
There's much, much more in the full Bloomberg piece, but the takeaway here is that WalMart doesn't just despise union sympathizers, the retailer equates them with terrorism and indeed, the company monitors their activities at certain locations just as the government would track jihadi sleeper cells.
The FBI is involved as is one of the world's foremost defense contractors and at one point, the Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Forces were called to the scene in a kind of nightmarish "evil corporate America meets oppressive police state" scenario.
As for OUR WalMart, they're not giving up the fight. In fact, they're adopting new and innovative strategies. This year, for instance, they decided to highlight the problems associates face feeding their families on meager wages by - starving themselves:
"This year, instead of striking, OUR Walmart staged a 15-day fast leading up to Black Friday. The hunger strike is in support of a $15-an-hour minimum wage and to highlight the problems some Walmart workers have feeding their families, Cynthia Murray, one of the founders of OUR Walmart said.
We wonder if waterboarding is coming soon to WalMart breakrooms or if perhaps a drone strike or two on a picket line will be necessary to disperse the living wage "jihad."
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It's the Bolsjevik Jews fault!
Lockheed Martin, for a safer zone work place.
no its the mensheviks jews fault!
Hate to break it to you sparky but the Tampa area store has re-opened and was due to a massive plumbing problem. They have refurbished the store and was open over 2 months ago.
Much of the FEMA stuff online was from the woo-woo society of the internet.
Dead end retail and unions don't mix.
Unionizing an unskilled job is a complete waste of time. Turnover should be high because one should only work at a place like Walmart for six months to a year and then use that experience to move on to something else.
Unions lost their relevance once old-style sweatshops and child labor abuses ended...anybody bitching about a hostile/unsafe workplace today has no clue what a real hostile/unsafe workplace can be. Several decades ago they just became another avenue to pump socialism into society, and sadly it was largely successful, without such poisoned ground the likes of progressive Dem's like Obama and useless dreck like E-GOP stooges McConnell & Ryan would not be skanking up everything.
But the woo-woo stuff is fun, usually.
BTW...
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/business/20151106/walmart-supercenter-reopens-with-whole-new-look-in-pico-rivera
The only 'odd' thing is that the wage increase was self-inflicted!
So this is fascism?
<At least it comes with a smiling yellow orb.>
I mean...of course it does.
Best not ever be caught wearing a blue sleeveless vest... Gooberment'll have you confused with Hell's Angles and put your ass on a TBD list
unions are not much better. Police and teacher unions covering for corrupt cops and child molesters. The drug use on unions jobs is abhorrent and the few that are straight and sober keep getting picked repeatly for randon drug tests.
You're just criticising human nature at this point. When workers have no say or incentive, it's slavery. "Union" as a concept lost its meaning generations ago. The tree of democracy must be watered, and all that. What happened was that the tree was cut down when it reached a handsome size, and was replaced with a papier-mache copy, behind bulletproof glass.
The tree of "democracy"?...is that the invasive plant that choked out the tree of liberty?
'The tree of liberty will be choked off and starved of nutrients and light from the sun and true god of this planet, by the vines of "democracy"..... which is just another word for 'female empowerment".
GhostOfDiogenes - AD 2015
The tree of democracy is not a tree, it's a Kudzu vine.
i am a thirteen year old boy and if it were not for the teachers union my math teacher Ms. Hardknockers would stop taking me to her home for tittering..i mean tutoring
should see the drug use on governing boards...K Street, Wall St...
Southpark made fun of walmart ala 'poltergeist".
http://youtu.be/02FNsVruaVs
Walmart is evil.
The us .fedgov is evil.
The Federal Bureau of Intimidation is evil.
Jews rule the world, for rich jews, and law enforcement sucks their cock.
It really is as simple as that.
*any time you worthless losers in law enforcment want to take off the badge and settle this like MEN you know where to find me.
Fukin spinless pussys could only be made by worshipping a jewish skygod-hippie.
Walton's were not Jewish. Presbyterian, IIRC.
Sam Walton got out of ww2 by working for dupont.
His wife's last name is 'Robson'. Her parents were kosher parasites/carpetbaggers. His children have married jews.
That makes his kids jews.
Sorry.
Technically, they are Protestant, but Sam Walton simply did what the original Mellon guy did and I believe it was either Rupert Murdoch's daddy or grandaddy did:
they each married a Jewish woman from a wealthy family, then leveraged the fortunes they married into.
Shocking, really shocking.
Now excuse me, I have to go pay my plate fee for the Chamber of Commerce dinner/SS rally.
Wonder if the people could hit Walmart using stalking laws. It's tough because it's a private corporation, not the government, even though that line is obviously fuzzy or non-existent.
.gov will always protect the Pinkertons. They created them.
Yes, indeed.
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you-may-not-know-abo...
Refer to the All Seeing Eye, and #6, #8, #9, and #10. Pay particular attention to Numbers 6 and 8.
He was director of the Arkansas State Police before he joined Walmart in 2007...
So they went and hired probably the dumbest motherfucker on the planet?
Hmm. What should qualification be, for Soviet Superstore overseer?
How to tell potato from penis pump enough, according to USSA boss menschen.
My daddy once told me you can tell the difference because you can't eat a penis pump...
But alas ....
http://www.idrink.com/v.html?id=46497
Kool-Aid? Eurggh nasty.
"So they went and hired probably the dumbest motherfucker"
Don't know. I have never in my life met a 'smart cop' just differing degrees of vapid stupidity.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6e8AtrrveiM
Yeah but Arkansas is like world headquarters for Idiocracy.
That's like making Mayor of Retardville the next Pope or something.
When I was in Colorado I had a convo with an ex cop who towed my truck to different scumbag thieving mechanics.
I told him for two hours what scum modern leos were, and how the country was being wrecked by them.
At the conclusion of our conversation he told me that he was a trainer for cops in Denver.
He told me that he never trained one cop to arrest anyone after a domestic.
His superiors were cool with it.
He shaked by hand and told me that he agreed with everything I said!
I was dumbfounded to say the least.
He then told me that he agreed with me. Nothing will change until dead bodies litter the halls of our government institutions.
But he was happy with his pension and 2 job.
So he has that going for him, which is nice.
How dare you say that about Kenneth Senser, who was with the FBI when they were the victims of deep penetration by the Chinese military intelligence.
Oh, sorry, you're right after all . . .
(And let's not forget that fortune they paid to SAIC with zero results, believe Senser had something to do with that as well. Before that, he was with the CIA . . .)
Boycott WalMart
No. Join walmart as an employee and begin petitioning other employees about union membership.
Walmart close the store, problem solved.
but, but, but, I'm trying to join the Canadian Security Intelligence Service so I can cause dissention there. Frankly, I can't be in two places at once unless I'm Remote Viewing, of course. ;|
Most people don't know that there was a time in this country when US troops were used to put down the "labor movement". Back then, it was apparently ok to lay seige to families working in company towns at the behest of plutocrats. They would even deport hundreds of people to Russia, stripping them of US citizenship for having impure thoughts. The people who tried to rebel in the early 20th century were labeled communists and shipped out or murdered. Then the Red Scare was concocted to justify the ongoing campaign of white enslavement.
One thing the elitists fear the most is a free market in the economy, and of ideas. The central issue of our times is to finally bring an end to slavery- once and for all.
If you don't want to work for a company, then DON'T. You are free to work for yourself, or set up your own company.
Obviously someone got an email alert about an article critical of WalMart.
I wonder if it's the same platform hasbarists use.
"
I wonder if it's the same platform hasbarists use."
Anything run buy jews has an email system for true believers.
So israel, the nookular industry, walmart, etc etc are part of the kosher nostra protection racket.
Well stated, PoasterToaster, good that Ameritards learn about "the Palmer raids" and that the FBI was originally founded by the grandnephew of Napoleon (ole Joseph Bonaparte) as a secret police to rid the world of workers who believed they should enjoy rights!
Fancy that!
Recommended reading:
The Gangs of America, by Ted Nace
So, when workers plot to form a union and hold the company hostage, that's OK
But, when a company tries to defend themselves against those employees, that's bad?
pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft
And when a company holds taxpayers and a community hostage..... That is OK, too, right, as long as the stawk keeps going up, right?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-26/walmart-admits-profits-depend-h...
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/walmart-government-subsidies-study
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/24/business/la-fi-mh-walmarts-depen...
http://www.walmartsubsidywatch.org/
So? Who's fault is that? The companies fault for taking advantage of the system?
I guess you also blame welfare recipients for accepting government handouts.
Defend yourself against a minimum wage high school graduate? What a douche!
Spoken like someone who's never run a company, and who has a lifetime of experience sucking the public teet.
It's the unions, not the high school dropouts.
If you are an American you should be deeply embarrassed by yourself. Consider this - "in order to form a more perfect union...." if you are an American and don't recognize that line please leave
WTF are you talking about?
you think unions are bad?
like running a business bestows some great wisdom? Seen many so called self starters blow it right from the get go. As for governing boards? They too can be stocked with morons.
I believe we all know by this time what happened to all those former companies you ran and used to own. . .
sorry but I could not resist having a few words at your troll, I should have given you more time to respond.
@Anopheles,
You mean like the Ludlow massacree?
Same bloodline defending themselves today.
With your blood.
That was a centruy ago. Why don't you dig up the Civil War while you're at it.
btw, the Union won the US civil war
How much are the Waltons, four of whom are in the top 20 richest people in the US, paying you for each of these posts, you disgusting troll asshole.
How the fuck obvious does if have to be:
Jim Walton, #9 $36 Billion
Allice #12 $32 B
S. Robson #13 $31.7 B
Chrisy #$ $30.2 B
That's $130 fucking BILLION dollars for the Walton heirs, who with the exception of Jim do Jack over shit about running the place, and you dare whine about the nasty unions trying to rip Walmart off? What a fucking tool. I'm no big fan of unions, especially public employee unions ripping off the taxpayers huge time, but Walton's union busting is a bit much, considering the mostly economic lower-class folks they serve.
Oh yeah , a few 8/hr workers are really a fair match for a nearly Trillion dolla r company with armies of lobbyists
If you all knew your place. You should WORSHIP the rich...especially generational inherited riches.
'Plot'? They are exercising their DEMOCRATIC RIGHT to organize themselves for collective bargaining. And the hell of it is that their taxes are being paid out to US government contractors and the FBI to suppress their rights. That is why you are finished as a country. You have lost your way and there is no going back.
So. Now you know how to get a Walmart store closed.
the actress scares me
In the break room they used to have a sign telling you which super PAC you needed to donate your wages to for their damn benefit. Unbelievable. And besides that, their fricking stores stink. I mean smell bad, like 100,000 unwashed VJJ's. Makes me ill to go in them.
It is a race between financial collapse and societal collapse and will really be interesting if they both arrive at the finish line at the same time. There is only so much crap people will take before they go from passive to snapped mode. I know .gov is counting on the police to save them but police appear to be trained to unload their entire clip on the most threatening person. That is fine when they are shooting crazies and bystanders but probably not a good strategy when facing a mass of rioters.
Spiritual collapse first.
Financial collapse next
Sociatal collapse after that.
And ecological collapse after that when all the nookular power plants melt down.
Hitler was right about the us being a pathetic jewish nation. Thats why jewmericans hate him so much. If he was wrong.....there would be no israel.
http://youtu.be/FtK-QCiD-FE
I have a brilliant fucking idea....you work at Walmart and don't like it? Quit. You don't work at Walmart and don't like how they treat their employees? Don't fucking shop there.
That's pretty easy.
They have a right to form a union.
Its easy and likely fun for you to kick poor people.
After all the Walton kids only have 120 billion.
Hardly enough to buy the govt. Ohh wait.
Don't shop there...I don't. Why is that so hard?
First time ever in a WalMart was just after Turkey Day, pair of Wrangler jeans $15. I left a slightly larger than normal tip at the Chinese next door - should balance the universe. Dick's Sporting had average ammo prices so I left nothing extra for the dicks. The rub n tug was closed for the day.
And I have another britlliant idea. Stick your head up your fucking ass and inhale deeply. Smell that? That's your bullshit and you're full of it. Why don't you go get some exlax, at walmart.
Why was CIA ISIS shown in nice pickup trucks
a lottah Patriots drive nice pickup trucks around here...
<-- USSA
Soviet style
Someone said stasi
That make me puzzled
The Obama socialist revolution hits another road block, and another union turns out to be run by corrupt "community organizers".
A year from now, Obama will resume terrorizing Chicago, and "union activists" (aka socialists) will resume playing golf in Florida while their uneducated union members struggle to work double shifts to pay the greens fees. Its the circle of life.
A century ago, unions did some important things and fixed some really bad working conditions -- but like everything else, the success attracted organized crime elements...
Quick someone offshore more jobs!
spy on me FBI for fucks sake my family installed 1000's of security systems all across the US including Texas MAX prisons run by Wacenhut, leaving blueprints, locator codes, alarm button ID's cabling runs, and security Check's controlled by automated computer controlled radio callout
.
While my family is forced to pay lawyer fees to represent hardened felons who distribute and manufacture meth, intimidate and victimize women with the same, may have hypnotized my mother, cheated on my father, burglarized companies and brought their booty over to my house as a child and mortgaged our house to pay themselves for it "my moms business"
.
Once released from prison thanks to representation by lawyers retained by my familys hard earned money, AGAIN manufacture and distribute drugs while hiring multiple felons, giving keys and codes to the front doors of the building and rooms that house afore mentioned security codes and documents including 1000's of old folks homes and other installations as described "garages, personal homes, businesses" to monsters that as described I have only witnessed burglarized and cheat WITH KEYS TO THE FRONT DOOR AS A TOOL OF INTIMIDATION. Totaly defeating childrens security, old folks, law officers, and the public in general.
.
Not only scum hired on by Bruce Tomblin, his son "IDAHO TROY" double crosses the cops as an informant learning locations of drug investigations posing as a informant and taking pictures of the investigators, handlers, and street informants to HAND OFF TO FELONS to avoid prosecution imperiling the security of my family and the community.
.
PLEASE FBI READ THE LETTERS I SENT YOU AND CONTACT ME NOONE WILL TELL ME WHERE IDAHO TROY IS AND I NEED A PROTECTION ORDER
.
great story