Wal-Mart: Say NO to OUR App!

OUR, Wal-Mart’s labor group founded with the help of the United Food and Commercial Workers International (UFCW), recently designed a new application called WorkIt that allows the company’s employees to chat about workplace policies and employee rights. However, Wal-Mart instructed its store managers to advise their employees not to download the app because it was just a scheme to get personal and private information from its workers. Given Wal-Mart’s long history of fighting union activities and organizations in its stores, it is only normal that employees feel skeptical about following this advice. However, OUR might not have enough influence to convince employees to use the app either.

OUR (Organization United for Respect) isn’t like other workers’ unions; its members don’t have collective bargaining rights and have been shut down by Wal-Mart many times for alleged illegal protests, which is in turn illegal according to Federal Law. Moreover, organizing a worker’s union for a company like Wal-Mart hasn’t been easy. In 2005, there was an attempt to build a group named Wake Up Walmart, a precursor to OUR, but the effort went nowhere. The UFCW also attempted and failed for many years, before OUR decided to separate from it last year, to organize workers at all Wal-Mart’s US stores.

Olson would not be surprised by this; indeed, this is exactly what he would expect according to his taxonomy of groups. With 1.4 million employees, just in the US, Wal-Mart’s OUR is clearly a “sleeping giant”, or how Olson formally describes it: a latent group. There are many members, thus the free-rider problem is intense and contributing is irrational. Also, it isn’t a closed shot group since workers are not required to participate. But, what has really doomed OUR are its weak selective incentives. The list of selective incentives isn’t and hasn’t been strong enough to overcome the free-rider problem. OUR has failed to prove that joining the group has potential great benefits for them. With unions moving their focus to social media, OUR is hoping that the new app will have a positive impact and convince its members that unity makes strength. Nonetheless, waking up this sleeping giant might take a lot more effort than that.