Wal-Mart: the face of twenty-first-century capitalism

Nelson Lichtenstein (ed), The New Press, 349 pages, paperback, £12.99

With the GMB currently in dispute with Wal-Mart’s UK affiliate ASDA, this book couldn’t be more timely.

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer and largest private employer, with more than 5,700 stores employing 1,500,000 workers worldwide. None of its 3,600 stores in the US has union recognition: the company says it employs “associates”, not workers.

As well as cataloguing Wal-Mart’s impact on local communities and the retail sector in general, the authors detail its anti-union practices — providing detailed accounts of union-busting in Texas and in Quebec, where the company shut its operations rather than accept a union voted for by the workers.

The book also discusses how Wal-Mart workers could be organised, with the involvement of local communities and ex-workers. As such it is a useful primer for organising efforts in the retail sector in Britain and elsewhere, especially when faced with a hostile employer.