The chief scheduler does not fear an app because......
Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App
App designed by worker organization OUR Walmart is in the retail giant’s crosshairs
Wal-Mart has a long history of fighting union activity in its stores. More recently, the company has worked to address some labor-rights leaders’ concerns. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is discouraging store workers from downloading a smartphone app designed by OUR Walmart, an organization that advocates for higher pay and other benefits, as the battle between employers and labor groups increasingly shifts to social media.
The app, released on Android phones Monday, allows Wal-Mart store employees to chat among themselves and receive advice on workplace policies or legal rights, said leaders from OUR Walmart on a conference call. The group declined to say how many people had downloaded the app, which it tested with about 200 users.
Wal-Mart has instructed store managers to tell their employees that the app wasn’t made by the company and described it as a scheme to gather workers’ personal information, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The worker organization is “increasingly trying to get our associates to turn over personal information to the union by using deceptive and slick looking social media and mobile apps,” according to the document.
OUR Walmart, which says it has thousands of paying members, isn’t a traditional union because members don’t have collective bargaining rights. It separated last year from the United Food and Commercial Workers International, which has tried unsuccessfully for years to organize workers at Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores. In previous years, the group has staged Black Friday protests at Wal-Mart locations. This year it plans to encourage store workers to download the new app over the holiday shopping weekend.
The app, called WorkIt, invites users to register by providing a name, email, telephone number and ZIP Code. Users can also s hare their job title and Wal-Mart store number, but anyone can download the app. The app doesn’t access a user’s location or smartphone contacts, and lets users opt out of photo access, said Dan Schlademan, co-director of OUR Walmart.
“There is no way to know if the details this group is pushing are correct,” Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg said in an emailed statement. “Our people are smart and see this for what it is: an attempt by an outside group to collect as much personal and private information as possible.”
Wal-Mart has a long history of fighting union activity in its stores. More recently, Wal-Mart has worked to address some labor-rights leaders’ concerns, increasing the starting wage of its 1.3 million U.S. employees to $9 last year, adding training aimed at helping workers advance and other measures. Still, as the country’s largest private employer, it is often the focus of workers’ rights campaigns.
While other labor groups have created apps to broadcast news, the WorkIt app is unusual because it allows users to chat with each other and solicit personal workplace advice.
“This is a battle for the hearts and minds of the workers,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. In the future, “human resource management will be on people’s telephones.”
As unions struggle to maintain membership and relevancy, both employers and organizers are rushing to control the messages employees digest through social media and mobile devices. Employers are launching mobile scheduling apps and finding ways to push human-resource messages out through social media or digital advertising. Wal-Mart is in the process of rolling out a test of its own mobile app to communicate with store employees, mostly as a way to quickly give employees access to their schedules, said a person familiar with the plans.
Wal-Mart employees are already swapping advice or sharing stories on Facebook, Reddit, and other social media sites. For example, there is one Facebook group for Wal-Mart workers with more than 20,000 members. However, those conversations can be disorganized or inaccurate, driving the need for an app with curated responses, said OUR Walmart leaders.
OUR Walmart developed the WorkIt app with Quadrant 2, a New York City-based software development company that has designed products for companies and activist organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union.
The app uses International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson artificial-intelligence technology to build a set of answers to employee questions over time, said Jason Van Anden, founder of Quadrant 2. If Watson is stumped “there is a peer network of experts that will interact with the users,” said Mr. Van Anden.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com
