It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively.<p>But WalMart probably doesn't have much to fear from the Labor Department. Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. It's really tough to organize a union today, even though the law as written is pro-union.
Just to play devil's advocate here, this is from the article:<p>> The app, called WorkIt, invites users to register by providing a name, email, telephone number and ZIP Code. Users can also s hare (sic) their job title and Wal-Mart store number....<p>That is a bunch of personally identifying information. You can easily steal somebody's identity with those bits of information, or at least have a good idea of who they are. I see how Walmart's corporate line is at least somewhat believable upon further thought.<p>And there has been no disclosure on how they're storing this information. Are they storing it on AWS/GCE/Azure or Linode? Or do they have their own locked down racks that safeguard this information?<p>Look, I'm not saying that there's anything malicious about this, or the Walmart isn't trying to bust worker collaboration. But, in today's security conscious world, you really should ask these questions when you're requesting PII to sign up to your app.<p>And malice vs carelessness doesn't matter when your personal information is leaked all over the web.
Another link: <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/11/15/wal-mart-tells-workers-dont-download-labor-groups-chat-app.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/11/15/wal-mart-tell...</a><p>Interesting:<p><pre><code> 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.</code></pre>
Walmart is just a front for off loaded cheap Chinese goods. Sure using labor camps, product dumping and destroying the sky doesn't happen in our backyard. But the concept of Walmart as pro American is disgusting. Anything to harm it is good. Good for this app. Bored? I'll fund a new one.
It is a fascinating idea. Let's explore it:<p>The app would let users signal need from a buyer so that workers in their social network could agree on the price to give them.<p>If buyers managed to find the service somewhere else, users could snap a picture of the person/company who won the business and "review" them so that their network knew not to help the winner out, like if their brakes were about to fail or their house caught fire or whatever.<p>Signup would be free but users would pay like %5+ of their paycheck, which they will be fine with because of the increased benefits they get, and we would use the money for expansion and blocking competitors. Uber failed at getting political support because they were greedy capitalists who create injustice, so campaign contributions will be one of our big cost centers, but the returns will be well worth it.<p>Instead of an auction for services and market making like the apps we have today, it's a way to collude to fix prices. If they act now, YC can get %5 for a mere $50m.<p>Imagining the utility elevator pitch, "...no, no, like Grindr but for comrades!" An app for creating labor cartels.<p>What will I call it? "Koloodr."
The most dangerous thing about this app is the certainty that, if it takes off, it'll be filled with union-busting labor "consultants" who'll focus on identifying rebellious workers so Walmart can retaliate against them for some other pretext. Note that Walmart already spends millions of dollars on these particular types of specialized attorneys who do pretty much exactly that except over other channels, so this isn't at all far fetched, despite how evil it sounds.
I'm curious, was this article censored off the front page? I saw it near the top briefly, and then when I clicked back to the front page, it quickly disappeared, and it is still not in the front pages despite racking up votes.