Walmart Workers Organizing Informally

   Thousands of Walmart workers are getting organized.  Just don't call it a union.

   OUR Walmart -- Organization United for Respect at Walmart -- has signed up thousands of Walmart workers across the country in recent months and in mid-June launched a Web site -- ourwalmart.org -- and a Facebook page. 

   Although the grassroots effort is not a formal union, it plans to push for better pay, benefits and respect at work, and is funded and supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has been trying to organize Walmart workers for years.

  "I joined OUR Walmart because it provides a voice for the Associates at Walmart," said William, a Customer Service Manager from Texas.  "As an individual at Walmart, if you speak up to managers, you"ll likely get fired...But with OUR Walmart we speak up as a group."

   "We've got Walmart associates in large numgers coming to us and saying, 'We need a voice.  This company is mistreating us.  We want to stay here, but we need to be able to change the way we're being treated,' " Dan Schlademan, UFCW director of Making Change at Walmart,

 told The New York Times.  "The best thing the UFCW can be is a catalyst to help Walmart associates build an organization."