“When the [National Labor Relations Act] was passed [in 1935], nobody imagined a company like Walmart,” says Making Change at Walmart Campaign Director Dan Schlademan. “The antiquated aspects of the law play into Walmart’s hands.” The union recognition process under the NLRA permits employers such as Walmart to vigorously, even ruthlessly, campaign against unions and suffer only minor penalties for law-breaking.

So organizers at Walmart devised a new strategy. “We got together a group of Walmart associates,” many of them veterans of earlier campaigns, says Schlademan. “What people came up with was, ‘Let’s stop waiting for the government or Walmart to say we can have an organization. Let’s build an organization now and begin to create a voice for Walmart workers as they face real issues now.’”

The result was OUR Walmart: not a union seeking recognition at a single store, but a nationwide network of hourly associates seeking to pressure the retail giant into better companywide practices through collective action. “Like all movements for change, not everyone is involved, but there’s a committed core,” says Schlademan.“[As in the] civil rights movement, the courageous ones are standing [up], then others stand with them, and bigger things are bound to happen in the future.”

OUR Walmart’s structure hearkens back to what historian Staughton Lynd called the “alternative unionism” of the 1930s. These workers regarded everyone as a leader, acted locally without waiting for national union organizers and created local unions that were linked in horizontal solidarity rather than through subordination to a central hierarchy. Some workers formed non-union associations that often became more like a union over time. Others formed “minority” unions without waiting for majority support; employers were still obliged to bargain with these unions for their members’ rights. Now-retired labor law professors Clyde Summers and Charles Morris argue that even under the NLRA, such unions—now rare—have the same legal rights as majority unions.

“The most recent tax disclosure from the Walmart Foundation, obtained by The Nation, shows that between February 2011 and January 2012, the company gave over $175.68 million in grants to charities, municipalities, churches and various community groups across the country, from the Environmental Defense Fund to Friends of NRA to Puppies Behind Bars. Our review of the foundation’s giving reveals that it has donated considerable cash to groups that have gone on the record to support Walmart during its most contentious political disputes, including the ongoing effort to open stores in New York City. The foundation also donates directly to municipalities, funds groups tied to powerful elected officials and instructs grantees to publicize Walmart’s generosity.

Leslie Dach, who oversees the foundation as Walmart’s most senior executive devoted to political affairs, touted the benefits of the company’s philanthropy during a presentation to investors in October 2010. According to a transcript, Dach described “our reputation” as “a lever” in pursuing the company’s goals, which he said include “new markets,” among them “urban America.” A former Democratic Party operative, Dach also extolled the company’s improved polling numbers among self-identified “liberals” and “moderates.”’

From Obama, this is totally unsurprising.