Nov 08 2013

Walmart Workers Up the Ante, Plan Major Black Friday Protests Second Year In a Row

Imagine two people working for the same company doing the same job but one of them gets paid much less and has fewer benefits. Would you think that was fair? Well, unfortunately, this is the situation for American employees of the world’s largest company, Walmart. While Walmart workers or associates in Europe, Brazil, Argentina and even China are allowed to unionize, and hence get better wages and benefits, Walmart’s US employees are forbidden from joining a union.

To help remedy this, Walmart workers have been organizing sporadic one-day strikes across the nation and here in Southern California over many months. Just last night police arrested 54 people at a walkout at the Walmart in LA’s Chinatown. The day before, workers at a Walmart store in Paramount walked off the job demanding better working conditions and pay.

The labor organizing group OUR Walmart has been helping coordinate the walkout efforts which they are hoping will result in Walmart offering a minimum wage of at least $25,000 a year for their full time employees.

Workers are building momentum for their next big walkout action on Black Friday which is the nation’s biggest shopping day the Friday after Thanksgiving. Last year’s Black Friday saw 400 associates walk off the job.

GUEST: Josh Eidelson is a staff reporter at Salon.com who has been covering the Walmart walkouts

Click here to read Josh Eidelson’s work.

Visit www.forrespect.org for more about OUR Walmart’s campaign.

Visit BlackFridayProtests.org for more about the planned Black Friday walkouts by Walmart workers.

Visit associatevoices.org for Walmart workers and solidarity organizers to plan protests.

2 responses so far

2 Responses to “Walmart Workers Up the Ante, Plan Major Black Friday Protests Second Year In a Row”

  1. Joeon 08 Nov 2013 at 8:15 pm

    At what point did an employer become responsible for an employee’s life’s decisions and bills? Walmart offers people a job for a certain rate of pay. If you accept then you work, if you can’t make ends meet then my heart goes out to you but you have to work a second job, get a better job, or go back to school. I don’t like how these employees are strong arming this employer. If you don’t like their policies don’t work for them and definitely don’t buy from them but don’t blame them for the work they offered you and the debt you accumulated.

  2. Angelaon 10 Nov 2013 at 9:08 am

    Joe; You need to watch Network. It was a comedy which became realty. You don’t understand and even me sitting here trying to explain it to you will not make you understand it. So go and read a newspaper and educate yourself. You are in the bottom 80 % for a reason (we are all).

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