Sep 04 2013
Walmart Workers Stage Largest Protest Since Last Year’s Black Friday
In a bold move designed to send a message to the nation’s largest private employer, Walmart employees are staging another protest tomorrow to protest the company’s unfair labor practices.*
The group, OUR Walmart has organized Walmart Associates in fifteen different cities, including here in Los Angeles, to protest illegal firings of Walmart employees who participated in a strike in June and also to demand better wages. Thursday’s walkout will be the largest strike since the Black Friday protests last November. OUR Walmart has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board about the illegal firing of dozens workers who participated in the June strike.
The Walmart Corporation is one of the most profitable companies in the world whose profits topped $4 billion dollars while a large portion of its workers survive off public assistance. Workers are calling for a minimum annual salary of $25,000 a year.
Walmart workers are also hoping that Washington DC Mayor Vince Gray will sign a bill which would require large retailers in DC to pay $12.50 an hour. Walmart walkouts are gaining strength throughout the country as more and more workers join the picket lines.
GUEST: Carlton Smith, former Walmart worker who was fired last year for organizing his fellow workers, Richard Reynoso, stocker at Walmart, who is currently on medical leave
* On the program today, we used the terms “strike” and “walkout” to describe Thursday’s protest. In fact, Walmart workers are protesting rather than walking off the job. Uprising regrets the error.
One Response to “Walmart Workers Stage Largest Protest Since Last Year’s Black Friday”
In support of Walmart employees, I shop at Walmart now, on occasion ,as I’m on a fixed income. When I leave the store, guilt hounds me for having spent my dwindling income money there.
I see the poor people working there and i always talk with them about the hardships of working for a thankless employer. It’s my opinion that Walmart is one of the “GREEDY” employers that brought about the formation of labor unions. Before unions, these
employers worked men, women and Children as slaves, often locked in their unsanitary and unsafe firetraps called “The Workplace” The workers sometimes lost their fingers, toes, eyes limbs and lives.
My Father witnessed these atrocities in his early life and helped to organize the AFL/CIO to help stop them. I was an elected labor leader myself, as a craftsman, and never took one cent in payment
for the things I did for labor. Later as management, I was always fair in dealing with labor, looking at both sides of disputes while keeping my “Roots” in mind. At 73 myself , I know only a few of us who really cared about these issues survive now and we really are past having any influence.
I had occasion to talk with a Walmart management person the last time I was in our Super sized Wallmart. There were only two lines
open in non-express. My wife was in one of the two lines with ice cream and frozen foods in our cart. It took over 30 minutes to get one additional checker into the fray. The first two lines were over 20 carts long. After listening to her (the management person) for awhile, I politely told her to stop with the excuses and do something.
The shame of the whole Walmart situation is that no action has been taken against them by the NLRB. Guess maybe it’s a political thing!