Following a five-day organizing training and strategy summit in Birmingham, members of the labor group OUR Walmart will announce a plan to send civil rights movement\u2013style caravans of workers from around country to converge at the retail giant\u2019s June 7 annual shareholder meeting.<\/p>\n
Walmart workers active in OUR Walmart, a non-union organization backed by the United Food & Commercial Workers union, plan to make the announcement on a video live-stream from Birmingham at 4 pm Central Time today. Several days before the shareholder gathering, caravans will leave from several cities around the country, stopping along the way to pick up workers and supporters, and to meet with community activists. OUR Walmart\u2019s plans for the next month also include confrontations between Walmart employees and members of the company\u2019s board of directors.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Walmart worker Tsehai Almaz told The Nation that after visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and meeting with local clergy, she and other OUR Walmart leaders were inspired to follow the example of the 1961 freedom riders. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re facing many of the same issues,\u201d said Almaz, \u201ceven though it\u2019s not necessarily about race\u2014this time it\u2019s about respect. And being able to feed our families, and having good working conditions.\u201d Almaz, a support manager who\u2019s worked for the company for about a year, said that she was driven to join the campaign after she and several co-workers were needlessly injured in a rash of workplace accidents in her store.<\/p>\n
OUR Walmart activists were also present at the company\u2019s 2012 shareholder meeting. At that gathering, Walmart workers brought a petition urging the resignation of the company\u2019s CEO and board chair, and read a shareholder resolution from the floor calling for restrictions on executive pay. Since then, Walmart retail workers followed guest workers at a Walmart shrimp supplier, and sub-contracted Walmart warehouse workers, in walking off the job\u2014the first coordinated Walmart retail strikes within the United States.<\/p>\n
As The Nation has reported, the current campaign has outpaced past efforts by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in Walmart\u2019s supply chain, developing worker leadership through local shop floor showdowns, and mounting carefully crafted work stoppages designed to engage more workers, while dodging the obstacles facing modern US strikes. Still, OUR Walmart activists remain a small minority: their most significant action so far\u2014a Black Friday strike by some 400 workers\u2014mobilized less than one of every 1,000 direct US Walmart employees.<\/p>\n