Warehouse Workers Strike In Illinois On Heels Of California Walkout
Huffington Post
Dave Jamieson
A strike among warehouse workers in Southern California has spread to northeastern Illinois, where a group of workers at a distribution center for Walmart goods walked off the job over the weekend.
The walkout by roughly 30 employees of a labor agency in Elwood, Ill., near Joliet, mirrors another strike, begun last week, by another group of 30 warehouse workers in Mira Loma, Calif. Both the Illinois and California facilities handle products headed to Walmart stores throughout the country, although none of the workers in question are directly employed by the retail giant.
The individuals in California went on strike over what they described as unsafe working conditions at the warehouse, while those in Illinois walked out claiming that supervisors had retaliated against them after they brought a list of grievances to management.
Phillip Bailey, a worker at the Elwood warehouse, told The Huffington Post that he and some 30 colleagues on Saturday brought a petition to their employer, the logistics company RoadLink, demanding a living wage and regular hours. (Bailey and three other workers had filed a lawsuit against RoadLink two days earlier.) According to Bailey, the supervisors told the group of workers they were temporarily suspended, and the workers then went a strike.