Wal-Mart warehouse strike heats up
Salon
Natasha Lennard
The giant retailer had to shut down a distribution facility
On Monday, 600-plus people marched to Wal-Mart’s vast distribution warehouse in Elwood, Ill., to show support for 30 non-union workers who have been on strike since mid-September. Riot police were called in and arrested 17 people as a group of marchers sat down to block the road to the warehouse. However, in successfully shutting down the facility for the day, strikers and their supporters estimate their protest Monday cost the company several million dollars.
The civil disobedience also brought attention to the strike, which has continued for weeks with no media fanfare. Workers cite unsafe conditions and low wages as fueling their industrial action, along with complaints about long shifts with no breaks and sexual harassment. Micah Uetricht reported for Labor Notes on Monday’s march, the strike and the reasons underpinning it:
At the rally—surely the largest in Elwood history—workers told of backbreaking work for little pay, temperatures that oscillate between sweltering heat and bitter cold, management retaliation, and gender discrimination.
Yolanda Dickerson, who had worked in a warehouse for two years, says she “was sexually harassed on a regular basis,” recounting an incident of being locked in a trailer by male co-workers. After Dickerson reported the incident, she says management did nothing. WWJ [Warehouse Workers for Justice] says such reports are common.
[…] and the Strikers in Chicago shut down their warehouse with a mass demonstration that culminated in civil disobedience. Very soon thereafter Wal-Mart store employees (Associates in Wal-Mart Speak) struck over a dozen […]