Warehouse ‘permatemps’ push Walmart accountability
American Public Media
Michelle Hartman
A dozen temporary warehouse workers from Chicago and Los Angeles descended on Walmart’s home town of Bentonville, Ark., last month.
Walmart was holding its annual stakeholders meeting at a big conference center in town — closed to the press and labor groups. As the warehouse workers waited impatiently in the parking lot to give company executives a box of petitions collected by supporters all over the country, they struck up a tune, improvised on “My Girl,” an old Motown number: “I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way — organizing, talk about organizing. . .”
The workers have been organizing for better pay and treatment back home, with rallies, strikes and protest marches outside stores and warehouses. In Bentonville, they sat down quietly with some of the company’s top brass.