Wal-Mart Archive
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Walmart Workers Fighting Back
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012TriStates Public Radio
Bill Knight
As the world’s largest retailer last month filled aisles with Halloween candy and cheap costumes, workers from coast to coast conducted an effective “trick ‘r treat” job action, and now others are taking the giant retailer to court.
Walmart workers protested low wages, slashed hours and management retaliation last month with a Los Angeles work stoppage that spread to more than a dozen cities, and Illinois employees who a ran a huge warehouse near Joliet shut down the facility before returning to work with back pay and a pledge for no retaliation. The Elwood, Ill., workers belong to the Warehouse Workers Organizing Committee, which accuses the giant retailer of retaliating against outspoken employees and with wage theft, meaning paying less than legal wages for work actually performed.
Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit, Twanda Burkes et al. vs. Walmart Stores Inc., filed Oct. 29 in U.S. District Court in Chicago accuses the chain and two staffing agencies of requiring temporary workers to show up early, stay late, and work through lunch there.
Media Release: Walmart Warehouse Workers in Elwood, IL Demand an End To Illegal Retaliation
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012WWJ Media Release
Unfair Labor Practice Charges Are Filed with the National Labor Relations Board
Wednesday November 14, 2012, warehouse workers filed charges of unfair labor practices against four employers operating Walmart’s largest distribution center located in Elwood, IL.
Schneider Logistics, Roadlink Workforce Solutions, Select Remedy and Skyward Employment Service are all charged with violating workers rights under the law. Illegal threats, intimidation and discipline against workers organizing for improved conditions are the bases for the unfair labor practice charges filed today.
“We work hard and deserve to be paid fairly, have a safe workplace and be treated with dignity as human beings. If Walmart thinks we will be silenced by this illegal retaliation, they are wrong” said Walmart warehouse worker Phil Bailey.
In Mira Loma, CA today dozens of warehouse workers walked off the job at a Walmart-contracted warehouse Wednesday morning to call for an end to continued retaliation against workers advocating for fair treatment and safe conditions.
Workers at the Walmart warehouse in Elwood, IL went on strike for three weeks this fall to protest unfair labor practices committed by Roadlink Workforce Solutions. They won their three week strike on October 6th when Roadlink rescinded all retaliation and paid the strikers for all the days they were on strike. The unfair labor practice strike was triggered by management’s discipline against workers attempting to present the company their concerns about wage theft, unsafe conditions and discrimination. They are demanding an end to retaliation against workers who organize to end the poor conditions.
Warehouse workers labor under extreme temperatures, lifting thousands of boxes that can weigh up to 250 lbs each. Workplace injuries are common; workers rarely earn a living wage or have any benefits.
Warehouse Workers for Justice is an Illinois worker center dedicated to fighting for quality jobs in the distribution industry that can sustain families and communities.
When Walmart Workers Strike: What You Need to Know and What Happens Next
Tuesday, November 13th, 2012The Nation
Josh Eidelson
Thursday, Walmart warehouse workers are headed back to the picket line. At 8 am PST, twenty-some workers in Mira Loma, California, plan to launch a one-day walkout that could spread to more workers, including retail employees in Walmart stores. Thursday’s strike will be the latest in an unprecedented wave of work stoppages throughout the retail giant’s US supply chain. It follows strikes by seafood workers in June, by warehouse workers in September, and by 160 retail workers in twelve states last month. It comes a week before Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza that workers have pledged—barring concessions from the company—will bring their biggest disruptions yet.
“Hopefully it will make a dent in their production…” said Raymond Castillo, “and it gets their attention, that we’re not playing around.” Castillo and other Mira Loma workers struck in September, and voted Sunday to do it again on Thursday. According to Castillo, workers started organizing because of unsafe and unsanitary conditions: crooked ramps caused serious injuries; workers’ drinking water came from a hose. The organizing brought retaliation, which inspired a strike, which drew more punishment. “Since we’ve all been retaliated against,” said Castillo, “it was a pretty easy decision for all of us to go back on strike.”
Walmart workers sue for unpaid wages
Thursday, October 25th, 2012People’s World
Mark Grunberg
CHICAGO – The other shoe – the legal one – has dropped in Wal-Mart’s constant low pay and bad benefits for its workers: 20 temp workers in a Chicago-area store sued in federal court for unpaid wages.
The class action complaint, filed Oct. 22, said Walmart and two staffing agencies, QPS and Labor Ready, required workers show up early for work, stay late, and work through lunch at the world’s largest retailer, all unpaid, among other violations.
Sometimes, workers toiled so long their hourly pay didn’t end up meeting the minimum wage. Other times, they’d be called in but kept on stand by, not getting paid the state-required 4-hour minimum wage. That also deprived them of the chance to seek other work those days.
The suit says the affected workers are among a group of 20-30 temps the two staffing agencies summoned to work at the Walmart store in suburban Crestwood. The law breaking there began three years ago, in October 2009. The suit said their class could include temp workers at other Chicago-area Walmarts.
The workers seek unpaid overtime, pay covering the difference between what they actually got and Illinois’ minimum wage, damages and a court injunction banning Walmart – legally considered a “joint employer” – and the staffing agencies from further state and federal wage and hour labor law-breaking. No trial date has been set yet.
How Workers are Using Globalization Against Walmart
Thursday, October 25th, 2012Truthout
Matthew CunninghamCook
The recent Walmart strikes — beginning first among warehouse workers in California, then spreading to others in Elwood, Illinois, and finally to Walmart retail stores across the United States — raise the possibility that workers may be able to crack the anti-union wall at the country’s largest employer. The new momentum seems likely to spread among many more workplaces to come. But these wildcat strikes are a reminder that, if American workers are to have a better-organized future, they will have to better understand where their corporate opponents are vulnerable.
The Walmart strikes are part of a significant reevaluation of organizing strategy by labor unions and activists in the context of the continuing decline of unionism in the United States — where fewer than 7 percent of workers in the private sector belong to a union. As Nadine Bloch pointed out two weeks ago, such wildcat strikes on multiple levels of the supply chain at Walmart are unprecedented, and groups like OUR Walmart and Warehouse Workers for Justice are planning to escalate the campaign in the coming weeks.
Over the past three decades, there has been a tremendous shift in the work lives of almost everyone in the United States wrought by processes of globalization. With the deregulation of trade in favor of multinational corporations (exemplified in trade deals such as NAFTA), and the emergence of hyper-specialization, most major commodities are now produced with components manufactured all over the world, selected through a competitive bidding process that aims to extract the maximum profit.