From Portland to Seattle, Miami to Washington, D.C., Chicago to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Walmart workers and their allies held job actions Nov. 23 — Black Friday — to protest against the world’s largest retailer’s low wages, lousy benefits, and retaliation against workers who speak out.
How widespread were the protests? Try even Seguin, Texas.
“We went to the Seguin Walmart about 8:30 this morning. Myself, my sister and my two nieces ages 13 and 16,” one woman wrote to changewalmart.org, one of the groups organizing the protests. “We had our homemade signs —‘WalMart Always Low Wages.’ We read the prayer and sang some songs and engaged in a few conversations with customers who were curious. But then Walmart called the police and made us leave.
“The officers refused to arrest us, much to the manager’s dismay. There was another manager — who looked like security — who copied down each of our sign messages. It was scary and intimidating. There were only four of us, all small women/girls. A local newspaper reporter saw us and took down all the information. I hope we made a difference even though we were there less than 40 minutes. I hope this army of four makes a headline in our small town!”
That “army of four” in a town of 22,000 east of San Antonio was duplicated on a much larger scale in 1,000 protests nationwide that drew tens of thousands of people.
Nearly 200 people rallied in pouring rain outside the Walmart store at Eastport Plaza in Southeast Portland. Among the protesters were Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz and Commissioner-elect Steve Novick. Walmart has opened three new stand-alone grocery stores in the Portland metro area, with the possibility of 14 more in years to come.
Five hundred people protested in Miami. An “OurWalmart” rally in Paramount, Calif., attracted more than 1,000 people. OurWalmart is a group of company workers organized last year to work for change from the inside.
Other Walmart workers staged walkouts in St. Paul, Minn., Milwaukee and Kenosha, Wis., Lancaster, Texas, Albuquerque and Clovis, N.M., and Chicago.
Unions and union members, notably the United Food and Commercial Workers, supported the protests, but did not organize them.
At every rally protesters demanded justice, living wages, and decent benefits for the retailer’s 1.4 million workers. They also demanded respect, a voice on the job, and no retaliation for speaking out.
At the same time workers were protesting on Black Friday, Walmart executives took time out to announce that the next Walmart dividend will go out on Dec. 27 instead of Jan. 2. Why the switch? According to veteran labor journalist Sam Pizzigati, who edits the online blog Too Much, the Bush tax cut for dividends expires at year-end. Switching the date will save the billionaire heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton as much as $180 million. That amount is enough to give 72,000 Walmart workers now making $8 an hour (barely over the federal minimum wage of $7.25) a 20 percent annual pay hike. [That would still leave them under the poverty line for a family of three.]
At the same time, the family of the late founder Sam Walton have a net worth of $102.7 billion — more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America.
Six members of the Walton family appear on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. Christy Walton, widow of John Walton, leads the clan at No. 6 with a net worth of $25.3 billion as of March 2012. She is also the richest woman in the world for the seventh year in a row, according to Forbes. The other five are: No. 9: Jim Walton, $23.7 billion; No. 10: Alice Walton, $23.3 billion; No. 11: S. Robson Walton, oldest son of Sam Walton, $23.1 billion; No. 103: Ann Walton Kroenke, $3.9 billion; and No. 139: Nancy Walton Laurie, $3.4 billion.
“I’m standing up for all Walmart workers around the country so Walmart will give us a living wage and so Walmart will stop retaliating against us when we speak up,” Charmaine Givens-Thomas told In These Times after she spoke at a rally at a Walmart in the Chicago suburbs. That rally drew around 250 people. “I want them (Walmart) to understand we just want to be able to pay our bills from one paycheck to the next and for them to respect us,” she said.
(Editor’s Note: Press Associates Inc. contributed to this report.)
