Posted on 11/29/2013 10:18:17 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Walmart, the United States' largest private employer with 1.3 million workers, is in major crisis mode. The brave Walmart workers, who've been putting their jobs on the line and getting arrested for over a year to demand an end to illegal retaliation for speaking out, full-time work for those who want it, and a living wage, are hoping to make history yet again on Black Friday - the busiest shopping day of the year in the US - by striking, protesting, and holding rallies at 1,500 stores across the country. In addition to major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Philadelphia, actions are also planned in Granbury, Texas, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Elk City, Oklahoma, and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
To make matters worse for a corporation that brought in $17bn in profits last year, a store in northeast Ohio is receiving widespread negative publicity in the national media for holding a food drive for workers who can't afford Thanksgiving dinner. A sign in the employee lounge read, "Please donate food items here so Associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner." In other words, let's ask our poorly paid employees to bring in cans of food so other poorly paid employees can afford to eat.
The group Making Change at Walmart is running a television ad about the food drive in Washington DC, and Bentonville, AR, home to Walmart's headquarters. In it, Martha Sellers says, "All of your sales floor associates and cashiers are struggling to make a living. When is enough enough?" It also shows talking heads on television looking dumbfounded about the fact that far too many workers don't earn enough to make ends meet. Over 825,000 workers make less than $25,000 a year. Those who want full-time work say they can't get it and rarely know what their schedule will be from week to week.
The average worker makes $8.81 an hour or $17,000 a year, forcing many to rely on taxpayer-funded public assistance programs to make ends meet. John Paul Ashton, a 31-year-old Washington-based Walmart maintenance worker who makes $20,000 a year, has no choice but to rely on food stamps to put food on the table. Patricia Locks, a 48-year-old single mom who has worked at Walmart for 11 years in the Seattle, Washington area, barely makes $19,000 a year. She lives in low-income housing, relies on food banks and food stamps to feed her teenage daughter, and can't afford health insurance.
And all they are asking for is $25,000 a year and the chance to work full-time. Walmart CEO Michael Duke's annual $35m salary gives him more in an hour than a full-time employee makes in a year. He just announced plans to step down. The combined wealth of the Walton family's six heirs to Walmart's enormous fortune is now worth more than $93bn. They have more money than nearly half of all American households. And yet, their greedy business practices cost taxpayers billions of dollars in subsidies.
A May congressional report prepared for the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce looks at the cost of Walmart's low wages on taxpayers. It found that a 300-employee Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin costs taxpayers $900,000 to $1.75m a year in public assistance programs. Wisconsin has 100 Walmarts, 75 are Supercenters. Where are the conservatives obsessed with so-called entitlements and socialism when you need them?
Back in 2004, a UC Berkeley Institute for Industrial Relations study found that California taxpayers spend $86m a year providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state's 44,000 Walmart employees. And according to Walmart Subsidy Watch, a website run by Good Jobs First, Walmart has received more than $1.2bn in tax breaks, land deals, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing, and grants from state and local governments across the country. Academics and researchers have been issuing these reports for years, but only now is the information becoming widely disseminated and discussed, thanks to the worker's actions.
Because they are not unionized, many are paying a heavy price for speaking out. According to OURWalmart, 80 employees have been fired for engaging in civil disobedience. Employees who were illegally fired for speaking out have spent the past few days in freezing weather outside Walmart's corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas calling on executives to pay a living wage and end the retaliation. The National Labor Relations Board is pursuing charges against the company for illegally firing and disciplining more than 117 workers, including many who went on strike last June. It found that Walmart stores in 14 states across the country unlawfully threatened, disciplined, or terminated employees for engaging in legally protected strikes and protests. The Nation's Lee Fang is out with a report about Joseph Kefauver, a former Walmart executive who is now running a smear campaign against Black Friday activists through his government relations firm Parquet Public Affairs.
Find a protest in your area and support these workers. As Patricia Locks says, "No one who works for one of the world's largest and wealthiest companies should have to live like this. I don't think it's asking too much to earn enough so I don't have to rely on food banks and other assistance to survive."
*********
Rose Aguilar is the host of Your Call, a daily call-in radio show on KALW in San Francisco.
The unions are salivating at the prospect of collecting union dues from 1 million Walmart employees, but it’s WalMart that’s greedy.
Oh my ...cry me a river.
You don’t like working for Wal Mart and making $9 an hour? Then GO TO COLLEGE, get some training . . . it’s not that hard.
I work at a major big box retailer. I am, however, salaried. Lots of the older adults working in the store are either retired, with time on their hands, or they’re people who just CHOSE not to get additional education. Sometimes they are disabled in some way. But MOST of them made choices ...
I made the choice LONG AGO to work my way through college, without a dime’s assistance from anyone. I stressed myself out beyond reason to do this, and then got married to a fellow college grad. We’ve stayed married and we’ve done very well. It was a lot of work and energy when I was young . ..but it paid off.
A few of the people I’ve met in the store that I work at will admit to me ...they got into trouble when they were young ...made some bad choices (i.e drank and did drugs) and so now they pay the price of that. Did they all come from bad families and bad circumstances? I doubt it.
So sick of unions and the people in them. I came from nothing and wasn’t given a thing. In fact, I came from a highly, highly dysfunctional family. But I took advantage of ALL this country has to offer. They could too ...but they were too lazy and stupid to do it while they could.
Sick of the whiners in this country.
Walmart employees are a lot of things but “brave” is not one of them.
“The average worker makes $8.81 an hour or $17,000 a year, forcing many to rely on taxpayer-funded public assistance programs to make ends meet.”
I’ve never made more than twenty grand a year and I’ve yet to have to rely on any form of extorted public assistance to make my ends meet. The closest I came was living in a rent-controlled apartment, and that was only for two years. What little help I have gotten I got voluntarily from friends and family, all of whom gave it because I’m a hard-working young man who has never been a moocher.
Granted, I acknowledge that some people have families and that complicates things, but hey, if you decided to have one without making sure you could afford it ten times over, the mistake and burden of working things out is on you.
Your experience parallels mind. Having selected the wrong parents, I worked throughout my college years, working as a radio announcer on the side. At one time I worked for two stations, putting in over 40 hours a week; my doctor finally told me that doing this would permanently hurt my health, so I cut back...a little.
I took no fewer than 15 hours per semester, often 18.
Consequently, I was successful in life, married a college grad, and Mrs. OP and I have been married for 42 years.
Uh, that would “mine” not “mind.” I know the difference.
Nope, just Obama's DC.
I had to put up with this crap from a pro-union aunt this Thanksgiving who bragged about how she would never shop at Walmart because of how they treat their workers. Telling her that every retail store, including her beloved Macy's, worked the same way with low pay and part time hours, that even more employers would have that type of job in the future, and that when 14000 people applied for 400 jobs it can't be that bad of job. Did she even hear me talking? I saw no evidence of it.
i’m not going to read the article but i saw a report on the protestors outside of a walmart in chicago yesterday...the reported made a point to tell everyone that “only a handful of these protestors are actual employees of walmart”....
I’m starting to think that “Al Jazeera” is an Al Gore plot to make the MSM look good.
Consider the source...
This network has anemic rating and I see no relief in sight....it’s a government project so it will be around forever but it is at it’s zenith right now!!!
I’d give a half-moment of attention to these idiots if they were capable of differentiating WEALTH from MONEY. The vast majority cannot.
The only crisis I see for Wal-Mart is what to do with it's money. Wal-Mart is an American icon of the capitalist system. I go there to save money not to advance any ones future. Their employees are getting exactly what they were promised....they are free to take the next step up.
And how is this article different than what we read every day in the New York Times or Washington Post or see on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc.?
I have to say I wouldn’t work at Walmart for minimum wage when you consider the customer base. They all should get hazardous duty pay.
It’s a religion with them.
I have the same with the retired trade unionist father of an ex-girlfriend.
84 years old and has never woken up. Typical “I got mine, how’s yours type”
Typical unionRAT thief.
“I got mine, how’s yours type
Typical unionRAT thief. “
Yes, and they are the only ones that should be making any money. Everything should be free. They are entitled to everything. Cheaper than sh** when it comes to paying for anything.
Employers should have a company meeting and blatantly ask; "If you're a Christian...raise your hand."
"You folks will have Thanksgiving and Christmas off."
"OK, who are moslems?"
"Who are atheists?"
I use to work in a milk processing plant. We worked 365/24/7 because cows don't take days off. If you worked one of the eight holidays you got double time, holiday pay and a day off of your choice later. Plus they would generally bring in pizza.
There was usually a list of people putting in to work those days.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.