Black Friday : Walmart workers on strike near you!

[blake 3:17]

Just got this in:

Strikes are spreading through Walmart’s stores nationwide and Black Friday is fast approaching. Today, Walmart workers in Ohio walked off the job.

Can you come out to a Black Friday protest near you?

Last week, Walmart workers in Chicago and Seattle joined their coworkers in going on strike to protest Walmart’s retaliation against those who speak out. Today, Walmart workers in Ohio went on strike for the same reason.

They’ve asked community supporters to mark Black Friday (November 29th) on their calendars. Can you come out to an event in your area (or host an event is no one has yet)?

Find an event in your area now:

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/black-friday-near-you

In Solidarity,
Making Change at Walmart

Thank You,
Making Change at Walmart

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: UFCW and OUR Walmart have the purpose of helping Wal-Mart employees as individuals or groups in their dealings with Wal-Mart over labor rights and standards and their efforts to have Wal-Mart publically commit to adhering to labor rights and standards. UFCW and OUR Walmart have no intent to have Walmart recognize or bargain with UFCW or OUR Walmart as the representative of Walmart employees.

[Red_Banner]

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/18/walmart-prosecuted-union-strike-workers

[RO17]

Walmart workers often get paid so little that they have go on food stamps and welfare (in the US at least) in order to stay afloat in the ever turning tide of the economy. I hope more people unionize and protest against Walmart's abuse of it's workers.

[blake 3:17]

If you can make it to any actions in support of walmart workers that's great!


Saw this slighly uplifting & mostly depressing news:

A Walmart in northeast Ohio is holding a holiday canned food drive — for its own underpaid employees. “Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” a sign reads in the employee lounge of a Canton-area Walmart.
Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, says the drive is a positive thing. “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships,” he said. Indeed, Lundberg is correct that it’s commendable to make an effort to help out those who are in need, especially during the holidays.


But the need for a food drive illustrates how difficult it is for Walmart workers to get by on its notoriously low pay. The company has long been plagued by charges that it doesn’t pay its employees a real living wage. In fact, Walmart’s President and CEO, Bill Simon, recently estimated that the majority of its one million associates make less than $25,000 per year, just above the federal poverty line of $23,550 for a family of four. When the Washington DC city council passed a living wage bill requiring Walmart to pay workers a minimum of $12.50 per hour, the chain threatened to shut down its new stores if Mayor Vincent Gray didn’t veto the bill. Gray vetoed the bill.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/18/2960371/walmart-food-drive/

[RO17]

If you can make it to any actions in support of walmart workers that's great!


Saw this slighly uplifting & mostly depressing news:


They use a hostage situation to get their way with the Mayor.. How can people just allow corporations to play with politics?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Is anyone involved with the group that's trying to unionize WalMart? I'm wondering why they haven't tried to group up with the fast food workers and star bucks workers? A collective strike at walmart, fast food and star bucks seems like it would be pretty devastating

[RedWaves]

I've known several people that worked at walmart. One worked there for 12 years and while she had been there over a decade, she was on welfare at the same time and barely paying her bills to get by.

Walmart pays their workers so low, it's so true when people bring up how they barely can get by without food stamps or welfare.

Worst part is how all this is ignored, I've seen cities give Walmart millions in tax dollars to come in and build a new store. They have more than enough money to pay their workers but refuse to.

[RedWaves]

Is anyone involved with the group that's trying to unionize WalMart? I'm wondering why they haven't tried to group up with the fast food workers and star bucks workers? A collective strike at walmart, fast food and star bucks seems like it would be pretty devastating


From what I was told by my friends that worked there, you have no unions at all. If you are even caught talking to a union you can be fired.

There's a reason they put a whole line of security cameras over the employees and barely any around the store to monitor for vandalism and thieves.


The documentary "Walmart: The High Price of Low" went deep into this to. They are extremely anti-union.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Walmart's policy on union busting is industry standard at this point, I'm very familiar with it. I'm asking if anyone is actively involved with ourwalmart or respect or whatever they're called now.

[RedWaves]

Spoke with two people about this today.

They had strikes last year before Black Friday, but the sales were still through the roof.


From what I have been told, that is one of the scariest times to work for Walmart. People act like animals starving over food to buy their consumerist goods cheaper. There has even been worker deaths over the stampedes going into the doors.

[Logical seal]

Shit redwaves, I'm sorry, But the only right option is simply

Don't go to work at walmart at profit over-life friday

Its the safest shit for the workers, And the best action to generally do.

[blake 3:17]

Walmart's policy on union busting is industry standard at this point, I'm very familiar with it. I'm asking if anyone is actively involved with ourwalmart or respect or whatever they're called now.


I have nothing to do with the company or the supportive unions other than being sympathetic, donating some money and following their news.

There've been a couple of breakthroughs in Canada in terms of unionizing a few major very anti-union retail and fast food outlets and I believe all of those were closed by the corporations/employers.

Josh Eidelson http://josheidelson.com/ has been far the best reporter on this stuggle.

[RedWaves]

Only one in my state, fuck that.

Last year we had massive protests all over Walmart down here, shocked we're not seeing any at themoment. There was rumors of them bring in immigrants that couldn't speak English to work during the strikes.

[BIXX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgvpJHGnodc

What the fuck.

I am so angry.

I saw this after seeing some racist assed ads today. I am officially fucking pissed.

[blake 3:17]

Peeps might want to consider making a donation to the solidarity fund here: https://donate.changewalmart.org/page/contribute/black-friday-walmart-protests

[Skyhilist]

Anyone else going to protest with them with tomorrow? I'll be going to the only Connecticut one near me in Avon.

[RedWaves]

Why do people even shop on black friday and act like animals trying to kill one another over consumerist goods?

That's what I would love to see. people actually growing brains and saying fuck this shit and not doing Black Friday period.

[Skyhilist]

Why do people even shop on black friday and act like animals trying to kill one another over consumerist goods?

That's what I would love to see. people actually growing brains and saying fuck this shit and not doing Black Friday period.

I saw this one girl on the news on TV crying over saving $165 on useless plastic crap. It was pretty nauseating...

[Os Cangaceiros]

I made the unfortunate mistake of going to wal mart at, like, 5 pm, thinking that it would be mostly empty due to thanksgiving, but I had forgotten that "black Friday" is now "black Thursday night+Friday". Ugh. REALLY crowded. I did buy season 1 of Fringe for 9 dollars, though.

[RedWaves]

I saw this one girl on the news on TV crying over saving $165 on useless plastic crap. It was pretty nauseating...

Yeah like they can't live without that crap. It's sickening.


I have to think though. Black Friday and consumerism in general breeds from capitalism. I think you can use Black Friday as a perfect example of how Capitalism breeds this insanity.

[RedAnarchist]

They're trying to bring it over here too. Walmart own one of our major supermarkets, ASDA.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

They're trying to bring it over here too. Walmart own one of our major supermarkets, ASDA.
Yeah, I noticed loads of articles on the BBC hinting at the event probably coming into play more in the UK as well. Fucking hell. Today is the last payday before crimbo and tomorrow is going to be fucking hell at work... be even worse if they dropped prices by huge amounts.

[blake 3:17]

Breaking: Massive Black Friday strike and arrests planned, as workers defy Wal-Mart
Exclusive: Wal-Mart strikers risk arrest in nine cities today. Here's what it means for future of U.S. work
JOSH EIDELSON

Defying the nation’s top employer and a business model that defines the new U.S. economy, Wal-Mart employees and allies will try to oust shopping headlines with strike stories, and throw a retail giant off its heels on what should be its happiest day of the year. By day’s end, organizers expect 1,500 total protests in cities ranging from Los Angeles, Calif., to Wasilla, Alaska, including arrests in nine cities: Seacaucus, New Jersey; Alexandria, Virginia; Dallas; Minneapolis; Chicago; Seattle; and Ontario, San Leandro, and Sacramento, California.

“Like my mom always said, ‘You see something that’s not right, it’s your turn to fix it,” said 45-year-old Chicago Wal-Mart employee Myron Byrd, who plans to be arrested in his first act of civil disobedience today. “And you can’t do it by yourself — you have to do it with others.” Byrd said he was driven to action by “high school”-level pay and workplace disrespect, and inspired by the courage of fellow workers and his mother’s civil rights legacy. “I’m sacrificing myself, along with others, to do this,” he told me, “to show Wal-Mart that hey, I’m not afraid, they not afraid, we not afraid.” In an e-mail to reporters, Wal-Mart spokesperson David Tovar said that “planned arrests” were “just another way to make these orchestrated events seem newsworthy,” and that “these aren’t real protests by real Walmart associates.”

Whether today’s action is bigger than last year’s “Black Friday” showdown remains to be seen, and likely depends on how you count: Would more protests, and more protesters, make up for a retaliation-fueled reduction in the number of Wal-Mart employees who go on strike to join them?

Wal-Mart’s first 50 years were free of Black Friday strikes – indeed, free of any coordinated walkouts in the United States. Then, 14 months ago, a wave of Wal-Mart supply chain strikes that started with crawfish-peeling guest workers and subcontracted warehouse workers spread to include the corporation’s retail employees, first in Southern California and then in cities across the country. Strikers were members of OUR Walmart, a fledgling non-union workers group that first announced itself in 2011; it draws funding, staffing and direction from the United Food & Commercial Workers union.

For the UFCW, Wal-Mart poses an existential threat, driving down standards for competitors and endangering hard-fought gains. “Our companies are saying, ‘If Wal-Mart can get away with it, why can’t we?’” an employee from a unionized Safeway told me as she prepared to join a Black Friday protest at a Maryland Wal-Mart last year. But the Wal-Mart challenge extends far beyond the company’s 1.3 million U.S. employees, or the UFCW’s 1.3 million members. By pioneering tactics to cut labor costs and avert labor organizing, and instigating imitation among suppliers, subcontractors, competitors and admirers across industries, Wal-Mart is hastening a transformation in U.S. work, toward an ever-more-present future in which workers – whether fast food cashiers or adjunct professors — lack living wages, workplace democracy, job security or even legal recognition as employees.

Faced with a future of declining leverage and relevance, U.S. unions have taken up a range of tactics on full display in the Wal-Mart effort, including “comprehensive campaigns” that wield political, legal and media weapons against a company’s brand, growth ambitions and consumer loyalty; “minority union” tactics in which smaller numbers of workers take bold public action to embarrass management and engage more reticent co-workers; organizing in solidarity across supply chains and national borders; short-term strikes designed to maximize public engagement and minimize the risk of retaliatory firings; and working with or through “alt-labor” groups that aim to transform workplaces without seeking collective bargaining.

Together, these tactics have forged the most serious challenge to Wal-Mart’s control over its U.S. workforce since the company was founded in 1962. It’s far outpaced the previous decade’s well-funded but anemic union-backed anti-Wal-Mart efforts, which involved bloggers and presidential candidates but comparatively little in the way of Wal-Mart employees. But the current campaign still faces nearly impossible obstacles, some of which have only become more visible in the year since 400-some strikers and thousands of supporters pulled off Black Friday 2012.

Chief among the challenges is this: While U.S. law generally bans companies from punishing workers for organizing (whether toward unionization or as part of a non-union effort like OUR Walmart), it does precious little to avert or avenge such retaliation when companies are dead set on maintaining control. In the months after 100-some strikers staged a several-day work stoppage and protest caravan to Wal-Mart’s June 2013 shareholder meeting, 23 of them were fired – exactly the scenario that’s kept many Wal-Mart workers on the sidelines.

Full article: http://www.salon.com/2013/11/29/breaking_massive_black_friday_strike_and_arrests_p lanned_as_workers_defy_wal_mart/

[Sasha]

Seems though that the whole moving blackfriday forward thing might bite them in the ass the hardest, the people who don't nescecarely shop at Walmart but do have tangible media and political power seem pretty disgusted at the whole "destruction of the spirit of thanksgiving"...

Also, dutch national television broadcasted tonight the documentary of Morgan spudlock about Walmart and unionbusting, probably not an coincidence, pretty cool from them.

[RedBen]

huge turnouts and dozens of arrests at an estimated 1000 plus sites. we were well received here

[Aware]

I'm not sure what to make of these walmart protests.

On the one hand, it could spiral into a more general, low-wage work strike. Class consciousness gets a big boost.

On the other, the reactionary mechanisms in the United States are well-developed. The mainstream media will attempt to discredit these protests, and indeed many Americans will probably view low wage workers protesting like this with disdain.

We'll see what happens in the coming weeks. Is anybody prepared to act? Given the number of these types of job positions out there, things could get interesting fast. Perhaps with appropriate means, if they decide to cross the line, one could move in to protect their right to assembly and peaceful protest.

Just saying...

Edit:

Looked into some of these protests, and they seem to be very small. Like 100 people kind of small. So far, out of the protests going on in "thousands of cities", like 36 people have been arrested today. So nvm about anything. These protest are small potatoes.

I wonder what it would take for Americans to really start getting out in force.

[RedBen]

I'm not sure what to make of these walmart protests.

On the one hand, it could spiral into a more general, low-wage work strike. Class consciousness gets a big boost.

On the other, the reactionary mechanisms in the United States are well-developed. The mainstream media will attempt to discredit these protests, and indeed many Americans will probably view low wage workers protesting like this with disdain.

We'll see what happens in the coming weeks. Is anybody prepared to act? Given the number of these types of job positions out there, things could get interesting fast. Perhaps with appropriate means, if they decide to cross the line, one could move in to protect their right to assembly and peaceful protest.

Just saying...

Edit:

Looked into some of these protests, and they seem to be very small. Like 100 people kind of small. So far, out of the protests going on in "thousands of cities", like 36 people have been arrested today. So nvm about anything. These protest are small potatoes.

I wonder what it would take for Americans to really start getting out in force.
wrong.
there have been over 100 known arrests. not every state is as reactionary and red as florida, i bet the turn outs there were small. what did you do? look it up online and criticize or did you get out the door and on the picket line? they had to bus people to demonstrations here in chicago. undermining the efforts is counter intuitive because in a way you are discrediting them. it has to start somewhere.

[blake 3:17]

To echo RedBen--

This is massive. Workers are under threat of terrible retaliation, primarily losing their jobs and becoming unemployable. But sisters and brothers see what's what and are sick of the bullshit and are standing up and fighting back.

Not everyone who wanted to participate in these actions was able to or felt able to.

The massive expansion of the service industry and the loss of industrial jobs has left workers in a very weak position. Gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's not. The corporations and some of the media have played up the fact that many demonstrators weren't Walmart employees. Goddam altruistic fuckin commie bastards caring about other people!!!!!!!!!!

[Aware]

wrong.
there have been over 100 known arrests. not every state is as reactionary and red as florida, i bet the turn outs there were small. what did you do? look it up online and criticize or did you get out the door and on the picket line? they had to bus people to demonstrations here in chicago. undermining the efforts is counter intuitive because in a way you are discrediting them. it has to start somewhere.
100 arrests. Not a lot. We are a big country. Things have to scale to our population.

Small protests like this happen more frequently than is apparent. If any of us are hoping for actual revolution, then, in my view, things will have to deteriorate before people start protesting in the millions.

But as the slow motion collapse continues, protests like these aren't bad. Just small.

In the meantime, I hope the informal economy is growing as much as they say.

Edit: And the fact that they bused people in to a protests of several hundreds shows how discouraged and apathetic most people are. The anger is building, the tension boiling, but this powder keg is gonna need a bigger spark.

[blake 3:17]

From CNN today:


The National Labor Relations Board, which protects the rights of workers who organize for better working conditions, is taking a next step in a case against Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) for alleged unfair labor practices. The agency had warned in November that the complaint could be filed.

The complaint, filed Tuesday and circulated Wednesday by union representatives, details times when Wal-Mart allegedly illegally threatened "reprisal" against workers who protested on November 22, 2012, both on national television and to employees directly.
The agency also said Wal-Mart stores in 14 states unlawfully threatened or disciplined workers who participated in legal strikes and protests.
The complaint involves more than 60 employees, 19 of whom were allegedly fire as a result of their participation in the protests. It also named more than 60 Wal-Mart supervisors and one corporate officer.

The complaint means that Wal-Mart will face a hearing in front of an administrative law judge of the NLRB. A date has not been set for the hearing, but Wal-Mart has until January 28 to respond.

Wal-Mart spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said the filing is just a procedural step, and it gives the company an opportunity to present the facts in the case.
"We don't believe it's reasonable or okay for people to come and go from their scheduled shifts as part of a union-orchestrated PR move and not be held accountable," she said. "We take this very seriously and look forward to presenting our side."

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/15/news/companies/nlrb-walmart/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[adipocere]

From CNN today:
Wal-Mart spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said the filing is just a procedural step, and it gives the company an opportunity to present the facts in the case.
"We don't believe it's reasonable or okay for people to come and go from their scheduled shifts as part of a union-orchestrated PR move and not be held accountable," she said. "We take this very seriously and look forward to presenting our side."


Whoa...say what? What the fuck does walmart think labor laws specifically protect? Wal-mart, home of the "union package", lets their own spokesperson incriminate them at the institutional level literally on the record - I can't help but get a bad feeling...