More Labor Bashing at Walmart

My goodness, on top of paying $9.10 /hour in Illinois  ( San Francisco minimum wage is $10.24) Walmart (along with 6 other corporations)  is now requiring workers to show up on Thanksgiving to get a jump on Black Friday sales.  Workers don’t like it much, of course, and some of them are planning to walk picket lines in protest.

Walmart, for its part, as anti-workers as a company can be, has filed with the NLRB, claiming there is illegal organizing going on and billion dollar corporations have their rights!

In a rare move, Wal-Mart is trying to stop a union-backed group from staging a series of demonstrations against the company on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.

Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest employer and retailer, has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board — its first in a decade — seeking to prevent the group, known as OUR Walmart, from holding what the group says will be the biggest protests of this kind against the company at hundreds of store

… In this week’s planned events, OUR Walmart, which stands for Organization United for Respect at Walmart, is enlisting a broad range of allies, arranging fliers and letters that community, church and civil rights groups can use to publicize the Black Friday protest. OUR Walmart has even prepared remarks that it is suggesting members of the clergy might use in prayer, “to call upon the world’s largest corporation to treats its workers with justice and fairness. [Greenhouse at NY Times]

More news of Walmart and the push back here, here and here.

Be good folks on two counts: don’t join the Black Friday madness and if you ever go to Walmart print this out and wear it somewhere visible.

 

And, OUR Walmart folks, get with caps and Ts for your supporters!