Walmart

The Walmart Effect

December 26, 2024 Rogé Karma, Portside. Educate! Local Economy, Poverty, Walmart, Worker Rights

No corporation looms as large over the American economy as Walmart. It is both the country’s biggest private employer, known for low pay, and its biggest retailer, known for low prices. In that sense, its dominance represents the triumph of an idea that has guided much of American policy making over the past half century: that cheap consumer prices are the paramount metric of economic health, more important even than low unemployment and high wages. Indeed, Walmart’s many defenders argue that the company is a boon to poor and middle-class families, who save thousands of dollars every year shopping there.

Walmart Warehouse Workers Win First Union In Canada

October 26, 2024 Kari Thompson, Labor Notes. Resist! Canada, Unions, Victory, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

Eight hundred workers near Toronto have won the first Walmart warehouse union in Canada or the U.S. “Honestly I was pretty nervous at first because I didn’t want to lose my job,” said 29-year employee Rodolfo Pilozo, a member of “Team Red,” the organizing committee behind the September victory. The Walmart distribution center is in Mississauga, Ontario, an hour from the western New York border. Workers there began organizing last December to join Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union. Forty percent signed union cards over the summer. Pilozo cited low wages and pressure to work dangerously fast as the main concerns that pushed him and his co-workers to organize.

How Walmart’s Financial Services Became A Fraud Magnet

January 21, 2024 Craig Silverman and Peter Elkind, ProPublica. Educate! Fraud, Security, Theft, Walmart

Christy Browne was in a panic. The man on the phone said he was from the FBI. He warned her that drug traffickers had obtained her Social Security number and were using it to launder money. He said the FBI needed money to catch them. “They told me not to go to local law enforcement,” Browne testified in court recently about the February 2020 call. The police were watching her and considered her a suspect, the man said. At his direction, Browne, a retired elementary school teacher who lives in upstate New York, bought four $500 Walmart gift cards at her local Walmart. It was 3:15 pm. She took photos of the serial numbers and PINs on the back and texted them to the man on the phone. With that information, the fraudster had access to $2,000.

UN Decries Amazon, Walmart, DoorDash For ‘Shameful’ Wages

November 3, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Resist! Amazon, DoorDash, Low wages, Poverty, United Nations, Walmart

The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has called on the CEOs of Amazon, Walmart and DoorDash and the US government to address allegations that top US corporations pay such low wages that they trap workers in poverty, forcing them to rely on government-assistance programs to survive. Olivier De Schutter has written to the three major US corporations and the US government, requesting responses to numerous allegations. They include a 2020 US Government Accountability Office report that found Amazon and Walmart were listed among the top 25 employers with workers relying on the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap), formerly known as food stamps, or Medicaid in nine states studied, with Walmart ranked first and Amazon ranked sixth.

Boxed Out: How Predatory Buying Is Killing Off Small Businesses

October 8, 2022 Stacy Mitchell and Ron Knox, Institute for Local Self Reliance. Educate! Amazon, Capitalism, Small Business, Walmart

Walmart, Amazon, and other powerful, well-financed companies have captured control over much of retailing. These giants maintain their extraordinary market position not by competing on the merits of their service. Instead, they exert their power as dominant buyers of food and goods to bully suppliers, extracting discounts for themselves while forcing independent retailers to pay more. This is threatening those small businesses, wounding competition, and hollowing out communities large and small. It’s a monopoly tactic we call “predatory buying.” In this report, we examine the history of these abuses, the law Congress passed in 1936 to protect independent businesses’ right to compete on fair terms, and the pro-bigness coup that stopped enforcement of the law in the 1970s.

Will Amazon Workers’ Win Infect Walmart Next?

May 3, 2022 Coco McPherson, LA Progressive. Organize! Amazon, Labor Movement, Unions, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

The improbable April 1 victory of Amazon workers in Staten Island, who fought for over two years to establish the very first union at the retail behemoth, is inspiring other Amazon employees around the country and highlighting a new path forward for the labor movement. It may also reignite labor organizing at Walmart, where workers seeking to form unions have been thwarted for decades. More than two years after Amazon employee Christian Smalls led a small walkout at JFK8, the company’s sprawling distribution center on Staten Island, to protest its lack of COVID-19 health safety guidelines — soon after which he was fired — he returned in triumph. Earlier this month, at a joyful press conference on a grassy lot near the facility, Smalls and fellow organizers celebrated the historic Amazon Labor Union (ALU) win.

What Can Organizers At Amazon Learn From Walmart? Part 2

December 5, 2021 Alex Han, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Amazon, Unions, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

“Amazon is the epoch-defining corporation of the moment in a way that Walmart was two decades ago,” said Howard W, an Amazon warehouse worker and organizer with Amazonians United, a grassroots movement of Amazon workers building shop-floor power. What can organizers at Amazon learn from the Walmart campaigns in the 2000s? And what can these two efforts teach us about organizing at scale? Unions haven’t successfully organized an employer with more than 10,000 workers in decades, so getting to scale is one of the most pressing challenges for the social justice movements.

What Can Organizers At Amazon Learn From Walmart?

December 4, 2021 Alex Han, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Amazon, Walkouts, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

Amazon is the epoch-defining corporation of the moment in a way that Walmart was two decades ago,” said Howard W, an Amazon warehouse worker and organizer with Amazonians United, a grassroots movement of Amazon workers building shop-floor power. What can organizers at Amazon learn from the Walmart campaigns in the 2000s? And what can these two efforts teach us about organizing at scale? Unions haven’t successfully organized an employer with more than 10,000 workers in decades, so getting to scale is one of the most pressing challenges for the social justice movements. To explore these questions, Howard was joined by Wade Rathke, who, as chief organizer of ACORN in the U.S. from 1970 – 2008, anchored a collaboration among ACORN, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) that aimed to organize Walmart.

Walmart Salon Closed After All Hairstylists Walk Out

September 16, 2021 Kellen M. Quigley, Olean Times Herald. Resist! New York (NY), Walkout, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

Allegany, New York — The salon at Walmart was closed Tuesday after the entire staff quit at the same time. The SmartStyle Hair Salon’s doors were locked Tuesday morning with the message “We Out” on a poster hanging in the window. The poster also included the note, “We love our people,” and listed where each of the stylists had moved to. Staff member Dana Roth said the mass exit was inevitable with the way the site’s upper management had disregarded any concerns voiced to them. “The last nine months especially has been fairly taxing with us having had a limited staff and no support from the higher-ups,” Roth told the Times Herald. A manager at Allegany Walmart said there was nothing they could comment on at the store level and to contact the corporate office.

Biden Has Abandoned His Covid Worker Safety Pledge

August 2, 2021 Christopher D. Cook, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Joe Biden, Walmart, Worker's Rights

Until she got her first Pfizer shot on July 16, Cindy Cervantes toiled in the Seaboard Foods pork processing plant in Guymon, Oklahoma for most of the pandemic without a vaccine — working unprotected in an industry devastated by Covid-19 illnesses and deaths. “In one day, at least 300 people were gone” from the plant, sick from Covid, Cervantes says. Still, “Seaboard wanted a certain number of hogs out. They kept pushing people, the chain was going even faster. People were getting injured, and we were losing even more people.” Six of her coworkers have died from Covid-19, and hundreds have gotten sick, she says. Ravaged by the pandemic, the roughly 500,000 U.S. workers in meatpacking, meat processing and poultry are not getting much help from the industry or the government.

It’s Time To Make Large Corporations Pay Living Wages

February 28, 2021 Phil Mattera, DC Report. Organize! Amazon, Minimum Wage, Walmart, Worker Rights

Landing a job in the ’80s with a large corporation was, even for blue-collar workers, a ticket to good wages, generous benefits and a secure retirement. Women and workers of color did not share fully in this bounty, but they generally did better at big firms than small ones. All this began to unravel in the 1980s. Big business used the excuse of global competition to chip away at the living standards of the domestic workforce. Assault on unions, which were key in bringing about job improvements, proliferated. Meatpacking, for instance, what had been high wage and high-density union, turned into a bastion of precarious labor.

Walmart Workers Demand Fair Pay And Hours At Protest Outside Alice Walton’s Penthouse As Retail Giant Cuts Jobs

February 19, 2020 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Class Struggle, Protests, Walmart, Workers Rights and Jobs

Walmart workers issued a "wake up call" to Alice Walton, an heir to the retailer's $500 billion fortune, in New York on Tuesday by marching to Walton's New York penthouse and demanding her company pay its 1.5 million workers a living wage and give them reliable, stable work schedules. The protest was partially a response to the company's so-called "Great Workplace" restructuring initiative which Walmart began testing last year and plans to roll out in at least 1,100 of its 5,300 U.S. stores by the end of 2020.

Nation’s Largest Teachers Union Threatens Walmart Boycott Over Gun Sales

August 12, 2019 Stephen Gandel, Cbsnews.com Resist! boycott, Guns, Teachers, Unions, Walmart

Walmart could suddenly become a whole lot less busy this back-to-school shopping season. The American Federation of Teachers, the nation's largest teachers union, is threatening to boycott the giant retailer if it continues to sell guns. The labor group also wants Walmart to stop making financial contributions to politicians who oppose gun control. "If Walmart continues to provide funding to lawmakers who are standing in the way of gun reform, teachers and students should reconsider doing their back-to-school shopping at your stores," AFT president Randi Weingarten wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.

Walmart Retaliates Against Worker Who Urged Employee Walkout Over Gun Sales

August 10, 2019 Bryan Menegus, Gizmodo.com Resist! Class Struggle, Guns, Walkout, Walmart, Workers

Following a pair of deadly mass shootings over the weekend, including one at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, a Walmart e-commerce category specialist, Thomas Marshall, posted two memos widely within the company, urging mass action by employees to pressure management to cease the sale of firearms. Now, Marshall claims he and one of his colleagues are unable to access their internal accounts. “Walmart has completely deactivated our access and accounts.

New Report: Walmart’s Monopolization Of Local Grocery Markets

June 28, 2019 Stacy Mitchell, Ilsr.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Monopoly, New Economy, Walmart

Our findings illustrate the failure of contemporary antitrust policy. For nearly four decades, the two agencies that enforce the antitrust laws, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, have given corporations like Walmart a free hand to use their size and financial might to consolidate markets. This lax approach was supposed to generate widespread benefits for Americans. Instead, it has left a remarkable number of places without a competitive market for even the most basic of daily needs.

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