When workers at a Southern California warehouse that stores goods for Walmart walked out on strike last month, it was no isolated incident. The company’s notoriously bottom-of-the-barrel employment practices, imposed on contractors and employees alike, are producing labor unrest up and down the supply chain. This morning produced the most dramatic actions yet, as Josh Eidelson reported in Salon:
[Walmart] workers walked off the job at stores in Dallas, Texas; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Laurel, Maryland; and Northern, Central, and Southern California. No end date has been announced; some plan to remain on strike at least through tomorrow, when they’ll join other Walmart workers for a demonstration outside the company’s annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas… On Thursday, as first reported at Salon, southern California Walmart store workers staged a day-long walkout of their own. Organizers say over sixty workers from nine stores signed in as on strike.
Both retail strikes were organized by OUR Walmart, an association of Walmart employees that has tried to sidestep Walmart’s well-funded union-busting tactics by organizing workers without establishing itself as a formal union.
