Walmart Workers Are Back on Strike Over a New Wave of Alleged Threats
Source: The Nation
Josh Eidelson
For the first time since November’s Black Friday walkout, US Walmart retail workers are out on strike. At noon, half a dozen workers in Laurel, Maryland, walked off the job in protest of alleged retaliation by Walmart management. They were joined by Lancaster, Texas, Walmart employee Colby Harris, a fellow activist with the labor group OUR Walmart. After delivering a letter to their store manager, and protesting with supporters outside the Laurel Walmart, the workers filed new charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging illegal intimidation by the retail giant.
“What inspired me” to strike, Harris told The Nation, “was the fact that Walmart’s still using those same tactics to try to silence workers.” Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Today’s strike comes one week after a settlement between the NLRB and the United Food & Commercial Workers union, which backs OUR Walmart, regarding allegations brought by Walmart against the union. As The Nation reported, under the agreement, the UFCW agreed to refrain from picketing for sixty days, and to reiterate that it is not demanding union recognition from Walmart (the company had charged that the UFCW was organizing illegal pickets designed to pressure it to bargain collectively).
Workers allege that Walmart exploited that agreement to unleash a new round of intimidation against workers. They say that Walmart managers held mandatory meetings in which managers read from a memo telling workers that the strikes had been illegal, and that OUR Walmart was being dissolved. “They said that anybody who associates themselves with OUR Walmart, and the leaders, and the organization as a whole, could face disciplinary actions,” said Harris. He said he had not been pulled into such a meeting, but had heard about them from co-workers in states including Florida, Illinois, Kentucky and Maryland.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/172748/walmart-workers-back-strike-over-new-wave-alleged-threats
(Flickr/Matt Hamilton)
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