Walmart is making their stores open at 8pm on Thanksgiving:
Black Friday’s shopping bonanza brings people out to line up in front of stores for hours before it begins. It has trampledpeople, but not profits for companies that reap a large chunk of their annual sales on the day after Thanksgiving.
At Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, the world’s largest shopping day generatesmore than a quarter of annual sales.
Now, with the help of online organizing and Our Walmart, Walmart workers are gearing up for a walkout on Black Friday. The workers hope to highlight what they say is the unfairness of having to work for low wages, in poor conditions, while Walmart profits.
They also say they are protesting retaliation like reduced hours and lost jobs that followed a wave of walkouts at Walmart stores and warehouses in recent months. Warehouse workers at Walmart in Southern California said they will go on strike this week because retaliation from the administration has not ended.
Adding to the tension, many Walmart employees will be working through the Thanksgiving holiday to get ready for Black Friday.
“This essentially cancels Thanksgiving for hundreds of thousands of workers,” said Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart, on a conference call to discuss the upcoming actions. “Lots and lots of Walmart workers are going to be forced to not have Thanksgiving because they’re going to be preparing all day for the busiest shopping day of the year.”
With more than 4,000 Walmarts across the country, organizers say online organizing has been essential to the campaign’s ability to reach far-flung areas. The Making Change at Walmart campaign site includes testimonies from workers like Mary Pat Tifft, who has worked at Walmart in Kenosha, Wisconsin for 24 years.
I’ve worked holidays for years. It’s really no big deal, Thanksgiving, the 4th, Christmas and New Years – that was the industry I was in.
The Big difference was, I was fairly compensated for it. Something Walmart employees have never been.
I’d love to see a major walkout. Now that would be a good holiday present.
Every time I had a job that I didn’t like I looked for something else. The people that run Wal-Mart can do what they want. The employees can either stay working their or do what most rational people do and look for a new job….sheesh!
Sure, as if there’s just loads of jobs to choose from.
Well our favorite little troll has returned from his post Romney pout. I am pretty sure he’s signed off for the day, so now we can discuss how Obama really is gonna take his guns away!
Yo, Marky Mark — you’re joking, right? It’s not as if Walmart “associates” have a lot of options. If they did, they wouldn’t be working at Walmsrt, which is Exhibit A for why workers need unions more than ever. You’ve heard of labor unions, I hope.
sigh.