Protests Hit 1,600 Walmarts on Black Friday

Tens of thousands of Americans protested at 1,600 Walmart stores across the country last Friday, calling on the company to pay their workers a minimum of $15 an hour and provide full-time work. Five actions were held in the metro Washington area, including at the H Street Walmart, where a group of workers held a sit-down strike on Wednesday. This was the first time that workers at the new store in Washington and in neighboring Virginia were on strike…
photos (except for sit-in) by Bruce Wolf, OPEIU Local 2 Social Justice Committee

Walmart workers—members of OUR Walmart--continued a nationwide strike protesting the company’s illegal retaliation against associates who speak out for better jobs.

In Phoenix, Sandra Sok walked off the job last Wednesday for the first time and said: “Many of us are living in deep poverty and going hungry because the Waltons won’t pay us a fair wage. When my coworkers speak out about these issues, the company tries to silence us. For all of my brothers and sisters who have experienced illegal threats, I am on strike.” 

“The Black Friday rallies and demonstrations represent a dramatic escalation of the growing protest movement among employees of America’s largest private employer. But they also represent the vanguard of a sharp challenge to the nation’s widening economic divide and the declining standard of living among the majority of Americans,” Peter Dreier, Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College, wrote in the Huffington Post. “It is sometimes difficult to recognize historical events as they unfold, but it is likely that future generations will look at these Walmart protests as a major turning point that helped move the nation in a new direction, similar to the sit-down strikes among Flint auto workers in 1937, the Woolworth lunch-counter sit-ins by civil-rights activists in 1960, and the first Earth Day in 1970, which jump-started the environmental movement.”
photos (except for sit-in) by Bruce Wolf, OPEIU Local 2 Social Justice Committee