Wal-Mart workers have launched historic labor protests and strikes across 28 stores in 12 states, the first retail worker strike in the company’s 50-year history. According to organizers, employees are protesting company attempts to “silence and retaliate against workers for speaking out for improvements on the job.” We go to Bentonville, Arkansas, to speak with Mike Compton, a Wal-Mart worker protesting outside the company headquarters today just days after taking part in a successful strike at a Wal-Mart supply warehouse in Elwood, Illinois. We’re also joined by Josh Eidelson, a contributing writer for Salon and In These Times who broke the story of the Wal-Mart store strikes last week.
by VideoNewsService, posted on Monday, October 8th, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Members from several groups came together on October 5th at the Elgin, Illinois Walmart to show their support for striking Walmart workers at Walmart’s largest distribution center at Elwood, near Joliet,Illinois.
by jstupec, posted on Monday, October 8th, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The strike is now over but I wanted to submit this to show what the strikers went through. They are heroes.
On Friday, Oct 1, I protested with the Walmart warehouse workers in Elwood, Illinois. I am with Jobs with Justice of Northern Illinois and we were there to show support for workers who are in just such a position and need some moral support
to show they are not alone in their fight. Other unions also backed the strikers.
It was a typical rally with an off site location across from the gigantic warehouse where the contents of trailers are unloaded into the facility and are re-loaded for distribution to local Walmart stores. Several of the speakers were “strikers” who walked off the job after trying to deliver a grievance petition to their management and were ignored and fired from their jobs. They told of inhuman working conditions where the temperatures inside the trailers parked outside in the sun reach up to 130 degrees on summer days.