As retail giant Walmart fires company “associates” across the country speaking up for their rights, Organization United for Respect (OUR Walmart) carried out actions targeting Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo and a member of Walmart’s board of directors. Large numbers of Walmart workers have come together in OUR Walmart to win respect and improved labor standards on the job.
Although OUR Walmart says that it “has no intent to have Walmart recognize or bargain with it as a representative of Walmart employees,” the largest employer in the world won’t even tolerate that level of independent organization on the part of its workers.
According to Angela Williamson, a former long-time Walmart worker and now leader of OUR Walmart outreach efforts on the Internet, dozens of Walmart workers have been unjustly fired—most since a two-week strike action in late May—and dozens more have been disciplined after they returned to work.
An initial major action of this campaign was the Black Friday strike and local support actions at many stores around the country during the traditional Thanksgiving weekend shopping blitz last November.
OUR Walmart organized a much larger and more public national action outside the Walmart Home Office in Bentonville, Ark., on June 3 during a Walmart shareholders’ meeting. Traveling in Ride for Respect caravans from around the country, Walmart strikers marched silently, then spreading out in a picket line, began to sing and chant about their cause. A video of this impressive action can be viewed here.
Despite Walmart’s attempts to snuff out this organizing drive, thousands of the company’s workers have made contact with OUR Walmart through Facebook or e-mail and the drive is gaining momentum despite the depressed state of the economy, Williamson told Liberation News.
Yahoo actions
It is in this context that the actions targeting Yahoo head Marissa Mayer took place in Santa Clara, Calif., June 24 and 25. Although not publicized in advance, to avoid giving the company notice of their plans, several dozen fired Walmart workers from the area and other parts of the country took part in the actions organized by OUR Walmart.
The first action was an attempt by a delegation of fired workers to meet with Mayer at the company headquarters in nearby Sunnyvale. She, however, would not take time to hear their concerns, even for five minutes during lunchtime. Five of the workers refused to leave the premises until she relented, resulting in their arrest.
The next day, several of the workers attended Yahoo’s shareholders’ meeting at the Marriott in Santa Clara while a demonstration of around two dozen others was held outside. They were able to get the floor and make statements during Mayer’s question-and-answer session, appealing to her to use her influence as a Walmart board member to improve labor conditions at the company. She again refused to address their concerns, saying, “This is a Yahoo meeting and not a time to discuss Walmart.” She then went on to talk about sports, which she evidently did consider a proper topic for the meeting.
Outside the meeting, the demonstrators held umbrellas with letters spelling out “Marissa Act Now.” They chanted: “If we can’t have no justice, you can’t have no peace,” “No Justice, No Peace,” “Marissa, Act Now!” “Whose Walmart? Our Walmart,” and “What do we want? Respect.”
Yvette Brown, who had just been fired from the Placerville, Calif., Walmart, and was one of the workers arrested the previous day (“my first,” she said), told Liberation News that Walmart had fired her for “speaking her mind.”
Another worker, related how she had been fired as a “no show” after her manager switched her schedule. She said: “Walmart is out of control. This has to stop. It’s not right.”
Toward the end of the action, the workers who had attended the Yahoo shareholders’ meeting came out and reported on the statements they had addressed to Marissa Mayer.
Despite Mayer’s non-response, all the courageous current and former Walmart workers involved in this effort clearly felt the actions at Yahoo were a success and are more committed than ever to carry on the struggle for workers’ rights at Walmart.
Besides national actions, OUR Walmart is organizing protests at local Walmarts whenever a worker is fired unjustly. They welcome support from union and community members.
For more information on this important campaign, visit ForRespect.org, MakingChangeAtWalmart.org or go to their Facebook page.
