This is why SumOfUs.org exists.
After warehouse workers in Walmart’s supply chain risked everything by going on strike, nearly 100,000 members of the SumOfUs.org community stood up with them calling for Walmart to work with suppliers to improve working conditions and not retaliate against striking workers. Then workers at a Chicago-area distribution center delivered your signatures to Walmart managers, and the next day the workers were told they could return to work with no retaliation and receive full back-pay for their time on strike.
When those same workers descended on Bentonville, Arkansas -- home to Walmart’s global headquarters -- to make their demands directly to top management, 912 of us chipped in what we could, and we bought nearly every ad in the home newspapers of Walmart’s top executives in an effort to help amplify the workers’ voices. Here’s what we heard about the impact of the ads from Eddie Iny, a Director of Making Change at Walmart, who was on the ground with the workers:
The ads you all did in Bentonville were fantastic. I heard from a number of folks that everyone saw the ads -- including a cop during our flash mob who asked if we were the ones blanketing the town with ads to Rob Walton! Nice work!
Even the ad representative from the papers told us that the ads were the talk of the town. No way could the executives -- or their neighbors, friends or baristas -- miss the workers’ message.
Then when warehouse workers delivered our petition to Walmart HQ, something totally unprecedented happened: the warehouse workers were met by Walmart executive Thomas Mars, who listened to their stories about conditions in Walmart’s warehouses for 2 hours. Walmart still hasn’t committed to taking responsibility for cleaning up working conditions in its suppliers' warehouses, but just getting a meeting with an executive was a huge first step!
And then, the story got even bigger, as Walmart retail workers in 12 cities around the U.S. also went on strike against unfair employment practices. Tens of thousands of us have signed a statement of solidarity with these workers.
It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks, and what’s most exciting is that momentum is still building as Walmart workers threaten to go on strike again on Black Friday (November 23rd), the biggest shopping day in the U.S., unless management promises to stop retaliating against workers who have been organizing for better conditions.
Now more than ever we need to stand with workers to show Walmart that it can’t ignore workers in the name of profit anymore, and that when corporations try to trample on workers’ rights, we’ll come together to hold them accountable.
Thanks for being one of us,
Kaytee, Rob, and the rest of us
P.S. Walmart is one of the world’s largest corporations, and has inexhaustible resources to keep fighting against its workers and customers. But we have a kind of people power that Walmart doesn’t. We know that the fight to improve working conditions in Walmart’s supply chain is going to take lots more work, and frankly lots more funding. Can you chip in $4, or whatever you can afford, so we can keep pushing for the biggest retail bully in the world to treat its workers fairly?
SumOfUs is a world-wide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. You can follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Click here to add yourself to SumOfUs.