Walmart Workers Looking To Strike On Black Friday

Walmart Workers On Strike photo credit: asfme.org

Black Friday has become an annual celebrated event for many in the U.S. This day is highlighted as the best in a shopper's paradise. Walmart was and still is thus far, the headlining retailer to contribute to Black Friday's chaos.  It seems that Walmart's employees are fed up with  low wages,  unequal opportunity advancements, and lousy benefits.

As a result, many have walked off the job this week, and are now planning to strike on the retailers busiest day of the year.

BusinessWeek reports,

"America’s biggest retailer may be in for an unexpectedly painful holiday season. Protesting low wages, spiking health care premiums, and alleged retaliation from management, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) workers have started to walk off the job this week. First, on Wednesday, about a dozen workers in Wal-Mart’s distribution warehouses in Southern California walked out, followed the next day by 30 more from six stores in the Seattle area.

The workers, who are part of a union-backed employee coalition called Making Change at Wal-Mart, say this is the beginning of a wave of protests and strikes leading up to next week’s Black Friday. A thousand store protests are planned in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C., the group says.

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, workers who were either planning to strike or already striking explained their situation. “We have to borrow money from each other just to make it to work,” said Colby Harris, who earns $8.90 an hour after having worked at a Wal-Mart in Lancaster, Tex., for three years. “I’m on my lunch break right now, and I have two dollars in my pocket. I’m deciding whether to use it to buy lunch or to hold on to it for next week.” He said the deduction from his bimonthly pay check for health-care costs is scheduled to triple in January. In 2013, Wal-Mart plans to scale back its contributions to workers’ health-care premiums, which are expected to rise between 8 percent and 36 percent. Many employees will forgo coverage."

Wow, I can't believe that Walmart has burdened their employees with such unjust treatment. However, it seems that they couldn't have picked a worst time to reveal an increase on employee's healthcare insurance.  I can only imagine their employees dilemma. However, I have managed to snag a copy of Walmart's black friday ad. Check it out here.