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The effort to bring fairer wages and benefits to WalMart

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Great write-up in the Huffington Post about OUR WalMart (Organization United for Respect) and their efforts to bring change to the world’s largest retailer. It starts out…

“Earlier this year, Janet Sparks was called in to meet her bosses at the Walmart in Baker, La., where she works as a non-salaried supervisor in the customer service department.

Sparks, 53, had approached the managers earlier to complain about the treatment of some of her co-workers. Now, her bosses accused her of “creating a hostile work environment,” Sparks recalled. “They were not going to allow this.”

It continues…

“But Sparks had already become involved with a nascent labor movement seeking to organize people inside the world’s largest retailer, and she was cognizant that she had rights. She presented her managers with a government document that laid out the rights of non-union workers to organize. By the end of the meeting, she said, the bosses had agreed not to discipline her or her co-workers.”

And then there’s this…

“Many of Walmart’s 1.5 million workers earn close to minimum wage, placing them among the fast-growing cohort of American workers who earn so little that they officially live in poverty. Those who earn more often lack the hours they need to make ends meet.”

We’ve heard it before, but it can’t be said enough, WalMart and their low wage policies are helping to create mass poverty. We need to start working towards livable wages. People who have jobs and are working should not also need food stamps. The saying “united we bargain, divided we beg” couldn’t be truer. Let’s end the begging: this is America.