Strikes? At Wal-Mart?
For years the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company has successfully resisted efforts to organize its workers. But in recent weeks, protests have broken out at some of its stores, including San Leandro and Richmond. Now protesters say they are making their biggest push ever on the biggest shopping day of the year.
On Black Friday -- when consumers traditionally take advantage of a holiday after Thanksgiving -- some Wal-Mart workers plan to walk off the job. Black Friday is a big deal for Wal-Mart, which plans to start sales pegged to it on 8 p.m. Thursday. As a measure of how seriously the company is taking the threat of protests, it filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board calling the pickets illegal.
From the New York Times:
The National Labor Relations Board, which often takes weeks or months to investigate complaints, said on Monday that it would decide within days whether there is merit to Wal-Mart’s complaint, filed last Thursday, to seek an injunction to stop anti-Wal-Mart protests scheduled for this week...
Wal-Mart contends that the protests violate a law that prohibits picketing for more than 30 days when a union is seeking recognition. Wal-Mart asserts that the group’s rolling protests have gone on for more than 30 days and are actually sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which helped found OUR Walmart last year. The company maintains that the food and commercial workers union is seeking union recognition from Wal-Mart...
Disagreeing with the company, OUR Walmart said this week’s demonstrations were not demanding union recognition, although some of the group’s members acknowledge that is their long-term goal.
Change Walmart, which is also helping organize the strike, is getting the word out in some creative ways, such as a storyline made of gifs (snippets of animation).