“I’ve come today to represent all the silent Wal-Mart workers that are afraid to stand up for their rights.”
As reported in InTheseTimes, Elaine Rozier, a Wal-Mart employee of eight years, told a crowd of about 150 labor activists and community supporters—accompanied by raucous musicians with Occupy Guitarmy and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra—on Friday in Secaucus, N.J., across the street from a well-guarded Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club (the wholesale club owned by Wal-Mart and named for the company’s celebrated founder, Sam Walton). “I’m standing up for my rights, my kids, my grandkids, and their kids,” Rozier said.
Perhaps because of the fear she mentioned, Rozier, who comes from Miami, was one of the only identified Wal-Mart employees in the crowd. Along with Mark Bowers and Colby Harris, two Wal-Mart workers from Texas, Rozier traveled to New Jersey for Black Friday, Wal-Mart’s biggest retail sales day, to demonstrate to the workers inside the Secaucus store that they, too, could stand up for their rights.
Accompanied by ten supporters, the three workers blocked traffic on the street alongside the Wal-Mart, chanting, singing and clapping until police took them away in handcuffs.
The protest was one of hundreds of Black Friday actions organized by OUR Walmart, a United Food and Commercial Workers-backed group of Wal-Mart workers—including Rozier, Bowers and Harris—that has been putting on strikes, protests, and direct actions at Wal-Mart for over a year in support of better wages, benefits and conditions. The first wave of strikes hit in October of 2012, and on Black Friday of that year, some 400 workers reportedly went on strike at stores around the country.
“Stand up, live better” has become the rallying cry of the movement, a twist on the retail giant’s own slogan, “Save money, live better.” On Friday, workers in Secaucus repeatedly echoed the “stand up” line.
OUR Walmart has always focused on preventing Wal-Mart from retaliating against workers for organizing, but after the firings of several strikers this summer, the group has doubled down on the issue. “I’m getting arrested because Wal-Mart has continued to retaliate against the associates who’ve been speaking up,” Harris told In These Times before sitting down in the middle of the street to risk arrest—one of at least 111 protesters arrested in eight cities this Black Friday, according to UFCW. “I was actually fired illegally September 30 for participating in concerted activity over the past year and a half. That’s why I’m here today: to call on Wal-Mart to reinstate those who were illegally fired and work with the associates to end poverty wages [and] give us consistency with scheduling and hours.”
More at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15938/black_friday_protests_embolden_wal_mart_workers/