Truth Tour Shines Light On Walmart Worker Conditions
Printer-friendly version Date of publication: April 20, 2011
Source: Progress Illinois
Author: Aricka Flowers
As Walmart looks to continue its expansion in Chicago, a worker truth tour makes a stop in Chicago to shed light on how the retailer treats some of its employees along various stops on the supply chain.
"I was complaining about roaches and the smell. But when I heard her story, I was like 'what am I complaining about?'" said Robert J. Hines, Jr., a former Walmart factory employee at yesterday's media event for the kick off of the "Sweatshop, Warehouse, Walmart: A Worker Truth Tour."
Hines was referring to fellow panelist Kalpona Akter, a former garment factory worker turned workers' rights advocate who helped launch the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. In exchange for her fight to ensure that workers who subcontracted with Walmart received fair wages and reasonable working conditions, Akter says she was arrested, relentlessly questioned, tortured and imprisoned for 30 days last August and now faces life imprisonment or the death penalty. The Bangladesh government has filed seven charges against her, including encouraging workers to take part in an illegal strike and starting a riot. At the event, Akter detailed the events surrounding the day of her arrest:
Even as she faces years in prison, or worse, Akter is actually encouraging people to continue shopping at Walmart. Because the retailer employs so many people in Bangladesh, with the vast majority of them being women, she says a boycott of Walmart would spell ruin for thousands of people in her country:
Cynthia Murray, who works at a Walmart in Maryland, and Hines, who worked in a Walmart warehouse in Chicago's Southwest suburbs, also detailed stories of unfair treatment and wage losses as employees for the retailer. Hines is currently in a class action lawsuit against the retailer. He says Walmart devised a plan to chronically cheat employees of their wages by documenting that they worked fewer hours than they really did. He also says the company failed to give him a paycheck altogether, forcing him to quit the job.
One of the issues both Hines and Murray pointed out about the retailer is the way in which it cuts corners when it comes to providing employee health benefits:
As Walmart seeks to expand in Chicago, Hines, who lives in Joliet, warns that residents of the Windy City should be skeptical of the argument that the addition of more Walmarts will translate into quality jobs for communities that boast of high unemployment rates:
At the national level, today the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case that could be the nation's largest class action lawsuit in history, if the High Court allows the case to proceed. The lawsuit accuses the company of gender discrimination in pay and career advancement.
