Walmart workers across the country have been going on strike (Black Friday Protests). They want full-time work instead of just 20 or 30 hours a week. They want $15 an hour, instead of the usual $8.50 or so that they receive. I support what they are doing 100%. I think it takes real courage to stand up against employers like this, especially when doing so can cost you a job, or even land you in jail (some strikers were carried away by the police).
We’ve seen this before: Long ago it was commonplace for people to work long hours for slave wages, all without any benefits to speak of. Then, labor laws and unions took root, and all of a sudden there was a 40 hour work week, enough money for vacations and extra goods, health insurance, and paid off-time to boot.
Some of the response I’ve seen to the Walmart strike are blase, such as:
If they don’t like the money they earn, they should just get better jobs!
When people are desperate enough to risk losing their job, that means they have probably tried the easy solution of just looking for better work elsewhere. The way things are now, with 30 million people unemployed and with many jobs not being significantly better than Walmart’s, going on a job hunt is not the answer for these people. I know: I’ve lived it. I worked for low wages for over 3 years of my life, and was unemployed for one year. I tried everything within my power to get out of that situation, but nothing worked, until I got hired by the department of corrections. Of course, corrections can’t and won’t just hire all these people, and I don’t think there are many other employers paying a decent wage could hire all these people either. In other words: the military can’t take all of these unemployed and under-employed people, neither can any other sector of the economy.
Unionizing, I think, is the best option for these people. Unfortunately, Walmart has a record of viciously seeking out and firing anyone involved in union activity. Which is why I think it should be the law that employees can and should be able to form a union without fear of losing their jobs. Now the counter-argument to this proposal is that Walmart has a “right” to fire people for unionizing. I beg to differ. Employers shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever they want. In the old south it was very common for black women to have sex with employers in order to get a job. If they didn’t like it, they had the ‘free choice’ to go to another employer who would usually want the same thing. The only thing that has changed is that employees are now getting screwed in a different way: they have the ‘free choice’ to accept the wages of poverty, or go to a different employer for the same wages of poverty… Or starve to death.
