Vol. 79/No. 8      March 9, 2015

This pay raise is not an act of kindness from Walmart executives, but the result of years of protests, including recent actions by OUR Walmart, backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. We have joined with McDonald’s and other fast-food workers, airport workers, carwasheros and others demanding $15 an hour, a full workweek and a union.

While the minimum wage is at or above $9 per hour in seven states and the District of Columbia, the increase for many of our 1.4 million co-workers this year and next is good for all of us. The truth is wages are set from the bottom up.

Ten dollars an hour is certainly not enough. Many of us will still need to work more than one job or take public aid to get by, but the bosses’ announcement shows that our fight is having an impact and that we can win more. The protests at stores across the country organized by OUR Walmart in November on Black Friday showed the potential to widen support.

I’m an overnight stocker at the H Street Walmart. Most of my co-workers are part time and want to work full time. But Walmart has made no commitment to guarantee more hours, offering only a vague promise “to offer some associates fixed schedules.” Many of my co-workers are temps, who don’t even earn sick or vacation days. Walmart has been known to fire pregnant workers and encourage other abusive conditions.

The announced pay raise is also in part a result of an uptick in hiring. Some bosses are offering higher wages as they compete to hire and keep the workers they need. This gives us more confidence and leverage to demand better conditions, because we know that if need be we can find another job.

The same conditions have strengthened the confidence and resistance of oil refinery workers, who are carrying out the first national strike in decades over safety and forced overtime. Dockworkers on the West Coast just went through a monthslong battle over similar issues. Rail workers in the U.S. and Canada are fighting against bosses’ attempts to run trains with one-man crews, reductions that will lead to death and destruction for workers and surrounding communities alike.

I saw this confidence and determination when I joined workers at Unity Sanitation in Maryland striking for better pay and with nurses at Providence Hospital and at Washington Hospital Center demanding better nurse-patient ratios.

Walmart’s move was a cold-blooded business decision. They are concerned about losing workers and know our fight is having an impact. Still, as the New York Daily News said, “That is, quite literally, the least the retail behemoth can do.” Walmart raked in $16 billion in profits last year, profits that come from our labor.

“This pay increase would not have happened without OUR Walmart getting support from the community, unions and other labor organizations,” my fellow fighter, Cynthia Murray, a leader of OUR Walmart at the store in Laurel, Maryland, told me. “But this is just an olive branch. Now is the time for more of us to stand up and demand $15 an hour and full time. We can win this demand.”

I could not agree more. Walmart blinked. Let’s step up the fight.

Glova Scott works at Walmart, is a member of OUR Walmart and the Socialist Workers Party candidate for City Council in Washington, D.C.
 
 
Related articles:
Oil workers expand nat’l strike, fight for safety
Explosion rocks non-struck Calif. refinery
West Coast Dockworkers Push Back Boss Attacks
On the Picket Line
‘We see too many of these grade cross crashes’
 
 
 
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