Organizers behind a post-Thanksgiving protest planned against a Walmart in downtown Washington say they will have 50 of the retailer’s employees at the event. They will not necessarily be employees at that particular Walmart, though.
Julie Anderson, an organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, told the Washington Examiner that the employees will come from stores “throughout the metro area” to join a protest that will focus on a Walmart on H Street in the District. The protesters will demand the retailer pay a $15 an hour wage to employees.
The H Street event is the only sizable one being planned for that day in the Washington area. There are 22 Walmarts in a 25-mile radius around the H Street location, meaning the protest would include roughly two employees per area store — assuming the 50 do appear.
The group behind the event, OUR Walmart, has promised 160 protests nationally on the day after Thanksgiving — called Black Friday by merchants — and is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Besides Washington, the largest events are set for Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, the San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento, Calif., Tampa, Fla., and Baker, La., organizers say.
Most of the protesters will be outside activists and community leaders, OUR Walmart has said. Critics contend that the events are phony and staged, pointing to the scarcity of actual Walmart employees at them.
“OUR Walmart is a group that dishonestly claims to be of, by and for Walmart associates. The reality is OUR Walmart is a wholly owned subsidiary of the UFCW,” said Ryan Williams, spokesman for Worker Center Watch, a business-backed group.
UFCW financially backs OUR Walmart and has listed it as a subsidiary in Labor Department filings. The 1.3-million member union has long sought to organize the non-union retailer and its 1.3 million employees.
