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Subscribe to RSSWal-Mart's chief marketing officer Duncan Mac Naughton tells TODAY's Savannah Guthrie that the retail company is "confident" that customers will not be affected by employees strikes.
Wal-Mart worker protests and walk-offs planned for Thursday night and Black Friday had the retailer taking them seriously enough to send a top executive to the TODAY show this morning to downplay the story.
Widespread picketing was not expected, Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart's chief merchandising and marketing officer, told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie. "We'll have 4,000 stores ready to go," said Naughton, staffed by "one million associates serving our customer."
The group behind the protest actions, OUR Walmart, told TODAY they are striking to protest what they say is manager retaliation against any employees who complain about working conditions.
"We have a really open culture of listening to our associates, it's based on integrity, respect for the individual," Mac Naughton told TODAY.
An OUR Walmart organizer, William Fletcher, 23, disputed this, telling TODAY that Walmart's "open door policy" where any associate can speak to a manager to bring up issues was instead used to "find out who's complaining so they can silence them with indirect threats. "They're very good at doing that while still staying within the law."
Wal-Mart said they were "really confident" that Black Friday will go off without a hitch. "What you're seeing in the media and in the news is a small group of Wal-Mart associates in a select number of stores," said Mac Naughton, "complimented by a number of of non-Wal-Mart associates that are paid by the union."
Still, the matter is large enough for Wal-Mart to have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), arguing that the protests were an unlawful attempt to disrupt its business. The complaint alleged that the group running the protests, the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), was backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), and was more about building union membership than fighting for worker rights.
The UCFW filed its own complaint that day, alleging that Walmart had directed store managers to make workers fearful for their jobs if they participated in the actions.
The legal maneuvers may be too late to prevent the strikes from disrupting one of the biggest shopping days of the year for Wal-Mart. In a statement released Tuesday, the NLRB said that it was unlikely to come to a decision before Friday.
With stores opening at 8 p.m. on Thursday and walk-offs planned throughout the shopping event, consumer chaos is a threat, depending on how many workers end up participating.
"Workers will be walking off the job left and right over Thanksgiving," UCFW Janna Pea spokesperson told TODAY.
Pea couldn't give an estimate of how many walkoffs there would be, but said that there would be protest actions at over 1,000 Wal-Mart stores, ranging from employees not showing up for work, to workers walking off in the middle of their shift, to community allies passing out brochures outside the stores.
Protests are planned at Wal-Mart stores around the country as thousands of retail employees push back against early Black Friday hours and low wages. NBC's Mark Potter reports.
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@TheGrammarPolice post # 1.5 :
Try Skyvue televisions............................................
glad I'm non metro
Amazing how out of hand we have become. Sad. And no one sees the big picture of the results of how badly we treat each other are a real reflection on our lack of moral values. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. And I don't care who I trample to get it.
How many people will be trampled to death at a Wal-Mart store this Black Friday?
100s? We can only hope.
Same old fight. Capitolism vs Labor. "You should be lucky to have a job" is a bunch of hooey because that's what they always say. Soon they will pay $2/hr with no benefits and if you object they will say you're against business, you're a communist. I say burn Walmart down.
Is this a joke, or are you really that obtuse? Please point out the historic trend in our country where minimum wage LAWS have the minimum wage going DOWN.
It's hilarious to hear people spew hyperbole like "Oooooh, if the unions lose this fight we'll all be back at factories working 22 hours a day with no vacations for 25¢/hour losing limbs as we step over the corpses of 6 year old employees!" As though all the labor and safety laws in all states will just magically disappear.
Yes, the unions did a good thing for us getting those laws instituted....about 60 years ago. Now they're just bankrupting industries and cities across our country. Just ask CA and RI what the unions are doing to them. Ask the people of Chicago what they think about their teacher's union. Ask Hostess. Ask GM.
Jax, minimum wage has dropped for decades in terms of actual, real-world purchasing power.
Income inequality has also been an ongoing issue, as has been the concentration of wealth at the top- which has reduced the velocity of money to unsustainable levels, causing the ongoing slow motion plane crash we've been calling an economy.
The site below is a good place to start correcting some of your misconceptions- and if you follow up with some legwork, you might be able to start making statements based on reality- not dogma.
I doubt you'll bother to correct your ignorance.
Instead, I'd expect you to either ignore me, ask me to spoon feed you all the data required to justify my position and THEN ignore me, attempt to impugn my sources or my intelligence, or resort to a simple ad hominem attack of some kind.
But that won't change the fact that you currently have no idea what you're talking about....so do yourself a favor and read up.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/p60-204.pdf
FeO2, don't be deliberately obtuse, even if it does come naturally to you. The poster I replied to laughably said minimum wage was going to go DOWN to $2/hour "soon." Minimum wage isn't the only wage that's "gone down because of the loss of purchasing power of the American dollar" ...ALL wages have. So that argument flies straight out the window.
Wealth inequality will always be an issue of a capitlistic economy. The more people mess with it (like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd insisting "everyone should get a house") the worse things get. You can't multiply wealth by dividing it, and every time our government tries, we get disastrous results.
As far as listening to you or ignoring you? Don't flatter yourself, you're just as irrelevant as everyone else posting here. But by all means, please continue to histrionically consider yourself important enough for me to care about the non-stop whining that spews out of liberal whiners (redundant, I know) like you. Happy Thanksgiving.
Folks act like Wal-Mart invented Black Friday!!!!! Shopping the Friday after Thanksgiving has been the in thing since as long as I can remember. Now all of a sudden folks are all indignant and outraged? I don't get it. If there wasn't a demand for this, it would not have been a tradition for all these years if not decades. If you don't want to shop on Black Friday, which I have yet to experience just don't do it. If you don't want to work either on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, guess what? Don't work in freaking retail or in the health profession or any other profession in which people are required to work on such days. I am so freaking tired of people *itching and moaning about everything they don't agree with and expecting other people to fall in line with whatever they may believe in. I hope if folks don't go to work at Wal-Mart or Target or wherever they are fired on the spot!!! Grow up people and be responsible. I see why so many children and young adults are so irresponsible.
Outraged because Black Friday is no longer Black Friday. It has become Black Thursday at 8:00 p.m. Where have you been?
Let there be no mistake, Walmart holds the hammer. I doubt that there will be little disruption to business. But, there is a bigger picture here and Walmart can't ignore it. Their employees are unhappy and generally dissatisfied. Their management style sucks. I worked for Walmart for almost four years and never, never, once met a Human Resource representative of the company. Execs would visit stores, but never interacted with the employees. Store management are puppet contolled. Each and every store is a seperate operating entity. Walmart doesn't have the money or the resources to fix the problems that have been created by ever expanding. It has out grown itself. It has become a blob of mercury in a petri dish, you can't pick it up and you can't control it. Eventually, Walmart is going to implode, it's not going to happen in communities, it's going to happen in Bentonville. Arrogance and nose thumbing is going to come back to haunt them.
People do work for Walmart and they endure the pain because, as horrible as the wages are, people do need to live and that's what Walmart is capalizing on. This is no benevolent organization, they are in business to make money. We constantly refer to the sweat shops of the 20's, welcome to the sweatshop of the 2000's, it's just packaged a little differently.
Walmart, the company we love to hate. But, while we're at it, let's make certain we understand that there a hundreds of employers and businesses doing business over the holidays, cab drivers, airline emploiyees, gas stations, police, firemen, etc etc etal. The difference between all of these other companies and agencies is recognition and compensation. If you are an hourly employee, you are selling your life one hour at a time and the only person that can control that is you.
I laugh when I read "GO TO SCHOOL" with what? We have college grads working at oil change garages because they can't find work. Want to be a success, be a plumber, or an electrician.
Maybe people could CHOOSE one of the many marketable business or STEM disciplines (science, tech, math, engineering)? Maybe Persian Underwater Basket-Weaving History wasn't the best degree to get?
Seriously, STEM jobs are sitting vacant in this country, even as our unemployment is still as high as 8%! Everywhere you go you hear about companies like mine that just can't find enough technical talent in STEM disciplines. We've had openings for SQL Server dba's and .NET programmers for over half a year, and can't fill them.
Well said.
my Aunt was a support manager @Walmart for 7 years..on black Friday alone a Walmart store pulls in 8 to 10 million dollars in sales..that's 1 day of sales!!
Her manager's meeting they were prep to push workers no matter what the situation. If a 3 workers didn't show up you were demanded to fill their quota of work. She told me if a manager found out a worker was going to complain to the head office. They were instructed to put that worker in a intolerable situation or multitask them so they could fail = a verbal warning
If that disgruntled worker complain more = a written warning
Next step = fired
This is what the strike is all about.
The avg wage is $8 @ 32 hrs per week
the avg overnight worker is $9 @32 hrs per week
The past 4 years the overnight staff got cut from 60 overnight workers to 22 to break down precisely 56 to 60 palettes of freight, stock , clean and prep the store before 7am
No overtime is permitted ...you get written up then fired.
The managers are incentive base driven by the Corp...that's why this problem is real
The high turn over of employees is largely due to "rough"working conditions.
Walmart back in the past was a family oriented, easy going with a friendly atmosphere. The wages used to be good until the Waltons sold the company.
Now comes your once a year evaluation for a raise...remember all those verbal warnings?
Instead of the max 60 cents per year you get the 20 cents minimum..this is not by accident but by design. So let's do the math
A typical Walmart worker goes from $8 to $8.80 in four years of work...no wonder labor unions are licking their chops to get in Walmart.
In 2007 Walmart sales went down 22% but their profits soared 42%. How is that possible?...cheap labor, cutting out medical, enforcing part time only. And last but not the least...making "Overtime work" a penalty on the grounds to be fired!
That might friend is 3rd world capitalism.
Could it be that their US sales were down 22% but their world wide profits were up 42%? That is how it is possible.
When retailers can't take a holiday off is a sign of desperation on our economy
Normally, I would side with business considering what unions have done to this country and the city I live, but I support the workers on this one. Thanksgiving Day or even Thanksgiving weekend should be family time. I wish NO ONE would go in any store that's open. Soon, businesses would realize being too greedy is not good.
You know Wal-Mart workers are not the only ones that have to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Most people who don't work for the government have to drag their *sses back to work on Friday. Again, why all the moaning and groaning? I not only have to work Friday, but Saturday and Sunday!!!! When Christmas falls on the weekend guess where my *ss is? Yep, at work. I knew when I accepted this job that I would not receive any sort of benefits, NONE, I would be scheduled to work every single weekend regardless of if it is a holiday or not and that I would never ever be eligible for a rate increase regardless of how fantastic my reviews are. In spite of this, I agreed to work under these circumstances and yes am grateful I have a job. When I no longer want to work unders such circumstances, I will submit my two week notice and leave this job without incident. I am thankful to live in a capitalistic country where I do have choices. God bless America!!!!!
Any Wal-Mart worker who walks off the job should be fired. If you don't like your wages or benefits you have the option of looking for another job. We can't have the unions do to Wal-Mart what they did to Hostess.
Are you talking about the pay cuts the unions took when Hostess filed for bankruptcy the first time??
You're all wrong about Hostess! The MANAGEMENT killed them, not the workers. They "Bained" the corporation!
Please see comment #1.32
Walmart fails to provide a livable wage and decent healthcare benefits, costing U.S. taxpayers an annual average of $1.02 billion in healthcare
In fact, Walmart has become the number one driver behind the growing use of food stamps in the United States with "as many as 80 percent of workers in Wal-Mart stores using food stamps."
Now we can move on to CEO pay.....
Mike duke is the CEO of walmart.
CEO Mike Duke makes more money in one hour, than his employees earn in an entire year.
Do you see that as being fair?
How about this??
Walmart: America's real 'Welfare Queen'
Walmart has bad management practices and even worse employee relations. If walmart isn't careful, they will be the next hostess!
Without unions we would all be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and get less than $5 an hour working in unsafe conditions! Strong unions make for a strong workforce.
comment 70.3 is a direct personal attack against me and has been reported as such.
Let's see if the Moderators are listening to any of this!
When you have no facts to rely on you have to resort to personal attacks.
comment #70.5 reported as personal attack.
Keep attacking me personally, and I'll just keep reporting you.
We'll see how the Moderators rule on the Blatant CoH violations you are making.
Doug J-735313, you are suspended for a day for violating rule # 1 of the Code of Honor.
Actually Doug J-735313 banned, multiple accounts.
hard worker-1280944, Doug in Golden, DJ-3232956, and CoryTrevor, all banned
Thanks for the tip.
Ok Here is an interesating point, but what about Target? Best Buy? Kohls? Sears? My son works at Walmart(Part time College Student) he makes on average about $1.50 more an hour than his friends that work at other retailers. Why is it such a big deal about the Walmart employee's apposed to the rest of the retailers that have done the exact same thing??? You people need to quit being Naysayers and let these people put food on their tables! Geez
It'd be nice to see wal mart in the news for record sales plummet.These bastards used to tout American products.Now-well you know.I doubt they are great stewards as they say
What products do K-Mart, Target and your big grocery stores that sell other stuff "tout"? You really think Wal-Mart is the only store that has Chinese products? It's all about supply and demand.
Who are these protestors? They do not work for walmart.
Union bosses see a gold mine with walmart. Unionizing Walmart would bring a nice chunk of change to Richard Trumka.
Walmart employs about 1.3 million workers in America. About 250,000 of those employees have been with the company for over 10 years. That is a pretty good retainmant rate in retail sales!
I just find it hillarious that the liberals were calling anyone that said buy American back in the 70's a bunch of ignorant dumbass rednecks that didn't understand world marketing. So now those same people are saying buy american.......OMG... the progressive folk are really ignorant dumbass rednecks???? When did this happen???
So what happened all you Wally World worker bee's?? I drove to 2 different wal-mart's to see all the fuss and all I seen was lots of shoppers and workers. I can only guess they didn't want to get fired for walking off the job, which is considered at *any* job that you quit that job.....period. Tons of us work on Holidays and not just retail, get over yourself.......IF they were to close then you'd bitch you lost a days pay.
Sumter, South Carolina management recently removed my sister Sandra because she was reaching 20 years of service thereby qualifying her for retirement benefits, this is now a common move by Walmart. She has been the face of Walmart for many years in the many charities she participated in and all her loyalty and devotion was counted as nothing by the Walmart Corporation. Contacting Mr. Duke has resulted in him assigning someone to look into work place harassment and the illegal firing of my sister and yet he has done nothing about it. These workers are afraid of losing the little income they have, they are not going to risk losing it to become part of a union. Its just too bad that Walmart cannot act ethically and responsibly when it comes to treating its employees fairly
I refuse to shop at walmart, and havent for years.
Support our standard of living, support middle class wages. Dont support Chinas.
And what box store doesnt sell China products American workers have run themselves out of the work market by demands and selfish beliefs. Funny but you hark companies like GM, Dodge, Ford etc.. they are not made in the USA they are manf in Mexico and Canada now toyota,Honda, Kia well those just happened to be made in the USA. Hmmm and will to work states too I wonder...
to the employees of Wal Mart
Take a look at Hostess the Waltons do not need Wal Mart to live they have enough money. With this idiot in office right now every job is important and a lot of people would love to have any job right now. I would laugh my butt off if the Waltons said screw it sell everything out and close up shop we do not need the headache. How many people would be in the unemployment line then. You could be there with the Hostess people wondering what the hell happened. Im sure Wal Mart holds you hostage if unhappy find another job go to it. Good Luck on that and be glad I'm not a Walton.
Hostess was killed by bad management.
Walmart management should take a good look at hostess and find that they are wrong for not paying their employees a living wage.
Please see comment #1.32