Downtown Long Beach’s Wal-Mart. Photo by Greggory Moore.
Check out the news Friday and you’re bound to see stories about employee protests at as many as 1,000 Wal-Mart stores across the country. But at Long Beach’s two stores, it will be business as usual.
Friday’s strike is being organized by the Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart (OUR Wal-Mart), a nonprofit comprised of Wal-Mart employees critical of the megachain, “in protest of Wal-Mart’s continuous acts of retaliation against those of us who speak out for better pay, affordable healthcare, improved working conditions, fair schedules, more hours, and most of all, respect.”
But according to Allison Mannos, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy who replied to the Long Beach Post‘s interview request to OUR Wal-Mart, employees at Long Beach’s two stores are not taking part.
“There are certain stores in which there are more active employees in general,” Mannos said, “and Long Beach hasn’t been one of those [places].”
Mannos noted that this is generally true of the Long Beach stores, and not specific to Fridays protest.
Wal-Mart claims that Friday’s protests will be limited in scope.
“Our stores will be operating normally on Black Friday, and our customers will see nothing unusual when they shop,” Wal-Mart spokesperson David Tovar told the Wall Street Journal. “These so-called protests involve a handful of associates at a handful of stores. In fact most of the protesters don’t even work for Wal-Mart. They are union organizers and union members.”
Wal-Mart is seeking an injunction from the National Labor Relations Board to stop Friday’s strike, but the NLRB has indicated that because of the complexity of the legal issues involved, it is unlikely that a decision on the matter can be reached before Friday.
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