You may have heard or seen in the news recently that the corporate leaders of Walmart have generously decided increase the minimum wage from $10 an hour to $11 and give a one time bonus that is determined by length of employment. President and CEO Doug McMillon has stated that this is an investment into us as employees, but the majority of us see it for what it is, extra scraps thrown to the workers, who are mostly black, for the same backbreaking work that keeps this evil machine running day after day. They condescendingly announce this to as if they’re doing us a favor, while most employees continue to rely on food stamps, public housing, second jobs, and medicaid (our benefits don’t even cover the full cost of a teeth cleaning) to survive. Several of my coworkers have even returned to selling drugs on the side to make ends meet.
To briefly sum up who I am: I’m from the Westbank and my family is mostly made up of the proletariat. After my parents’ divorce and my dad suffering a near fatal accident on the job, I lived with him to take care of him. His only income at the time was $850 a month from social security. To keep food on the table and the lights on I began selling drugs to pay whatever bills I could. I barely passed high school, and college was a fairytale for someone like me. So after two years of unemployment out of high school I couldn’t be picky and was hired on at Wal-Mart as a truck unloader at $8.40, which later became Cap-2 after the first wage increase. The first thing you are shown in orientation is a cheesy 90’s anti-union video and they make it clear that organizing will get you fired on the spot.
To start, the workload and expectations are impossible for the amount of people on a crew. Eight hours of work (unloading the truck onto pallets and carts then pulling them to the sales floor) is expected to be done in four and a six person crew is supposed to do a fourteen person job. On top of this the air conditioning is too weak for the size of our backroom, constant harassment from management about not pushing our bodies to the limit, bathroom breaks are treated as slacking off and lunch breaks usually don’t come until six or seven hours into our shift with one fifteen minute break until then. Managers act as constant reminders that your job can be gone in an instant, yet they routinely break rules such as smoking near propane tanks and driving forklifts inside the building. The tension causes tempers to flair, arguments and even fights between workers constantly happen.
One night there was an attempted robbery, so from then on managers had to lock all doors after the store closed at 12 am. At the time our crew got off at 1 am, so a manager had to let us out to re-lock the door behind us. If we left without a manager letting us out we faced termination. Several of them took advantage of this by refusing to open the door for us if our job wasn’t finished (the rules clearly state they can’t hold us after our scheduled time), threatening to fire us if we didn’t stay past our time. Surprising we reported this to the labor board and a long time Co-Manager (the store manager’s assistant) was demoted and transferred. So far this is the only “victory” we’ve had when we fought for our rights.
Once the first wage increase to $10 an hour happened, the company decided to create Cap-2. We still unload both general merchandise and grocery trucks, but now we also act as a second maintenance team, forklift operators, stockers, occasional buggy pushers. Basically anything management wants to throw on us because we’re in no position to argue. They also began to cut the hours and positions of the overnight shift, expecting us to finish all of grocery, chemicals, paper goods, pharmacy, infant supplies and pet supplies by the end of shift. Basically after killing ourselves to unload the trucks in impossible times we have to stock everything from half the store. We have never had enough people on the crew to do this on a normal day and we’re frequently chewed out for not meeting these ridiculous expectations.
The threat of being written up is constant, especially for black workers. Talk back? Written up for being negative. Say nothing and walk away? Written up for insubordination. Take your polo off because it feels like an oven in the back room? Dress code violation. Buying something on your break? Prepare to be stalked by asset protection, the wannabe pigs that assume every black worker wants to clean the store out. Most days I clock out feeling so physically and mentally drained that walking to my car feels like running a marathon. I feel like I wake up every day just to get beaten up and cheated out of eight hours of my life.
And this is just my department, buggy pushers have it even harder. Many have mental illnesses and disabilities and are forced to work in all conditions. Pouring rain? Blistering heat? Freezing cold? Doesn’t matter: that parking lot better be clear. In the break room there’s a picture of a buggy pusher that passed away before I was hired, he was suffering from heat stroke so and a manager sent him home in a taxi instead of calling an ambulance.