Jobs With Justice

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
November 13, 2012

CONTACT:
Ori Korin
(202) 822-2127 x126
okorin@americanrightsatwork.org

Washington, D.C. – Tonight, Jobs with Justice and American Rights at Work Executive Director Sarita Gupta will be honored with the Business Ethics Network (BEN) Individual Achievement Award for her decades of successful work on economic and social justice, and for her leadership in bringing together diverse efforts into powerful coalitions for change.

BEN introduced the annual BENNY Awards in 2005 to recognize outstanding corporate campaign victories, and to celebrate the dedicated people leading the movement to transform corporations into socially and environmentally responsible organizations.

Walmart has seen their fair share of “days of action” from community and labor activists. But the recent call to “Stand Up, Live Better,” culminating in walk-outs throughout the country this month, is a game-changer.

The momentum has been building for months. Workers from throughout the supply and distribution chains have walked out and even taken their demands to Walmart’s Home Office in Arkansas.  The rest of us have stood in solidarity with them—leafleting, organizing delegations to managers, picketing, and inspiring a groundswell of activity across the country of historic proportions.

On Black Friday, adopt-a-store to engage in creative action during and in between the sales (usually at 10PM, 12AM and 8AM starting the night before).

In areas where OUR Walmart associates are walking out, we ask that community leaders and activists mobilize in solidarity of the action, coordinating with the workers’ plans.  Elsewhere, actions can vary from sending Walmart-focused Christmas carols to petitioning the crowds with “I support associates” stickers to wear inside.

In the wake of the unprecedented strikes by Walmart Associates all over the country, the Huffington Post uncovered a confidential memo Walmart issued to salaried managers on October 8th, just after the first wave of strikers walked off the job in Southern California. The document contains seven pages of instructions for how to respond to both strikes and actions by community members.

The document shows that the dozens of walk-outs and hundreds of store actions have unsettled the company, in spite of their public claims that neither the strikes nor protests have impacted their ability to operate. It also shows that Walmart expects both workplace and community actions to continue, and wants to carefully control the response from local store managers.

Originally posted at ThePOWERCampaign.org

The National Guestworker Alliance just announced a huge victory. The C.J.’s Seafood workers who exposed forced labor on the Wal-Mart supply chain in June were vindicated by the federal government, which granted them U-Visas—special visas for victims of serious crimes. This is an extraordinary victory for worker organizing and labor law enforcement in the U.S.

Now, armed with protections against deportation, the C.J.’s workers are entering labor camps across the Gulf Coast, organizing hundreds of other Wal-Mart supply chain workers to stop forced labor at their own workplaces. Winning these immigration protections allows the C.J.’s workers to continue to be leaders in their campaign—both as witnesses to the ongoing government investigations they triggered at their own workplace, and as organizers fighting to secure the basic rights of all workers on the Wal-Mart supply chain.