June 3, 2015
By LaborPress
About 30 current and recently fired workers staged a 24-hour hunger strike outside a Los Angeles Walmart May 27 to protest the corporation’s retaliation against their efforts to form a union.
“The fast is to show Walmart that this is what they’re driving people to—hunger,” said Evelin Cruz, who was fired from the chain’s store in Pico Rivera last November “due to my activism.” The company abruptly closed that store and four others in April, laying off 2,200 workers, in a move union supporters have charged was retaliation for organizing there. “We would like every employee that was laid off to be reinstated with their full benefits, hours, seniority, wages,” said Martha Sellers, who works at another area Walmart. However, the United Food and Commercial Workers has cut its funding for the OUR Walmart organizing project by 60%. Read more
