The workers were attending the St. Swisher’s looting and burning protests. There was an exception in NJ.
Organizers of a post-Thanksgiving protest on behalf of workers at a Walmart in downtown Washington, D.C. identified only one of the participants as actually working at that store.
The admission underscores the fact that few Walmart workers have been involved in the protests.
“Thirty striking workers from Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland took part in today’s protest, and Melinda Gaino, one of the striking workers, works at the H Street Store,” said Julie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers union, which organized the event.
Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg claimed the number was far smaller. “We recognized about 5 to 10 who are current associates from around the metro area,” he said.
UFCW had previously said that 50 Walmart employees from the D.C. metropolitan area, including Virginia and Maryland, would take part in Friday’s event. There are 22 Walmarts in a 25-mile radius of the H Street store, meaning that the protest attracted at most about one and a half employees per store in the region. A majority of the protesters were community leaders and liberal activists not affiliated with Walmart.[…]
There did not seem to be much of a groundswell at other metro area stores either. A worker at a Lanham, Md., store that been the site of a 2012 OUR Walmart protest said, “I wouldn’t do that. I love my job.” She called the D.C. protest “a mess,” adding that she wouldn’t want to see the store shut down on Black Friday because so many of their local customers depend on it.
Other workers were simply weary. An Easton, Md., Walmart employee said she had headaches as a result of being at the store until closing at 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, then coming back in at 5 a.m. on Friday. She wasn’t getting overtime either. But she wasn’t about to join a protest.
“No, I want to keep my job,” she said.