DC Area Walmart Workers, Community Supporters Join 1,500 Protests Nationwide for Better Jobs

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Walmart workers and community supporters in the Washington, D.C. area protested on Black Friday against Walmart—the nation’s largest retailer—joining 1,500 protests across the nation in one of the largest mobilizations of working families in American history. Workers in the Washington, D.C. area were joined by tens of thousands of Americans in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, Sacramento, Miami, Minneapolis and other locations who called on Walmart to end illegal retaliation and publicly commit to improving labor standards, including providing workers with more full-time work and $25,000 a year. At a protest at the Walmart store located on Richmond Highway in Alexandria, Va., nine people, including one Walmart worker, were arrested in an act of civil disobedience calling for an end to the exploitation of Walmart workers by their company. “The support we’re seeing for Walmart workers across the country is overwhelming,” said Tiffany Beroid, who works at a Walmart store in Laurel, Md.  “I’ve worked at Walmart for two years and earn less than $25,000 a year. As a wife and mother, I’ve had to depend on food stamps to get by, and that’s unacceptable. As the largest employer in the country, Walmart can and should pay its workers a living wage.” Many UFCW Local 400 shop stewards from Giant, Safeway and Shoppers Food and Pharmacy came out to support the Walmart workers' fight for justice and respect on the job. Excerpted from a longer report on the UFCW 400 site. photo: a Local 400 shop steward from Shoppers Food & Pharmacy shows his solidarity at the Walmart action on Black Friday; photo by Bill Burke/Page One