In the beginning of the story the author, Karen Olsson, began by letting us know that employee, Jennifer McLaughlin, was a 22-year-old with a one-year-old baby and living with …show more content…
Employees who took the overtime without pay felt obligated to or else they would lose their job. She claims that you cannot make it on your own as a Wal-Mart employee unless you have someone helping you or you are a manager. Getting paid close to minimum wage and working only one job to provide for her family had to be a challenge. The only way her and other employers in her situation thought change would be brought is if they made some sort of complaint; took action, like a petition to get some change …show more content…
Wal-Mart was so aggressive on fighting unions that many employees were intimidated to join one in fear of losing their jobs. Wal-Mart repeatedly broke the law by interrogating workers, confiscating union literature and firing union supporters. The company even enforced hour-long anti- union meetings consisting of videos that warned you of the consequences of unions. (Hooper, 2013) Sometimes they would set up surveillance cameras to monitor workers. Some of the meetings even consisted of one on one sessions of anti-union role playing act in front of managers.
Since Wal-Mart is determined to fight off unions among their stores it seems like the employees will not see improvement with these problems.
In February 2000, the meat cutting department in Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW. The UFCW was the only Wal-Mart in the nation where workers successfully organized a union. Two weeks after the vote, the company announced it was eliminating its meat cutting departments in all of its stores nationwide. They also fired four of their workers who voted for the union. (Karen Olsson,