2,200 Wal-Mart workers who were suddenly laid off recently when the giant retailer shut down 5 stores for ???plumbing problems,??? have a filed an injunction with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to force Wal-Mart to reinstate the workers.
Wal-Mart said the shut-downs were ???temporary,??? yet they laid off the workers and gave them no guarantee that they would be able to get rehired back in the same stores where they were working in California, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. Wal-Mart said it would ???do their best??? to rehire the workers at other stores or at the five stores once they reopened.
???At first, we didn???t know what was going on. Some of us were crying,??? one worker in California told the New York Times. ???How are we going to pay our bills? How are we going to pay our rent????
The injunction was filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) on behalf of the employee group Our Walmart. The injunction charges that Wal-Mart is just retaliating against its employees: ???Wal-Nart has targeted [workers at a CA. store] because the associates have been among the most active associates around the country to improve working conditions.??? The UFCW wants the workers rehired or given jobs at other stores at equal pay.
???We don???t believe there is a basis for an injunction that would interfere with our efforts to repair the serious plumbing issues at the five stores,??? a Wal-Mart spokesman told the NY Times. The company says the laid off workers will be invited to apply for their old jobs when the plumbing gets fixed.
This is not the first time that Wal-Mart has been accused of closing down a store to retaliate against unions. A store in Jonquiere, Quebec was open for four years before Wal-Mart shut it down in 2005 shortly after Wal-Mart “associates” voted to unionize. Wal-Mart did it again in 2008, by shutting down a Tire and Lube center at their store in Gatineau, Quebec, when a union was certified there. In March of 2000 Wal-Mart proceeded to close down 180 meat cutting departments in their stores in six states because of unionization issues.
Natural News wrote: “Seriously? Does anybody believe the official explanation? What’s really raising eyebrows across the web is the mathematical improbability that five large Wal-Mart stores would all experience catastrophic plumbing problems at exactly the same day, all requiring exactly the same duration of closures: six months. The very idea…ranks right up there with some of the most ridiculously implausible cover-up explanations we’ve heard over the years…The cover story is so lacking in credibility…One news organization, Channel 8 in Brandon, Florida, looked into the claimed plumbing repairs and found it was a fictional cover story.”
Search this database by Jonquiere or meat cutters to see similar stories.
2,200 Wal-Mart workers who were suddenly laid off recently when the giant retailer shut down 5 stores for ???plumbing problems,??? have a filed an injunction with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to force Wal-Mart to reinstate the workers.
