Skip to content
  • (413) 834-4284
  • [email protected]
  • 21 Grinnell St, Greenfield, Massachusetts
Sprawl-busters
  • Home
  • About
  • Resources
    • Links
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Home Towns, Not Home Depot
    • The Case Against Sprawl
  • Victories
  • Blog
    • Share Your Battle
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About
  • Resources
    • Links
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Home Towns, Not Home Depot
    • The Case Against Sprawl
  • Victories
  • Blog
    • Share Your Battle
  • Contact
  • Uncategorized

Wal-Mart Humiliates Workers

  • Al Norman
  • July 1, 1999
  • No Comments

It’s 9:30 pm on the night of June 11, 1999 at the Severance Town Center Wal-Mart store in Cleveland Heights, OH. The store manager gets on the public address system and announces that all workers in the store are to come to the front of the store for a meeting. Once assembled, the “associates” are told that $3,000 is missing from the cash registers. According to Graham Robinson, a Wal-Mart employee, the store manager “informed us that some money was missing, and he wanted to give the alleged person or persons a chance to turn in the money, with no questions asked, no disciplinary actions, and no repercussions.” The meeting ends, and the workers go back to their departments to close down. But no one steps forward with the missing money. So the manager has the store searched. Then the manager orders 37 workers taken to the restrooms to be searched. According to what Robinson told The Cleveland Plain Dealer, “I was asked to open my pants to see if I had money stuffed in my underwear. I emptied my pockets and took off my shoes. It was humiliating and embarrassing.” Robinson said his bosses asked him to drop his trousers and empty his pockets. Female workers were asked to open their work smocks, empty their purses, and turn their pockets inside out. No one was actually strip searched, according to the public account. “We were asked to stand in line while Cleveland Heights police were standing outside the customer service departments,” Robinson said. After the incident, Robinson retained a lawyer to represent him. “These people were not just suspects. They were accused,” attorney Rufus Sims told the Plain Dealer. Wal-Mart has admitted that two managers involved in the incident were fired, and an assistant manager was suspended. Wal-Mart said the managers and assistants violated company policy by rounding up workers and patting them down. “We do not condone that at all,” Wal-Mart said about the search. Wal-Mart even went so far as to send someone from its “home office” to apologize to the 37 workers involved in the affair. To make matters worse, the managers and assistants who took part in the search were all white, and the employees who were forced to submit to a search were all black. “This action was wrong and race-based,” said Attorney Sims. “There was no evidence or indication they did anything wrong…The workers just happened to be African-American.” Sims claims that white employees who were in the store at the time were not searched.

If the workers at Wal-Mart felt humiliated, Wal-Mart was the one that was even more humiliated by this event. After all, Wal-Mart is the company that bases its employee relations on the statement “respect for the individual”. “We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” says the Wal-Mart employee manual. “Not only is discrimination against our beliefs, it’s against the law.” But, as one Wal-Mart employee wrote to me: “At Wal-Mart they say they have respect for the individual. Well, I’m still waiting to meet that individual, because I sure got no respect.”

Like this article?

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Linkdin
Share on Pinterest
Picture of Al Norman

Al Norman

Al Norman first achieved national attention in October of 1993 when he successfully stopped Wal-Mart from locating in his hometown of Greenfield, Massachusetts. Almost 3 decades later they is still not Wal-Mart in Greenfield. Norman has appeared on 60 Minutes, was featured in three films, wrote 3 books about Wal-Mart, and gained widespread media attention from the Wall Street Journal to Fortune magazine. Al has traveled throughout the U.S., Barbados, Puerto Rico, Ireland, and Japan, helping dozens of local coalitions fight off unwanted sprawl development. 60 Minutes called Al “the guru of the anti-Wal-Mart movement.”

Leave a comment

Find Us

  • 21 Grinnell St, Greenfield, MA
  • (413) 834-4284
  • [email protected]

Helpful Links

  • Terms
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy

Recent Posts

Facebook testing encrypted chat backups – CNBC

September 14, 2022

Facebook is shutting down its live shopping feature on October 1 – TechCrunch

September 14, 2022

Introducing Home and Feeds on Facebook – Facebook

September 14, 2022

Facebook to allow up to five profiles tied to one account – Reuters

September 14, 2022

Facebook tells managers to identify low performers in memo – The Washington Post

September 14, 2022

Meta is dumping Facebook logins as its metaverse ID system – TechCrunch

September 14, 2022

Introducing Features to Quickly Find and Connect with Facebook Groups – Facebook

September 14, 2022

Facebook plans ‘discovery engine’ feed change to compete with TikTok – The Verge

September 14, 2022

Wow, Facebook really knows how to give someone a send-off! – TechCrunch

September 14, 2022

Here’s What You Need to Know About Our Updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service – Facebook

September 14, 2022

Recent Tweets

Ⓒ 2020 - All Rights Are Reserved

Design and Development by Just Peachy Web Design

Download Our Free Guide

Download our Free Guide

Learn How To Stop Big Box Stores And Fulfillment Warehouses In Your Community

The strategies written here were produced by Sprawl-Busters in 2006 at the request of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), mainly for citizen groups that were fighting Walmart. But the tips for fighting unwanted development apply to any project—whether its fighting Dollar General, an Amazon warehouse, or a Home Depot.

Big projects, or small, these BATTLEMART TIPS will help you better understand what you are up against, and how to win your battle.