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Walmart gets protesters

Paul Maliszewski, with La Plata County Thrive!, a living-wage coalition, holds a poster at the main entrance to Walmart on Black Friday. He and others are wanting to raise awareness of a livable wage for workers in Durango.

On Black Friday, Durango’s Walmart attracted thousands of bargain hunters, plus another kind of crowd: people demanding a better deal for Walmart employees.

For two hours Friday, protesters with La Plata County Thrive! stood at both of Walmart’s highway entrances holding placards urging the giant retailer to pay its employees more.

Driver after driver honked in support.

Paul Maliszewski, a patent officer, said he was outraged that Walmart pays its workers so little.

“Most Walmart workers earn $8.81 an hour. But most estimates say you need $12.40 an hour to live in La Plata County, and that just covers the bare minimum, like transport, food and housing,” he said.

Real estate broker Kathy Hall said “most Walmart employees need government assistance.”

She pointed to one study that found that, every year, Walmart employees cost taxpayers more than $1 billion nationwide.

Contacted Friday afternoon, Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg said it was telling that no one who worked for Walmart attended the protest.

Asked whether Walmart had had problems with protesters at its Durango store before, he said, “I don’t know that I would call this a problem with the Durango store. Some community activists have gone out there and gotten attention for themselves.”

Nationally, he said, “you see labor unions involved in this, but not people who work with the company ... (who) find it frustrating and frankly very offensive when people outside the company try to speak for them.”

He defended the wages that Walmart pays, saying, “We absolutely have entry level jobs with entry level wages,” but, he said, workers soon get the opportunity to “build their careers” and “get off of public assistance very quickly.”

Last year, he said, 40 percent of the 170,000 workers promoted to better-paying positions were in their first year with the company.

“If you look at the whole picture, Walmart probably more than any other company helps to move people off of public assistance,” he said.

He said no more than 50 of Walmart’s 1.3 million employees had ever protested the company.

He denied that Walmart employees refrained from protesting because they were afraid they’d be fired, saying in the last three years, “a number of Walmart associates” had protested the store. “They continue to work for us.”

At the protest, Liza Tregillus, a social worker, said she’d known many people who have worked for Walmart over the years, and she was sickened by how hard they’ve struggled to get by.

Between honks, Maureen Maliszewski and Nancy Fisher said Walmart’s poor treatment of workers was particularly incensing as its owners, the Walton family, are among the richest people on Earth.

“They’re so unbelievably wealthy. They can afford to pay their workers decently,” Fisher said.

cmcallister@durangoherald.com

Nov 28, 2014
Black Friday less frantic this year


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