Los Angeles Area Wal-Mart Workers Strike

Reports are being published that Los Angeles, California-area employees of Wal-Mart were walking off the job in a strike today, November 6, 2013. There were unconfirmed reports that a similar strike in October had resulted in some workers at a Florida store being given raises and more hours. See the story on the Florida strike from Huffingtonpost.com. A story from Salon.com has the claims for the "victory" claimed by workers from the October action. Your blogger wonders how many of the workers actually "won" anything that was not already in the works under previously-announced Wal-Mart plans to make changes in its workforce.

A story today from ThinkProgress.org states that it was given the number of Wal-Mart employees in the Southern California area as 13,000. The stories your blogger found do not indicate how many employees were participating in the gatherings today. The primary focus of the gatherings is more hours and higher pay.

Wal-Mart, like every other retailer, is obviously concerned about what the sales levels for the remainder of the year will be. Will these strikes have a positive impact on the conditions for Wal-Mart workers? Will the strikes have any impact on sales at the locations where they occur? That will likely only be known after the start of the new year. Wal-Mart is working hard for the holiday dollars. One location had Christmas music playing at 7:30 a.m. on November 1.



Update: A Huffingtonpsot.com article indicates that some arrests were made when the demonstration permits expired for a gathering. The article also states that about 500 were involved at that location.