A group representing Walmart workers laid off after the abrupt closing of five stores last week planned to seek an injunction on Monday from the National Labor Relations Board that would require the retailer to rehire all 2,200 affected workers.þþWalmart said that the closings were temporary and were prompted by plumbing issues at the five stores, in California, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. Officials at the retailer said they would do their best to rehire the workers at other stores or at the five stores once they reopened.þþBut a claim set to be filed on Monday by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union with the National Labor Relations Board says that the closings were in retaliation for a history of labor activism at one of the shuttered stores, in Pico Rivera, Calif. The union is acting on behalf of Our Walmart, a group that has helped the stores’ workers air their claims, but is not a union itself.þþThe Pico Rivera store was the site of the first strike at a Walmart store in the United States, in 2012, organized by a workers’ group backed by the union. The strike was over pay and working conditions for the retailer’s hourly wage workers. Since then, store employees have led actions demanding changes to Walmart’s hours and pregnancy policies, access to full-time, consistent work and at least $15 an hour in pay for workers at the retailer’s 4,500 stores across the country.þþ“Walmart has targeted this store because the associates have been among the most active associates around the country to improve working conditions,” the claim says.þþIt asks the labor relations board to compel Walmart to immediately rehire all 2,200 associates laid off across the five stores, either by reopening those stores or by transferring workers to other stores without any loss of pay.þþA Walmart spokesman, Lorenzo Lopez, said on Sunday, “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.” Walmart officials have previously denied that the closings, which they say could take six months or longer, are related to the workers’ campaigns.þþThe five shuttered supercenters have had more plumbing problems than most of Walmart’s other stores, with over 100 incidents reported at each store in the past two years, according to the company. The retailer may decide to do additional work to remodel the stores, which Walmart called strong performers, ahead of the year-end holiday season. The chain said it had not yet obtained permits for the work because the extent of what might be needed was unclear.þþThe 2,200 workers at the five stores had been laid off, officials said, because it was difficult to know how long the work would take to complete, and also to give those workers access to 60 days of severance pay. The officials said that the workers would be invited to reapply to those stores once they reopened, and that the retailer would do its best to hire the workers in positions similar to those they held before, at the same or better pay.þþWorkers laid off in the closings have claimed that they have been given no guarantees of getting their jobs back at the reopened stores. They received just several hours’ notice from their managers of the store closings, said Venanzi Luna, a deli manager at the Pico Rivera store who had taken the lead in calling for improvements for workers.þþ“At first, we didn’t know what was going on. Some of us were crying,” Ms. Luna said. “How are we going to pay our bills? How are we going to pay our rent?”þþWalmart has been accused before of retaliating against workers over their participation in labor movements. In 2014, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Walmart violated local labor laws when it closed a store in Quebec that had become one of the first Walmart stores in the country to unionize. Walmart denied that it closed the store for that reason.þþThe retailer has moved to improve conditions for its work force. Walmart said in February that it would raise wages to at least $10 an hour by next February, compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.þ
Source: NY Times
