This article is based on interviews with Walmart employees in London Ontario.
Does it make sense to you that people earning minimum wage, living well below the poverty line, are doing fundraising for charities which are organized by the corporation to which they are employed? Yes that’s right, Walmart has its workers doing fundraising for charities in its name: brilliant and cheap “good works”.
A friend who worked at Walmart as a cashier for many years told me that she was expected to participate in various fundraisers, including “staff donations”, and if she did not she was treated as if she was not a valued employee. It is bad enough that employees are subjected to singing the Walmart song every morning, and if they are lucky enough to be there at close, the managers broadcast the total sales for the day throughout the store. Employees are expected to cheer and help the store break sales records daily. Ironically, what a Walmart in London can earn in a day, typically well over 150,000$, a cashier will never take home in a dozen years working for minimum wage.
Recently over 800 Walmart employees with friends and family participated in a walk to raise funds for the Children’s Foundation. But who ultimately benefits from the efforts of the low-wage workers? Walmart can donate funds enough to support hundreds of organizations and charities without exploiting its obliging workers (actually Walmart can’t really do anything without exploiting anyone). These events are nothing but publicity stunts to make Walmart look responsible and caring, two things which it is not.
If Walmart really cared, perhaps it would choose to “fundraise” to pay its employees a living wage, and clothe, house and feed the workers in China who make the plastic crap they sell. More fundraising ideas: environmental cleanup from the extraction and processing of petrochemicals, dyes, and metals used to make the products they sell, cancer clinics to treat people who work and eat at their McDonalds’ and revitalization programs for the tens of thousands of small town main streets across North America that are now ghost towns because of Walmart.
