Walmart workers join Black Friday protests across Puget Sound

A small number of Walmart workers joined labor protesters in Black Friday demonstrations across the country aimed at bringing change to the world’s largest employer.

In Washington state, protests were held outside the Mount Vernon Supercenter, the Port Angeles Supercenter and the Renton Walmart.

In Renton, roughly a dozen Walmart employees joined a few hundred labor protestors to demand higher pay and better benefits for workers. Customers entering the store were met with chants of “Walmart, Walmart you’re no good. Treat your workers like you should.”

“There are people that are dissatisfied, that have grievances,” said Rickey Martin, who has worked at the Walmart Supercenter in Federal Way for four and a half years.

He was not scheduled to work on Black Friday, and joined the Renton protest in solidarity.

“What better day to show Walmart we’re serious. Maybe we can cause some economic impact,” he said.

The workers involved are part of an employee-coalition called Making Change at Walmart, which said the protests were aimed at “informing customers about the illegal actions that Walmart has been taking against its workers.”

Inside the Renton store, however, customers seemed unfazed by the demonstration. In a press release, the company said it made 10 million transactions and sold almost 5,000 items per second nationwide from 8:00 p.m. through midnight on Thanksgiving.

“I’m so proud of what our more than 1.3 million associates have done to prepare and execute our Black Friday plans, giving our customers a great start to their Christmas shopping season,” Bill Simon, Walmart U.S. president and chief executive officer, said in a news release.

Simon said the number of protestors had been grossly over exaggerated.

“Only 26 protests occurred at stores Thursday night and many of them did not include any Walmart associates,” he said. “We estimate that less than 50 associates participated in the protest nationwide. In fact, this year, roughly the same number of associates missed their scheduled shift as last year.”

Several workers who walked off the job to protest at the Renton location told KIRO Radio they were not “anti-Walmart,” and did not want the protest to affect business.

“We don’t want Walmart to go away, but we do want them to do better,” said Kenny James, a former Walmart manager. “They are the number one retailer in the world, and we just want them to share the profits with the associates.”