http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2005/09/08/awsi1.html


"The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around
noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto
the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They're walking five-hour
shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in
Henderson-anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep
suntans on their faces and arms-with two 15-minute breaks to run across the
street and use the washroom at a gas station.

Periodically one of them will sit down in a slightly larger slice of shade
under a giant electricity pole in the intersection. Four lanes of traffic
rush by, some drivers honk in support, more than once someone has yelled,
"assholes!" but mostly, they're ignored.

They're not union members; they're temp workers employed through Allied
Forces/Labor Express by the union-United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
They're making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it's 104 F, and they're
protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.

"It don't make no sense, does it?" says James Greer, the line foreman and
the only one who pulls down $8 an hour, as he ambles down the sidewalk,
picket sign on shoulder, sweaty hat over sweaty gray hair, spitting
sunflower seeds. "We're sacrificing for the people who work in there, and
they don't even know it."

The union accuses Wal-Mart of dragging down wages and working conditions for
other grocery-store workers across the nation. "Whether you work or shop at
Wal-Mart, the giant retailer's employment practices affect your wages.
Wal-Mart leads the race to the bottom in wages and health-care," says the
UFCW's website. "As the largest corporation in the world, Wal-Mart has a
responsibility to the people who built it. Wal-Mart jobs offer low pay,
inadequate and unaffordable healthcare, and off the clock work."

But standing with a union-supplied sign on his shoulder that reads, Don't
Shop WalMart: Below Area Standards, picketer and former Wal-Mart employee
Sal Rivera says about the notorious working conditions of his former big-box
employer: "I can't complain. It wasn't bad. They started paying me at $6.75,
and after three months I was already getting $7, then I got Employee of the
Month, and by the time I left (in less than one year), I was making $8.63 an
hour." Rivera worked in maintenance and quit four years ago for personal
reasons, he says. He would consider
reapplying...................................



"We had one gal out here in her 40s, and she had a heat stroke. I kept
making her sit down, I noticed she was stepping (staggering), and I made her
sit in the shade," Greer said. She went home sick after her shift and didn't
ever return to work.

Another woman, Greer said, had huge blisters on her feet and he took her
inside to the Wal-Mart pharmacy. The pharmacist recommended some balm, and
Greer bought it for her. Since then, he said, other picketers have purchased
the balm for their blisters inside the Wal-Mart they are protesting.

The group has no transportation to go elsewhere-they are dropped off by a
union van and picked up later. On weekends, they have to find their own
transportation, Greer said. "................................



In Dyson's market, the air-conditioning is cool, business on this day seems
brisk, and the employees seem not so miserable; two checkers chat it up as
they ring up customers.

This is not lost on the picketers outside.

Rivera removes his watch to show the dark tan his arm has gotten working in
the sun; he talks about how he takes three buses to get to this work site on
weekends; it takes two hours to get there and two hours to get home-a
nine-hour day including that transportation for a gross pay of $35.

"I asked him (union organizer Hornbrook), I said, 'How come we're working
here for $6 an hour? I need you to help us find a better job. I want
information on the union,'" Rivera said.

He was told, he says, to secure his own job with a grocery store, and then
the union would help him to be sure the store paid him appropriate wages.

"This is an informational picket line only," Hornbrook said. "We're paying
these people. They were out of work before (joining their picket lines).
This is an in-between-jobs stop. Picketing isn't a career. But we did hire
one of the picketers, she's now working for us for $11 an hour (as a driver)
and we pay for gasoline."

The UFCW's website concludes, "Every person working hard for a living earns
the right to a decent wage, affordable health care and a voice on the job.
But Wal-Mart's greed provides other companies a license to chip away at the
rights of working America, influencing everything from wages to working
conditions."