We launched the campaign for $15 dollars and full time at Walmart over a decade ago. During that time we built a movement of working people that grew into what is now United for Respect.
We picked this fight because Walmart is the biggest private employer in the US, run by America’s richest family. The Waltons are some of the wealthiest people in the world, now worth almost $225 billion dollars. But the frontline associates who work at Walmart are often left relying on food pantries, SNAP benefits, WIC, medicaid, and predatory loans just to get by.
When we first started this fight in 2012, Amazon’s net income was in the negative. Today, Amazon is the country’s second biggest private employer, making billions of dollars a quarter. But Jeff Bezos followed the Walton playbook, getting rich by keeping associates and drivers underpaid, overworked, and injured.
When we take on the country’s biggest employers – and win – our work has a ripple effect across the entire country.
The retail industry is powered by over 16 million people of different ages, sexual orientations, physical abilities, genders and ethnicities — and we are fighting for a country that works for all of us, not just a few billionaires.