I work for Walmart, their transportation department specifically.
I always figured that it would be some massively automated system of hundreds and hundreds of people which is partly true but after being hired I realized that there are a total of roughly 60 hourly-paid employees who schedule every single pick up of Walmart’s cargo across the entire western hemisphere. Nobody outside of my job position is trained to do this job aside from the managers.
Before this I worked multiple part time jobs including food service and carpentry which I hated more than anything on earth but after being here for this long I almost wish I never left despite the increase in wage and hours. It has to be one of the most soul crushing, micromanaged sanitized and self-congratulatory environments I have ever seen in my entire life. 2 hour long meetings where all managers do is break down the record breaking profits Walmart is raking in all the while preaching about how we all need to work harder to uphold the “good old fashioned values” of the Walton family. Every other week they increase the workload of people who are already working a second full time job just to make rent. It’s been a revolving door of employees the entire time and the only promotions happening are conveniently relatives of our supervisors bosses. The ceiling they set for our pay is hardly enough to survive.
I bring all of this up because my coworkers have been talking of unionization very quietly which I have somewhat been stoking the fire of. I would love for this to happen, especially considering Walmart has such a vice grip on my area meaning there are not a ton of decent paying jobs out here. I know it’s an absolute shot in the dark to think Walmart wouldn’t make up some reason to fire us all on the spot but I just can not handle working there anymore. Reddit will not be the only place I look in to this but I would like some further insight from wherever I can get it:
Can Walmart ever unionize, even in an incredibly vital yet small department?