Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today!
Just look at the chain’s outlet in Canton, Ohio, where management set up bins for food donations, asking people to give generously to the poor who otherwise would not have a Thanksgiving dinner. But the bins weren’t for customers — they were tucked back in the employees-only area.
Yes, this corporate colossus, with an annual income greater than 140 countries, wants its poorly paid employees to buy food for fellow employees whose paychecks leave them in deep poverty. More astonishing is the corporation’s insipid, self-congratulatory insistence that the employee food drive demonstrates its deep ethical commitment to the welfare of all Walmart “associates” (as it grandiosely calls its beleaguered workers).Walmart’s Thanksgiving food drive was for its own employees, beseeching low-wage workers to donate to even lower-wage workers who can’t afford a family dinner on this national day of thanks.
“This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them,” a spokesman for the big-box giant asserted.
But, of course, Walmart isn’t taking care of its workers at all. It won’t pay a living wage, won’t provide decent health care or other needed benefits, won’t allow workers to organize so they can have their own voice — and then abandons them to beg for scraps if they want to share in Thanksgiving with other Americans.
This is obscene and a moral outrage. Three Waltons — Alice, Robson, and Jim — are heirs to the Walmart fortune and are sitting on more than $33 billion a piece, thanks to decades of profiting on the low wages the corporation pays. Shouldn’t they at least pony up a pittance from their prodigious inheritance for a few turkey-and-sweet-potato dinners on Thanksgiving?
An urgent fundraising appeal: We still need to raise $12,000
Truthout is one of only a few platforms for justice-oriented, grassroots journalism. Today, we face an existential threat.
Due to Google’s launch of AI search, we’ve seen a drastic plunge in our site traffic and, as a result, our revenue. We lost 15 percent of our readership overnight. This was a readership we painstakingly built over decades, and it vanished because Google chose corporate greed over a healthy democracy.
We are fundraising right now to meet our basic operating expenses. If you can support Truthout with a one-time or monthly donation, you will make a significant impact on our work. Anything you can do makes a difference — we appreciate your support.