Business & Tech

Iowa City Walmart Picketed on Black Friday

The small protest was in solidarity with national protests about Walmart's low wages nationally.


A small band of protesters gathered together out in the cold on Black Friday to protest outside the Iowa City Walmart branch of the shopping chain.

Mitchell Schmidt of the Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that there were as many 15 protesters outside the shopping center at 919 Highway 1 in the early afternoon Friday:

Iowa City resident Daniel Johnson-O’Mara said the group organized to draw attention to Walmark employees’ low wages. The average wage of a Walmart employee — $8.81 an hour — is not enough to support oneself, let alone a family, he said.

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“You can’t make a living on nine bucks an hour, and they’re trying to raise families,” Johnson-O’Mara said. “That’s not a living wage. People should be able to work for Walmart for a living, that’s what we’re saying.”

This was apparently part of several similar protests against Walmart across the country in as many as 46 states. The protests included walkouts by striking employees.

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The retail giant felt it was important enough to issue a press release stating that it had still had its best Black Friday ever and "that its stores rang up almost 10 million transactions from the time doors opened for Black Friday shoppers at 8 p.m. Thursday until midnight, or about 5,000 items per second."

That's not all. As some employees were striking outside of the stores all over America, other protesters with a different agenda were protesting inside, as strident pet owners urged Walmart to stop selling Chicken jerky treats made in China that have been linked to animal deaths.


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