It's beginning to look like Walmart Black Friday protests will be the biggest ever

Walmart worker Diana Tigon goes hungry a lot.

Walmart supporters will protest retaliation against workers in every single Walmart store in Massachusetts and Washington on Black Friday. It's just one sign sign that Nov. 28, 2014, will be the day of the most intense show of support for Walmart's 1.4 million workers.

It's also a sign of the rising disgust for Walmart's owners. The Walton family owns more than 42 percent of Americans combined but can't pay their employees a living wage.

Diana Tigon, a Walmart employee in Arlington, Texas, sometimes can't afford to eat all day. Here's her story:

Diana has worked as a cashier at Walmart for more than two years. She is one of the lucky workers scheduled for a consistent 40 hours a week. She and her coworker stood up for full-time status and won it for themselves and about 15 workers in their store. 

Even with more hours than many, at just $9.40 an hour Diana often finds herself strapped for cash. And despite her 40 hours, she doesn’t have full access to benefits because she was classified as a part-time employee. 

She is very disciplined on her spending so that she doesn’t fall behind on bills. After she covers the rent for the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her niece, she has little left to cover the bills or save for the car she dreams of buying to get her to work. On rough weeks, she will go full days without eating meals. Friends in her neighborhood started to take notice and bring her food from time-to-time. 

“On by weeks, you just have to make it until payday on Wednesday,” Diana said.  

She and her coworkers try to look out for one another and buy one another food when they can. Recently, when her coworker asked her to pay for her drink, she ran her card and crossed her fingers. She only had $18 to her name the last time she checked and she was afraid to see what, if anything, was left.

Walmart workers formed the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) to raise their wages and to form a union. They need the Teamsters help on Black Friday, and Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa wants you to support them.

All they're asking is that you take 30 minutes to visit a store near you. If you do it sometime between 7 am and 10 am you will really send Walmart a strong message. To find a Black Friday action near you, go to www.BlackFridayProtests.org.

No matter how many of you there are, they’re asking you to take a picture of yourself and your group in front of the store and post it to social media, or email it to community@changewalmart.org. Make sure your sign specifies which city or town you're in and that you support #WalmartStrikers. That will show that thousands of people from across the country want Walmart to change.

OUR Walmart is also asking you to deliver your sign to the store manager. That's because every time that store manager gets a visit from a supporter, they must call Home Office in Arkansas and tell them. So it has just as much of an impact if it’s you and one other, or a dozen or 50 of you.

So just get out there, no matter how big your group! Every time a Walmart manager calls Bentonville, you are making a difference. They are hearing you tell that it’s time to end the financial crisis that the Waltons have created for American families.

Inaction on Fast Track as Stop Fast Track Week of Action comes to a close

Congress is unlikely to pass Fast Track in a lame duck session, three leading Democrats said Wednesday in the midst of the Stop Fast Track Week of Action. Teamsters took active roles during the week of rallies, petition deliveries and social media. Our union believes Fast Track legislation will cost more good American jobs because it allows Congress to rubber stamp bad trade deals like the TPP.

Our friend Mark Gruenberg at Press Associates reported:

The Communications Workers, the Teamsters and CTC led the anti-fast-track drive. Other backers include the Steelworkers, the Bakery Confectionery and Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, the AFL-CIO, the Denver Area Labor Federation, the Machinists, the Service Employees, Public Citizen and Democracy for America.

They followed their initial drive with the “#StopFastTrack Week of Action” to produce more calls, e-mails and rallies. Details are at StopFastTrack.com.

Besides the letters, e-mails and petitions, the anti-fast-track campaign hosted a community forum in Sacramento, demonstrations outside lawmakers' offices in Chicago, Elgin, Ill., Portland, Ore., Boston, Allentown, Pa., San Diego, Seattle and Olympia, Wash., Denver and elsewhere and a phone bank in Chicago.

The hashtags #StopFastTrack and #TPP made it into the top 25 hashtags for Nov. 11, 2014.

Teamsters in Allentown, Pa., rallied outside Rep. Charlie Dent's office on Wednesday to urge him to vote against fast track in the lame-duck session. Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773, led the rally.

Teamsters in Allentown earlier this week.

In New York, Twitter tells us:

NYers sport a rockin #TPP banner at #StopFastTrack action in Albany -> call your Rep at http://StopFastTrack.com

Anti-fast track demonstration in Albany, N.Y.

And here's more good news: TPP talks got nowhere this week. Inter Press News Service reports:

For the third year in a row, government negotiators for 12 Pacific Rim countries have missed an internal deadline to reach agreement on a controversial U.S.-led trade deal. 

And though negotiators for the accord, known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), say the process is nearing completion, critics of the deal are expressing optimism that both public opinion and political timing are increasingly against the deal. 

“The reason the Obama administration keeps missing deadline after deadline, year after year, is that it’s pushing an extremely unpopular agenda that benefits a handful of big corporations at the expense of the economy, environment and public health in each TPP country and beyond,” Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Citizens Trade Campaign, an advocacy group that opposes the TPP, told IPS.

Today's Teamster News 07.10.12

Obama calls for extending middle-class tax cuts  WMUR.com   ...Obama called on Congress to pass a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for households making less than $250,000 per year...
It's a repeat: Romney tops Obama in June by $35 million  Politico   ...In an email to supporters, the Obama campaign announces raising $71 million in June — trailing Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee for the second consecutive month, this time by $35 million...
Major Rent Strike Against Millionaire Slumlord Catches Fire in Brooklyn  Alternet   ...As foreclosures continue to put historic pressure on the nation’s rental market, slumlords now have more opportunity than ever to prey on the most vulnerable of tenants...
Indentured Students Rise As Loans Corrode College Ticket  Bloomberg   ...As college costs have soared faster than the rate of inflation over the past four decades -- reaching $60,000 a year at the most expensive private schools -- Republicans and Democrats alike postponed a reckoning. They encouraged borrowing and ignored surging tuition, leaving loans to balloon to the size of mortgages, shocking even the system’s own architects...
Scott Walker Stacks Ethics Commission With ‘Fiercely Conservative’ Members Picked By A Corporate Lobbyist  ThinkProgress   ...Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, an ally of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), is currently facing ethics charges due to allegations that he placed a fellow justice in a chokehold during an argument. Walker, however, now appears to have adopted a selection process for new members of this commission that will ensure Prosser will receive favorable treatment in the future...
Teamsters Call For Independent Board Leadership At Republic Airways  IBT   ...The current structure, with its close-knit board and conflicted lead director, makes investors vulnerable to the whims of a domineering chairman/CEO with no clear vision for the airline...
Teamsters Strike at Sorrento in South Buffalo  WGRZ.com   ...Members of the Local 264, International Brotherhood of Teamsters say they agreed to strike because of "Sorrento Cheese's unilateral imposition, effective 7/2/12 of inferior terms for health care coverage..."