In a room bound by silence, the voice of one woman in NYU’s philosophy building reached a stunned audience with the help of an interpreter.
“My name is Aleya. I come from Bangladesh,” said Aleya Akter, a sewing machine operator in a Bangladeshi factory. “I’ve been working for Wal-Mart since 1994. When I started I used to get $7 per month for 208-hour work and now I get about $80 a month for 26 days a month. I was working 14 hours in a row and sometimes up to 3 a.m. shifts.”
As part of a larger campaign to keep Wal-Mart from building a store in Brooklyn, Oxfam @ NYU invited the “Sweatshop, Warehouse, Wal-Mart: A Worker Truth Tour” speaker series to give students a closer look at the experiences of Wal-Mart employees.
“Here in New York City, we do not need a Wal-Mart to offer poorly paid jobs and replace small business,” Oxfam America @ NYU treasurer Marlie Wilson said. “We need to send a strong message to the company that it’s big enough already and should discontinue its invasions into new communities.”
Wilson said Oxfam hosted the worker tour to inform students of what she called “Wal-Mart’s exploitative policies.”
The four speakers at the event, all past or present Wal-Mart employees, spoke about their experiences working for the company that Oxfam is advocating to push out of New York City.
“They want to get rid of all the full-time associates and the reason for that is all the part-time workers, you get no benefits,” said Cyndi Murray, who has been a Wal-Mart associate for 11 years. “You get no health care. They put nothing to the table.”
Kalpona Akter, who was fired from her job at Wal-Mart in Bangladesh and blacklisted for organizing at the sweatshop factory where she worked, spoke about how she joined with other former garment workers to create the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity. But her efforts have brought against her 10 charges for allegedly vandalizing streets during demonstrations. If convicted, she could face life imprisonment or even the death penalty in her home country.
Despite the speaker’s allegations about Wal-Mart’s labor practices abroad, Steven Restivo, director of community affairs at Wal-Mart, said Wal-Mart offers city employees wages that are “equal to or better than many other national retailers operating now in New York City.”
“We foster an environment of open communications with our associates and our ‘open door policy’ encourages any associate to take their concerns directly to members of management, up to and including the CEO,” he said.
The tour travels to cities where Wal-Mart is looking to expand. Murray speaks for the Wal-Mart Worker Truth Tour at risk of losing her job, but she says there is no other way to achieve change.
“I don’t choose to walk away because I feel that somewhere we need to make a change and if it doesn’t start with me, where will it start?”