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“American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist.”

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Every day, workers are forced to minimize safety in order to keep their jobs. The vast majority of American workers have no unions to defend their right to workplace safety. The U.S. Department of Labor and other federal agencies do not protect workers from being killed on the job.

The explosion in West, Texas was as big as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, yet there will be no war on this kind of terrorism. This is because the prevailing philosophy is profit before people.

American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist. Last year, approximately 5,000 workers were killed at work by unsafe conditions.

Kevin Harrington, New York City

At over $446 billion per year, Walmart is the third highest revenue grossing corporation in the world. Walmart earns over $15 billion per year in pure profit and pays its executives handsomely.

Wal-Mart’s poverty wages force employees to rely on $2.66 billion in government help every year, or about $420,000 per store. In state after state, Wal-Mart employees are the top recipients of Medicaid. As many as 80 percent of workers in Wal-Mart stores use food stamps.

…In effect, Wal-Mart is shifting part of its labor costs onto the public.

-DailyKos Diary - Oct 10, 2012

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as "right to work." ”

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Martin Luther King, 1961

Everything you need to know about Michigan’s “Right to Work” assault on workers.

“When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids. When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids. When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids. When you spend millions on your pet programs, but there’s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids. When you unilaterally institute a longer school day, insult us by calling it a “full school day” and then provide no implementation support, throwing our schools into chaos, that hurts our kids. When you support Mayor Emanuel’s TIF program in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of school funds into to the pockets of wealthy developers like billionaire member of your school board, Penny Pritzker so she can build more hotels, that not only hurts kids, but somebody should be going to jail.”

—Xian Berrett, “Why I’m Striking”

In what labor rights groups are calling a first in Walmart history, workers from multiple stores have walked off the job today. Workers led a one-day work stoppage for nearly a dozen Walmart stores to protest the retail giant’s retaliation for worker’s efforts to organize for better treatment and pay.

“Walmart should not be silencing workers for standing up for what’s good for my store, my co-workers, my family and my community,” Venanzi Luna, a striking worker at the Pico Rivera Walmart, said in a statement. Luna is a member of OUR Walmart, a national Walmart employee organization with a presence in 43 states that’s backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

At a rally today outside the Pico Rivera Walmart where Luna works, workers will tell their stories of struggling to barely get by on Walmart wages and dealing with reduced hours, safety issues and staffing issues. Among those coming out to support the striking workers are plenty of immigrant, labor and religious organizations who say Walmart workers shouldn’t be forced to rely on public assistance to get by, especially as the corporate behemoth turns around $16 billion a year in profits. Walmart has 1.4 million so-called associates around the country, and is union free in its North American stores. Workers on strike today say they are fighting for all of them.

The walkout comes after many months of worker organizing. Last month workers in San Diego and Dallasrallied for better pay, arguing that their wages, workers couldn’t afford health care premiums or even rent. A Walmart spokesperson told the Dallas Morning News after last month’s rally that Walmart workers have “some of the best jobs in the retail industry.” Workers have also walked off the job at distribution centers that serve Walmart in recent months.

Instead of paying so much for PR campaigns, damage control and organizing suppression, Walmart could put that money toward treating its workers better, labor rights groups argue. “Walmart has been forced to pull back from expansion plans in Boston and New York and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and PR campaigns to buy support in new markets,” John Marshall, an economist with the UFCW, said in a statement this week. “These additional costs are unnecessary and could be avoided if the company respected its workers’ rights.”

Today’s action comes just days ahead of Walmart’s annual investor meeting on October 10.