April 20, 2018
How PL+US united with Wal-Mart employees to win change at the corporation.
Carolyn Davis insists she’s a terrible public speaker. “Oh, my goodness, it’s like being on the chopping block!” says Davis, an associate at Walmart’s New Bern, N.C., store. It took hours of practice, encouragement from coworkers, and “determination,” she says, to get her ready to address 15,000 people at the University of Arkansas’s Bud Walton Arena last June.
The occasion was Walmart’s annual investors’ meeting, which traditionally draws a huge crowd to the retailer’s Bentonville, Ark., headquarters. Few in the audience had blue-collar jobs like Davis’s; she spends her workdays tracking inventory and stocking shelves. Still, as a shareholder, Davis, who goes by Cat, had a right to speak. She’s also a mother of two, and she had come to deliver a petition—signed by more than 100,000 associates—to urge Walmart to give workers like her the same family-leave benefits that executives get.