Cowardly. That’s how David Williams, who works at a Dollar General in New Orleans, describes the discount retail chain’s resistance to workers’ demands for better wages and working conditions.
Raised in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, Williams has worked at Dollar General for around two-and-a-half years. He says that his starting wage was around $8 an hour; it is now $9.25. Williams works part-time, and says that paying bills on Dollar General’s wages is “a constant struggle.”
“I never know when I’m gonna have my next meal, I never know when I’ll be able to pay my rent,” says Williams. “I’m constantly figuring out if I need to ask for extensions on bills, and then I’m not sure I can even hit the extension’s deadline. It’s a constant struggle thinking about this every single day.”
Williams is one of more than 150 Dollar General employees who traveled to the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, on Wednesday, May 25, to demand that company executives address low wages, understaffing, and hazardous working conditions. The workers were joined by labor advocacy groups such as the Fight for $15, United for Respect, and Step Up Louisiana, as well as workers from Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree.
Dollar General has enjoyed steady profits despite the pandemic, and CEO Todd Vasos was paid $1.7 million in 2021, a 37 percent pay bump that amounts to 986 times more than the median wage of one of the company’s 163,000 workers in the...
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