Dollar General and Family Dollar operate dozens of stores across Rhode Island, where federal OSHA enforces private-sector workplace safety and the state minimum wage is set to rise from $16 to $17 an hour on Jan. 1, 2027.
When federal safety inspectors walked into the Dollar Tree at 760 Tiogue Ave. in Coventry in January 2023 after receiving a complaint, they found slip and trip hazards from stacked boxes and carts. By June 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor had cited the store and proposed $294,000 in penalties, calling it the third citation against Dollar Tree in three months and pointing to prior similar citations at stores in Providence and other states.
That local inspection is one piece of a nationwide enforcement and court record examined in an analysis by the nonprofit watchdog Good Jobs First. Drawing on lawsuits, settlements, research from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and its own Violation Tracker database, Good Jobs First argues that major dollar store chains rely on lean labor models—marked by understaffing, low pay, unsafe stocking, wage theft, and discrimination—to support cheap prices, and that regulatory penalties remain too small to force change.
In Rhode Island, the footprint of those chains reaches across the state. Dollar General's online directory lists stores in 17 Rhode Island cities and towns, including Providence, Pawtucket, Warwick, Cranston, Woonsocket, and Coventry. Family Dollar, which is owned by Chesapeake, Virginia-based Dollar...
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