Labor Group Slams Walmart, Calls for Stronger Employee Safety Measures
“Save Lives. Live Better.”
That’s the name of a new, Walmart-focused report from United for Respect (UFR), a labor group focused on improving workers’ rights. The title is a play on the Bentonville big dog’s own slogan: “Save money. Live better.”
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In the report, UFR dives into what it calls “Walmart’s workplace violence crisis,” which is primarily centered around instances of gun violence in or at Walmart stores.
Bianca Agustin, co-executive director of UFR, said the group began researching and acting on violence in Walmart stores after a 2022 mass shooting in one of the company’s El Paso, Tex., stores. Since then, she said, Walmart’s lack of response to “a matter of life and death for associates” has been insufficient.
“Our hope with this is really to demonstrate to Walmart that we believe there’s evidence that there is a problem, and that it’s not a retail problem, but it’s a Walmart problem,” Agustin told Sourcing Journal. “They really impact hundreds of thousands of communities.”
According to UFR’s data, Walmart stores saw more than 200 instances of violence at its stores in 2023. That included 132 gun-related incidents, 26 bomb threats, 31 physical assaults and more. The group said 51 percent of those incidents occurred in the regional South.
In the past, Cyndi Murray, a Walmart associate and founding member of UFR, filed shareholders’ petitions calling on the company to conduct a third-party, independent review of the impact of company policies and practices on workplace safety and violence, including gun violence. Each time Murray submitted the proposal, with support from UFR, it has been rejected. That’s partly because Walmart recommended shareholders vote against it.
In its 2024 proxy statement, when the company provided its reasoning for recommending against the proposal, it said it has a “comprehensive approach to promoting safety and security,” including training on workplace violence awareness and prevention.
UFR’s report states that Walmart asks its employees to complete active shooter training on a computer module.
Agustin said UFR recommends that the company start implementing live simulation trainings for active shooter scenarios, similar to those performed in public schools nationwide, to help guide its associates.
“[Walmart associates] said that they do not feel prepared and that most of their colleagues, because of the interface, are just clicking through the modules. The rate of absorption is low, and when something actually happens, they don’t know how to behave in their own store in terms of where to hide, where to go, [who] to call,” she said. “My understanding from one of our associates is that Walmart tells its associates that the training will eventually include a live simulation, but it never happens.”
A Walmart spokesperson did not comment on the company’s training methodology, instead referring Sourcing Journal to the 2024 proxy statement, which does not provide any details about how safety and security training is administered to associates.
Walmart’s 2024 proxy statement also claims that its “safety record is consistent with or better than that of U.S. retail peers.” Specifically, it points to reporting metrics about lost time incidents and injuries. But it never addresses its track record for gun violence in its claims about its safety record.
That may be because the reality shows Walmart is not at parity with its peers, at least when it comes to violence.
The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit tracking data on gun violence incidents in the United States, has reported 52 gun violence incidents in Walmart stores in 2024. In the same time period, Target stores have had eight incidents; Costco stores have had two incidents and Macy’s stores have not had any.
Data from Guns Down America shows that, between January 1, 2020 and March 20, 2024, Walmart saw 473 gun-related incidents, yielding 279 injuries and 104 deaths. Over that same period, Kroger dealt with 54 gun-related incidents, which caused 43 injuries and 18 deaths.
Walmart does have a larger fleet of stores than those retailers, but its incidence rate remains higher.
“For Walmart, one out of every 10 stores in the U.S. experienced a gun-related injury or death during the period reviewed by Guns Down America. For Kroger, that number dropped precipitously to one out of every 52 stores,” UFR wrote in the report.
In addition to UFR’s demands for Walmart to implement better training, the group is encouraging the superstore giant to provide employer-paid healthcare that includes mental health services, physical therapy and rehabilitative services; paid time off to recover physically and emotionally for those affected by in-store incidents and more.
UFR members also want Walmart to reconsider its store procedures. Agustin said workers have brought ideas like in-store panic buttons to the fore in discussions with UFR. However, Walmart has not engaged in meaningful dialogue on workers’ rights and protections with the labor group, she said.
Agustin said for real forward progress, Walmart should take action to listen to associates who tell the company they feel unsafe at work.
“Acknowledge that there is a problem and put some resources and attention into addressing it. [Walmart] doesn’t have to take all of our recommendations as a cookie cutter solution…[but] we hope that if they started to give this attention, that they would involve committees of workers across the country and by region—not just a select few that they hand pick out of headquarters, but real, frontline workers.”
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