A Pittsfield, Massachusetts man is sounding the alarm after the city’s Walmart abruptly cut the part-time hours of his sister – a 15-year store veteran with Down Syndrome. Scott Connors says he was shocked when his sister Annie was told on Black Friday that she was no longer on the store’s schedule. After learning that his sister and other part-time employees had also had their hours cut from Walmart at the height of the holiday season, Connors was outraged and took to social media.
When reached by WAMC, the Pittsfield Walmart said it could not comment on the situation.
Walmart Senior Director of Global Communications Anne Hatfield provided the following statement to WAMC: “We’re glad he shared his concerns, there appears to be a misunderstanding and we want to clear things up. An associate’s work hours are based on two things: when the associate tells us they are available to work and when customers need them most. We’ve reached out to get everyone together and talk through the situation.”
Connors, who serves as his sister’s legal guardian, sat down with WAMC to explain what happened and what Annie’s friends and family are calling for.
CONNORS: Well, on Black Friday, my sister went on to work at Walmart and was told that she wasn't on the schedule and she needed to go home. So, she was very confused about that. She's a 54-year-old Down Syndrome woman. And you know, she has special needs, and Walmart’s sort of her life and her schedule. So, she asked her job coach, and he checked with store management, and they said she wasn't on the schedule. So, they thought at first it was a glitch. Then they went to Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and they started hearing that other employees were getting the same exact treatment that had a fixed schedule. Now, my sister has a fixed schedule, because she relies on public transportation to go back and forth to work, and we heard that employees were saying that they were being told that they were either going to work to schedule Walmart wanted them to work or not work at all. But they never got anything official from Walmart in hand. They never got a letter, they never got any kind of notice. It was just sort of word of mouth going out from her job coach.
Now, you alluded to this a moment ago about Walmart being her life- But tell us a bit about your sister. What kind of role does this job play in her day to day? And just paint us a picture.
She's Down Syndrome, but she’s very high functioning. She loves working at Walmart. I've gotten hundreds of comments of people who say she's kind of like the face of Walmart, when they go in there, they love seeing her. She's always saying hi, she smiles, and the rigidity of that job- She just loves it. It's her schedule that she works on every day, every week.
So, from your vantage point, what exactly is the problem here? And what kind of response do you think would be an equitable solution?
Well, I mean, I've contacted the “head people person” at Walmart, which is Donna Morris at corporate. She said they were going to look into it. I haven't heard anything back from her. And then her job coach has tried repeatedly to contact the store manager – which is Brian Bissonnette – and he had a sign on his door that said ‘in a meeting,’ and ‘do not disturb’ for two weeks. And then her job coach was told that he couldn't go in the back room anymore due to security reasons. So really, what we're looking at is for my sister and all the other part time employees to get their hours back. And I think the way they handled this was terrible. This was just Walmart doing something that was really egregious to its employees, and then the more that I researched it, because at first I thought, well, this is just a, maybe it's a corporate thing. I had people from North Adams’ Walmart message me and say, it's not a corporate thing. And they said, it's directly tied to the store manager’s bonus. They cut hours, and then they get more in their yearly bonus. And they can cut people's hours up to 12 weeks before corporate even knows about it.
So, I mean, this is a complicated situation, certainly. You have the local level, you have the national level- So, what would be the fairest outcome for your sister and other people who work part-time at Walmart like her?
Well, the fairest issue we all think is for her to get her hours back. She's sitting home crying, calls me every day crying, wants to know what she did wrong, why they don't like her, why they won't let her work, and she just doesn't understand it. And I've told her that I've launched a social media campaign, I'm trying to get her job back and trying to get her hours back, trying to get it so she can go back to her normal life because she has now no money and no hours. So, I think the equitable thing, the decent thing for Walmart to do at this time of the year would be to give people their hours back and give them their lives back.
Anything about this I've not thought to ask you that you want to make sure the wider world understands?
I am just amazed and I am just- My heart is goes out to the people that have shown support for her. My social media message accounts and my emails and my messages have blown up from people who have said, jeez, we support Annie, we love seeing her in the store, this is unfair. We had a group of people that I know that said they were looking, they're printing up leaflets and thinking about doing a peaceful demonstration and doing a boycott of Walmart. They don't even know her, they just know her through the store and through the social media thing. So, it's very important, that the community that came out around this against this behemoth of a corporation who decided to be Grinch at Christmastime was just astounding to me, so.
