Putting On The Pressure For Parental Leave

Walmart and a Wave of Other Big Employers Have Expanded Paid-leave Benefits for Blue-collar Parents This Year. One Reason for Their Generosity: a Relentless and Savvy Campaign by a Behind-the-scenes Coalition of Activists, Investors, and Their Own Employees.

- Valentina Zarya

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 bluecollar 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.

She made the same ask in the arena in a three-minute speech. Full-time associates who became mothers got six- to eight-weeks’ leave at 50% to 60% pay—not much to live on for people whose jobs typically paid $10 to $15 an hour. On the other hand, “Walmart’s female executives receive 10 weeks of paid family leave” at full salary, she explained to the audience in her warm Carolina drawl. “Let’s do the same for our hourly associates—women and men.”