Inside the Dollar General Workers’ Fight for Safety and Fair Pay

There are more Dollar Stores across the United States than any other chain. They vastly outnumber “Walmarts, CVS pharmacies, and McDonald’s across America.” They’ve been praised as the only option available in food deserts, but panned for low wages, poor working conditions, and as clearinghouses for cheap consumer goods that make them targets of crime. As Katie Jane Fernelius reports for Oxford American, some workers have had enough of Dollar General’s approach and they’re fighting back.

Months later, as if heeding David’s words, Dollar General would let its actions speak louder than words. It shut down five stores, all in New Orleans East, a large expanse of the Ninth Ward that juts out like a crab’s claw between Lake Pontchartrain and the marshes leading out to the gulf. It’s home to some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city. The move was a rare contraction for the retail giant that otherwise appeared to be expanding its footprint nationwide—and a move that David and other local workers read as retaliation against their organizing. 

Dollar General contested this. In a statement to the Oxford American, a representative for the company said its decision to close those five stores resulted from an “evaluation of operational effectiveness” and was not related to the organizing done by David and other workers in the city.