Dollar Store Workers Fight to Improve Jobs, Even Without a Union
When a Dollar General stocker named David Williams saw two of his co-workers struggling to subdue a would-be shoplifter who was carrying a knife in 2019, the then-33-year-old kept his mouth shut. Later, when a co-worker asked him why he did nothing, Williams told him the truth.
“I said, ‘No offense, but I only get paid one time, and that is to be a stocker,’” said Williams, who today makes $11.50 an hour filling shelves with diapers, ramen and discount shampoo at a New Orleans store. Some months, he said, he can’t make rent. ”So, sorry, I’m not about to put my life on the line,” he told his colleague.
What Williams needed, he thought, was a better job. He wasn’t looking to unionize his workplace — a tall order in the right-to-work South. He just needed things to change.
In 2022, Williams joined an organization that seemed, to him, like his best shot: Step Up Louisiana. Like several successful campaigns before it, Step Up organizes workers to improve their jobs, but stops short of calling for a union under the National Labor Relations Board. The approach, sometimes referred to as “premajority unionism,” is a natural fit for places like the South, with histories of public hostility to unions. Today, suggest experts, it may also be workers’ best bet for building power amid the hostility of the Trump administration.
The United States is home to 20,700 Dollar Generals, 8,000 Family Dollars and 9,000 Dollar Trees. “Anywhere there’s a dollar store, from here to California to New York, the working conditions are the same, unfortunately,” said Kenya Slaughter, a lead organizer with Step Up. Founded in 2017, the group — which has no official ties to any union — organizes grassroots members around economic justice issues in Louisiana and Tennessee. “We’re not against unions,” she said, but starting off with a demand for one, she explained, doesn’t make sense given the dollar store model.
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