An Albany-area Walmart employee fired from his job for redeeming $2 worth of cans he collected while gathering shopping carts in the store’s parking lot has drawn widespread sympathy and support on social media.

Thomas Smith, 52, told the Albany Times Union that he was fired in early November for redeeming a total of $5.10 worth of cans and bottles on two occasions, and said he was unaware that doing so violated store policy.

Support for Smith grew after a story on his termination from the Albany Times Union. A GoFundMe drive for Smith set up by Dounya Hamdan, of Chicago, has nearly reached the $5,000 goal as of Friday afternoon.

On the day he was fired, Smith, a formerly homeless ex-convict who has a learning disability, had stayed three hours past the normal end of his shift, having agreed to work extra time on a day when the East Greenbush, New York, store was short-staffed.

A Walmart spokesperson said the store did not take issue with the $3.10 worth of empty beer cans he took after a man discarded them in the parking lot, but with the $2 he redeemed from cans and bottles left in a shopping cart just inside the store’s entryway.

Smith said he was fired after signing a statement and undergoing an interrogation by three security managers in the store’s security office. He said that he did not have his glasses at the time and could not read the statement, but signed it to avoid any parole violation.

“I didn’t know you couldn’t take empties left behind. They were garbage,” Smith told the Albany Times Union. “I didn’t even get a chance to explain myself. They told me to turn in my badge.”

The $2 worth of bottles and cans were Walmart property, the spokesperson said. Smith was guilty of “gross misconduct” by redeeming them.

Smith, who is black, has since contacted prisoner advocate Alice Green at the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, who took up his cause, citing issues of race as reasons for Smith’s termination.

by Scott Klinger,

(Infographic: Center for Effective Government)

While Walmart’s announcement is a step in the right direction, the company can and should do far more. (Infographic: Center for Effective Government)

Over the last three years, strikes and pickets by Walmart’s low-wage employees have steadily expanded. Last Black Friday, protests were staged at more than 1,000 Walmart stores across the U.S. Dozens of employees were arrested. report commondreams

Late last month, the nation’s largest private employer finally responded by agreeing to raise its workers’ pay to $9 an hour by April and $10 an hour by next February. The announcement means half a million Walmart employees – almost 40 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce – will be getting a raise, including 6,000 who currently make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

After the raise, the lowest paid full-time Walmart worker will be making $20,080 a year; the typical 28-hour per week part-time employee, $14,560. The poverty line for a family of three is $20,090.

Walmart’s exceedingly low-wage structure has forced many of its employees onto public assistance programs to supplement their earnings. Public nutrition, health care, and housing assistance provided to Walmart workers cost U.S. taxpayers $6.2 billion a year, according to a 2014 study by Americans for Tax Fairness. Walmart’s recent announcement will lower, but not eliminate, the subsidies the American people pay to Walmart.

Walmart’s retired CEO makes $1,070 an hour, even while he sleeps.

By contrast, Walmart’s former CEO, Mike Duke, earned $44 million in his last three years at the company’s helm – $4,751 an hour assuming a 60-hour workweek – and left with a retirement package valued at $140 million. If Mr. Duke converted his golden nest egg to an annuity, he would receive a monthly check for $770,000 – $1,070 per hour around the clock, even while he is sleeping.

But wait, it gets even more unfair: the Walton heirs “earned” $445,776 an hour on the increase in the value of the stocks they inherited – in just the last five years.

Together, Walton’s daughter-in-law, Christy, and children Alice, Jim, and Rob Walton own half the company’s stock and had a combined net worth of $157.5 billion last year, an amount equal to the combined net worth of 42 percent of America’s families. They occupy slots six through nine on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

While low-income Americans struggled through the Great Recession, the Waltons have seen their combined wealth more than double since 2009 (when it was just $79.4 billion). If their wealth gain over the last five years was converted to an hourly wage, each of the four would have “earned,” on average, $445,776 each and every hour for the last five years.

The good news: the race to raise the wage floor in the retail sector is on.

Walmart was not the first retailer to significantly increase pay for workers at the bottom of the pay ladder. Furniture retailer IKEA announced it would increase the average minimum wage of its U.S. workforce to $10.76 an hour – with workers in low cost-of-living areas getting a boost to $8.69 an hour, and workers in highest cost-of-living regions seeing their paychecks bump to at least $13.22 an hour.

GAP also joined the wage-raising party last year, raising their workers’ pay to $9 an hour in 2014, and $10 this year. Last month, health insurer Aetna raised the minimum pay for its lowest-wage workers to $16 an hour, which boosted pay for 12 percent of the company’s workforce.

Costco, a direct competitor of Walmart’s Sam’s Club wholesale stores, uses a business model that stresses paying hourly workers well in order to keep turnover low. Costco pays its hourly workers an average of $20 an hour, far higher than the $11.39 an hour average for retail workers. Fewer than five percent of its workers leave each year.

Wal-Mart could do a lot more.

While Walmart’s announcement is a step in the right direction, the company can and should do far more.

Today, Walmart generates pre-tax profits of $13,866 per employee in its U.S. operations. (Pre-tax profits are what remains after all of the expenses of the business – salaries, costs of merchandise, utilities, except taxes, are paid). Walmart’s profits per employee are near the top of the retail industry. Moreover, Walmart’s profits per employee have been trending higher over the last five years, having grown more than 10 percent since 2010.

Walmart employee fired for redeeming $2 of cans finds groundswell of support

Walmart Workers to Earn $10 an Hour; Walmart Heirs “Earn” $445,776 an Hour