The former Family Dollar workers expressed the same feelings of burnout and unfairness that have led other employees across the US to"rage quit" or unionize in 2020 and 2021. But their struggle to win their claims through arbitration shows how hard it can be for workers to win in a legal system that often favors corporations.
The root of the problem, many former store managers said, was that the company didn't allocate enough money to schedule other workers for the hours needed to keep the store running. Customers exit a Family Dollar store in Orlando, Florida in March 2019.
But in a series of rulings over the past decade, the Supreme Court has said businesses can bar customers and employees from participating in class actions and force them to bring their claims, one by one, in private arbitration. In 2016, Okeechobee, Florida, was still under a hurricane watch when Cherish Buchannan got a call from her district manager letting her know she needed to open her store.
A man makes a delivery to a Family Dollar store using a"U-boat" cart. One former manager said he slept on this type of cart when he couldn't go home to sleep between shifts.Another, Brenda Goodman, said she decided to quit when she became pregnant with her fourth child; her others were 2, 7 and 10. She said that she worked in northwest Louisiana and that Family Dollar switched her to another location, increasing her commute by an hour.
Former store managers said they were regularly exposed to unsanitary and hazardous working conditions that in some cases ended in injuries. Another employee closed the store and called an ambulance and Giles' husband. The ambulance drove her to a hospital about an hour away, where she was told that she would need surgery and that two discs in her neck were"messed up," she said.
Several former employees also said they felt unsafe when working at Family Dollar, especially late at night., citing interviews and reviews of public records, that dollar stores, including Family Dollar, had become"magnets for crime and killing." Keller Lenkner sent its initial demand in July 2019 and a follow-up batch in September for a total of 1,962 Family Dollar clients, aFamily Dollar later filed against the arbitration provider said. By May 2020, all of the cases had either been withdrawn or settled on undisclosed terms.
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