Walmart is proud of its heritage as a family-founded company. Ironically, while the Walton family touts its family values, Walmart’s absence control program punishes workers who need to be there for their own families. Walmart disciplines workers for occasional absences due to caring for sick or disabled family members and for needing to take time off for their own illnesses or disabilities. Although this system is supposed to be “neutral,” and punish all absences equally, along the lines of a “three strikes and you’re out” policy, in reality such a system is brutally unfair. It punishes workers for things they cannot control and disproportionately harms the most vulnerable workers.

Punishing workers for absences related to illness or disability is not only unfair, it’s often against the law. Based on our conversations with Walmart employees as well as survey results of over 1,000 current and former Walmart workers who have struggled due to Walmart’s absence control program, Walmart may regularly be violating the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) by failing to give adequate notice to its employees about when absences might be protected by the FMLA and by giving its employees disciplinary points for taking time to care for themselves, their children, their spouses or their parents even though that time is covered by the FMLA.