Walmart has a pattern of recognizing that it doesn't pay its workers enough money to live on not by paying them more but by asking them to
donate food to each other at Thanksgiving. This allows the Walmart worker who is lucky enough to be part of the
not quite half of hourly Walmart workers earning a princely $25,000 a year to give to his or her co-workers making, say, $15,000 or $18,000 a year. However many of the $25,000 lucky ducks are in each store had better be ready to dig deep, I guess. In other words, by definition these from-workers-for-workers food drives are going to be limited and draw on people who mostly can't afford to give much.
If Walmart really wants to pull together some holiday charity for its workers—without doing the unthinkable and paying them more money—it should hold these food drives out in public, in the front of its stores. Just put those bins right by the entrances and exits, with a nice big sign saying "Please donate food items here so associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving dinner." That's the sign that was posted last year in an Ohio Walmart, but there it was hidden in an employees-only area.
These are stores with a lot of customers, and while money is surely tight for many customers as well, just as a result of the pure numbers game there are bound to be quite a few who can afford to give generously. This would be the way to collect a whole lot of holiday food donations for Walmart workers. And when defending these employee food drives, Walmart likes to talk about how its workers care about each other and the food drives are just an expression of that. Why is Walmart denying its customers the chance to show that they, too, care?
But I guess reminding people how badly you pay your workers kinda undermines the whole pretending to care thing. Just a little. And we can't have more questions about why Walmart wages are so low any more than we can expect Walmart to pay a living wage. That would be ridiculous, so asking underpaid employees to give to even-more-underpaid employees it is.