On Wednesday, the 10th of July, at early morning hours, about 17,000 workers of Walmart’s largest warehouse in Chile had left their stations as an act of protest, demanding better salaries, after a negotiation aimed at proffering new labor contracts had broken off earlier this week, President of workers’ union said to the press.

In effect, the unprecedented strike in Walmart’s warehouses in Chile was expected to shutter down more than one hundred brick-and-mortar stores that Walmart had been operating in Chile. The US-based retailing giant, Walmart has approximately 400 stores in Chile including popular grocery store franchises likes of Lider.

Adding that the latest negotiation with the company’s management had not provided any conclusive evidence that the company would be raising salaries in a near-term, the President of Lider’s Inter-Company Union (SIL), Juan Moreno said at a separate statement, “We haven´t reached an agreement.

We did make some advances, but they weren´t enough to seal a deal of the magnitude the company has in mind”. As a response, the US retailing giant had issued a statement in the early morning hours on Thursday (July 11th) saying that the company had offered a “robust” contract which addressed key points of conflicts including a rise in salaries, however, the company did not mention the amount it had offered.