Albany

Two fired Wal-Mart employees from the East Greenbush store, including a transgender woman who claimed harassment and discrimination, joined a chorus of outrage around the country in standing up to the world's largest retailer following the Nov. 6 firing of a worker who redeemed $2 in cans and bottles left behind in a shopping cart.

Also Tuesday, more than a dozen legislators, labor and religious leaders slammed Wal-Mart as a corporate bully with a record of mistreating workers. At a news conference, the advocates threatened a nationwide boycott if Thomas Smith, 52, of Albany, is not rehired, paid for lost wages and issued an apology by Nov. 30.

"It's an outrage," said Bishop Emeritus Howard Hubbard of the Roman Catholic of Diocese, a board member of statewide and national worker rights organizations. "WalMart has a long history of not treating workers with fairness and dignity. They treated him as a commodity to be discarded."

"This has been a nightmare for him," said Alice Green, founder of the Center for Law and Justice. "He only wanted to do his job, a job he loved. Instead, Wal-Mart called him a thief and defamed and denigrated his character."

"Wal-Mart is reinforcing the notion that the American worker is disposable," said Bernard Bryant, president of the NAACP Albany branch.

"I'm making a stand against discrimination," said a transgender woman, a 33-year-old Army veteran who stocked shelves and unloaded trucks at the East Greenbush Wal-Mart for five years. "What they did to him is not right."

She asked to use only her initials, A.J, out of fear of retribution from Wal-Mart, which fired her a month after she began her transition from male to female: counseling, hormone therapy, dressing in feminine clothing, wearing a push-up bra, putting on lipstick and makeup and asking to be addressed by a feminine pronoun.

Co-workers hurled homophobic slurs at her when she began using a women's bathroom, and managers filed complaints for productivity problems after her typical assignment of unloading 120 cases of merchandise in three hours jumped without warning to 250 cases.

"I know I was fired because I was transgender, but they made up a false reason so I couldn't file a lawsuit," she said.

A Wal-Mart official did not return a call for comment Tuesday on her allegations and those of other terminated employees.

After reading Thursday's Times Union story about Smith, Ricky Mollenkopf called the newspaper to register his disgust with his former employer.

"They use tactics all the time to get employees they don't want fired for whatever reason," said Mollenkopf, 23, of Rensselaer. He was fired this summer after more than a year as an asset-protection associate at the East Greenbush Wal-Mart, just before he was eligible for a raise from $10.25 to $12 an hour. His boss was Heather Johnson, asset protection manager, who also fired Smith.

"Heather said I didn't fit in with the team after I became the leading loss-prevention officer," Mollenkopf said. "If Heather doesn't like you, she'll figure out a way to get you."

Johnson would not speak with a Times Union reporter on Tuesday.

"We never arrested an employee for $2 in cans and bottles," Mollenkopf said. "I was too busy trying to stop guys stealing big-screen TVs from the store. "

On Tuesday, dozens of empty cans and bottles were observed by a reporter left in an unattended shopping cart and beside an overflowing trash can in a breezeway near the redemption machines at the East Greenbush Wal-Mart.

Smith, a formerly homeless man with who has a learning disability, said he redeemed $2 worth of just such empty cans and bottles left in a shopping cart after he saw the couple who discarded them leave the store. Wal-Mart, whose annual sales exceed $400 billion, claimed it was company property, that Smith's actions amounted to theft and he was fired.

Dounya Hamdan of Chicago started a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign that raised over $21,000 for Smith, including $1,000 from Suze Orman, the personal finance TV host.

Smith, who served 13 years for robbing the KeyBank in Latham, said he wanted Wal-Mart to apologize and to give him his job back. In the meantime, he planned to start a trust fund for his two teenage children with the windfall.

pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623 • @PaulGrondahl