Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

“We have many people with set schedules who aren’t here when we need them for our customers,” said John Knuckles, a manager at the store, which is located in the Nitro Marketplace shopping center and employs more than 400.

“It is to take care of the customers, that’s the only reason,” he said.

Workers who have had regular shifts at the store for years now have to commit to being available for any shift from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. If they can’t make the commitment by the end of this week, they’ll be fired.

“It shouldn’t cause any problem, if they [store employees] are concerned about their customers,” Knuckles said.

Several single mothers working at the store have no choice now but to quit, said one employee, who would not give her name for fear of retribution.

“My day care closes at 6 and my baby sitter can’t work past 5,” said the employee, a mother of two who has been a cashier for more than three years. Neither of the services is available over the weekends, she added. “I have to be terminated; I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Wal-Mart is supposed to be a family-oriented company, but kids don’t matter,” the worker said.

Along with the “open-availability” policy, the store is requiring all floor employees to learn how to run cash registers, several employees said. They suspect this is an attempt to brace for the departure of many of the employees who now work as cashiers.

When announcing the new policies, store managers said they expected to lose about 60 people, according to another employee who asked not to be named.

“They said sales were down so much, they had to make a change,” the worker said. “The past year they’ve really been nitpicking” longer-term employees, who are paid more.

“A lot of people were mad and there were women crying — it’s just terrible,” said the worker, who has been at the store six years. “I’ve put up with a few things, but this has got to be the worst thing I’ve seen them do.”

Other Wal-Mart stores have open-availability rules, but it does not appear to be required of each store by company headquarters. Managers at Wal-Marts in South Charleston and Ripley refused to comment, but one employee at the store in Spencer, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no such policy in place there.

Wal-Mart corporate spokesman Dan Fogleman said other stores have such rules, but that he did not know if stores are ever required by headquarters to institute them. The officials who did know were attending a conference on diversity and could not be reached, he said.

“This is something that is done throughout Wal-Mart stores,” Fogelman said. “The reality of retail is that our busiest times are evenings and weekends, so it only makes sense that we have higher staffing levels at those times.”

Union critics of the retailing giant, who have fought a long and unsuccessful battle to gain a foothold there, said it sounds like a new policy for the company and added that it will set a bad precedent for other retailers.

“This is a chilling new direction for Wal-Mart,” said Chris Kofinis, communications adviser for Wake Up Wal-Mart, a promotional campaign funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. “It shows that when you work at Wal-Mart, you can neither afford a decent standard of life or even have a life.”

Kofinis said researchers at Wake Up Wal-Mart had not heard of open-availability rules at Wal-Marts before. The tremendous influence Wal-Mart wields among retailers means that others may have to start considering following suit, he said.

“At a union employer, this kind of work scheduling would not be possible,” Kofinis said.