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seashore -> RE: walmart story (3/29/2009 11:29:57 AM)
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http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25541
n 2003, Head reports, the Korean owner of a plant in Pago Pago supplying garments to Wal-Mart was convicted of human trafficking and of holding more than 200 Vietnamese workers under "conditions of involuntary servitude." The National Labor Committee has found that Wal-Mart suppliers in China, Bangladesh and Central America routinely withhold employees' wages, enforce unpaid overtime, ignore restrictions on working hours, and deny employees health care and maternity benefits.
Wal-Mart is far worse in this regard than other retailers. In 2004, the National Labor Committee found that 90 percent of Bangladesh's garment manufacturers violated their female employees' right to maternity leave. A number of manufacturers—including Liz Claiborne, Costco, the Gap, Levi Strauss and Sears—pledged that any woman in Bangladesh sewing their garments must be guaranteed her legal right to maternity leave. Wal-Mart gave no such pledge.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/wal_mart
While Wal-Mart's consumer benefits are clearly overrated, it's hard to dispute that the company sells a lot of cheap stuff. The question, then, is at what price? Slavery kept cotton prices low in the United States for centuries and saved consumers countless dollars. But it was wrong. Likewise, Wal-Mart's strategy of keeping costs down by exploiting sweatshop suppliers abroad while undermining unions and paying less than living wages in this country should be deemed unacceptable in the twenty-first century.
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