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Wal-Mart's Shirts
of Misery from Bangladesh
By P. Singh,
Cité Libre
May 4th, 2008
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When you purchase a shirt in Walmart,
do you ever imagine young women in Bangladesh forced to work from 7:30
a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week, paid just 9 cents to 20 cents an
hour, who are denied health care and maternity leave; screamed at to
work faster; with monitored bathroom visits; and who will be fired for
daring to complain or ask for their rights?
At the Beximco factory in the Dhaka
Export Processing Zone in Bangladesh, there are 1,000 workers, at least
80 percent of them young women, sewing shirts and pants for Walmart and
other retailers. Beximco is a sweatshop, where human rights are
systematically violated.
Shame on Walmart
Walmart and its contractor Beximco do
not pay the overtime premium. In fact, as we have seen, they do not even
pay the legal hourly wage of 33 cents. They pay only 20 cents an hour
and pay overtime at this same illegal 20-cent rate.
These workers are locked in poverty,
being cheated out of over $20 a week in legal wages by the largest
retailer in the world. The workers are being illegally paid just $16 for
a full 80-hour workweek. For the forced 80-hour week, they should be
earning at least $36.96. Surely Walmart, with $7.6 billion in annual
operating profits, could afford this wage!
Some of the poorest people in the
world are being illegally robbed of their wages, driving them deeper
into misery. Even the 33-cent an hour wage does not come close to
meeting basic subsistence needs.
This is why in Bangladesh there is no
difference in the malnutrition rate of children whether their parents
are unemployed or are working in factories sewing garments for the
largest U.S. companies. Even the legal minimum wage is set too low to
allow the workers to climb out of misery.
No maternity leave: At Beximco, legal
maternity leave is denied and benefits are not paid.
Denied health care: By law, a factory
the size of Beximco should have a health clinic, with a doctor present.
Beximco has nothing. There is an empty first aid box for show. The women
workers and their children have absolutely no health coverage or
protection.
Access to bathrooms limited: The
workers need a ticket and permission to use the bathrooms. Access is
limited and bathroom breaks are timed.
Maltreatment/cursing/yelling: There is
constant pressure to meet the high daily production goal; the workers
are yelled at and cursed at to work faster.
Cheated of their tiny savings: In
Bangladesh there is a government regulated savings system whereby a
small deduction is made each pay period from the workers' wages and
deposited in the Provident Fund, which the factory maintains. The
workers can withdraw their savings from this fund when they leave the
factory or are fired. It functions as a kind of severance pay, to act as
a bridge or means of support while new work is sought. But most workers
at Beximco, who have been forced to leave, report that they are cheated
of their savings.
No worker has seen Walmart's Code of
Conduct: Walmart says it has a corporate code of conduct which
guarantees the human and worker rights of anyone sewing Walmart garments
around the world. Even by industry standards, Walmart's code of conduct
is very limited and extremely weak. Yet the workers at Beximco have
never even seen this weak code of conduct. Walmart's code is not posted
and it has never been explained to the workers. There has been no
attempt to implement the code.
No right to organize: In Bangladesh's
EPZs, unions and collective contracts are prohibited by law. The workers
have no rights; the government authorities do nothing to implement labor
law. The workers are fired for daring to protest forced 24-hour shifts.
Denied their right to organize, the workers are isolated and vulnerable
-- easily cheated of their legal wages and benefits.
Falling Real Wages
Devaluation and inflation have further
eroded the real purchasing power of the Bangledeshi workers' wages.
The local currency, the taka, has lost
19% of its value against the U.S. dollar since 1995. (In 1995, there
were TK 40.90 to $1.00. By October 1998, the taka had fallen to TK 48.50
to $1.00).
There is a five to six percent
inflation rate each year.
Greed in the Global Economy
Walmart and its contractor pay no
taxes to sew their garments in the Dhaka EPZ. All that they leave behind
is the illegal 20-cent an hour wages and some small rent and fees.
In 1998, total government revenues in
Bangladesh amounted to $3.872 billion (TK 187.8 billion), a sum far too
low to even provide the most basic services to the over 125 million
people in the country.
On the other hand, Walmart's sales in
1998 amounted to $137.6 billion, which means that Walmart's annual sales
are 36 times greater than the total revenues of the Bangladeshi
government. Yet Walmart does not pay a single cent in taxes or tariffs!
Nothing!
Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations
in the world, is being forced to subsidize Walmart.
Due to an inadequate tax base and
overall low government revenues, Bangladesh must rely upon foreign aid
to meet more than one-half of its entire development budget.
In the United States, Walmart also
seeks multi-million-dollar state, county and city subsidies as a
condition for locating its stores. But there is another indirect subsidy
as well: one half of Walmart's 720,000 employees, or "associates" as the
company calls them, qualify for federal assistance under the food stamp
program. Wages at Walmart, now the largest private sector employer in
the U.S., start as low as $5.75 an hour.
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Walmart.com using Wii Fit to boost Mom's Day sales
By Nicole Maestri,
Reuters
May 2nd, 2008
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forget the
flowers and candy -- Nintendo Co Ltd's highly anticipated "Wii Fit"
video game will debut in the U.S. later this month, and Wal-Mart Stores
Inc's online division is trying to persuade shoppers to order the game
as "a perfect gift" for Mother's Day.
This weekend, the Walmart.com homepage
will be dominated by the Wii Fit -- a physical exercise program that
uses a pressure-sensing board as a controller -- including a link to
order the product now, ahead of its May 19 U.S. launch.
Through May 11, shoppers who
"pre-order" the $89.74 game, or pay in advance to guarantee delivery
when the game launches, will also get a $10 online gift card to use for
a future order at Walmart.com.
"Initial response is extremely strong,
and we're feeling really good about Nintendo Wii Fit dominating the home
page," said Kelly Thompson, Walmart.com's chief merchant, of early
shopper demand for the game. "... We really like the angle of marketing
it to Mom."
The move comes as retailers look for
creative ways to entice shoppers to keep spending amid the economic
downturn.
Many U.S. consumers are shunning
discretionary purchases as more of their budgets go toward rising food
and fuel costs, and they have run out of access to easy credit to fund
their shopping sprees.
Retailers now see holidays, like
Mother's Day on May 11, as potential bright spots when cash-strapped
shoppers may be persuaded to spend some of their limited cash.
According to a National Retail
Federation Mother's Day survey, consumers, on average, intend to spend
$138.63 on the holiday -- down from $139.14 last year.
STRONG SALES GROWTH
But the survey also found that
consumers will shell out $1.2 billion this Mother's Day on consumer
electronics like digital cameras, digital photo frames and video
cameras.
In addition, while U.S. consumers have
pulled back on many discretionary purchases, video game hardware and
software continue to post strong sales growth.
U.S. sales of video game hardware and
software rose 57 percent in March from a year earlier, according to
market research firm NPD.
Sales of gaming hardware, software and
accessories hit $1.7 billion in March, led by Nintendo's Wii console,
which posted its biggest nonholiday month ever. Wii Fit, to be played
using the Wii console, has already has sold more than a million units in
Japan.
Walmart.com is seeing a trend toward
consumers buying more tech-related gifts, like digital photo frames or
cameras, for mothers, Thompson said.
With Wii Fit, Nintendo is trying to
appeal to new video game users, like women and older consumers.
"You'll see our marketing programs
really reach out to both genders and a range of ages," said Cammie
Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo's
U.S. operations, in an interview with Reuters in February.
Dunaway said such gamers will still be
drawn to the novelty and sophistication of Wii Fit and its bathroom
scale-sized controller, which uses sensors to detect subtle shifts in a
person's stance.
Thompson said Walmart.com has worked
with Nintendo on the Wii Fit promotion and ensuring it has a strong
inventory position to fill the pre-orders. There also will be a link on
the site to buy the Wii console, as well as other games and accessories.
Thompson said consumers can give the
$10 gift card to mothers on Mother's Day since the Wii Fit will not ship
until after the May 11th holiday.
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Wal-Mart won't build
Duluth Supercenter
By EILEEN DRENNEN,
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 2nd, 2008
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Wal-Mart announced late Thursday night
that it would not build a 176,000-square-foot Supercenter at the corner
of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Sugarloaf Parkway in Duluth.
While every step of the stores rollout
was greeted by crowds of protesters wearing red T-shirts and carrying
"Stop Wal-Mart" signs, there was no indication that pressure from
neighborhood group Smart Growth Gwinnett had an effect on the decision.
Instead, company spokesman Glen
Wilkins said in a press release, the decision was "related to Wal-Mart's
announcement in June 2007 to more strategically prioritize development
of Supercenters."
There are already two Wal-Mart stores
within six miles of the proposed location, in Duluth and neighboring
Suwanee.
"While this decision is certainly an
appropriate one from a business standpoint," Wilkins said in the
release, "it takes nothing away from the fact that Duluth is an
excellent community and a great place to do business."
Smart Growth's Marline Santiago-Cook,
who lives directly across Peachtree Industrial near the proposed
Supercenter, said the group was not just excited about Wal-mart's
decision, but the larger changes that resulted from their lengthy fight.
As part of the larger citywide debate about managing development, the
city of Duluth adopted a large-scale building ordinance last December
that governs all facets of projects over 75,000 square feet.
"Not only did we achieve our goals of
stopping this particular project," Santiago-Cook said, "but we got a
bigger win by the implementation of the new ordinance, which will
address any future project at this particular site as well as in the
entire city of Duluth."
The two lawsuits filed against the
city of Duluth by landowner Jack Bandy – who wanted to sell his
30-acre site to Wal-Mart – are still pending in Gwinnett Superior
Court. The first, alleging that the city violated the open records act
by approving a moratorium on large-scale buildings without first
advertising it on an agenda, has a trial date set for Sept. 15.
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VIDEOS
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Fighting
Wal-Martization 25min. (2005)
A new video by
The Labor Video Project 25 min.
(2005)
Wal-Mart is now the largest private
employer in the United States and has the same impact that General
Motors had nearly 50 years ago. This 26-minute video shows why working
people and trade unionists are fighting back and what Wal-Mart has in
store for the communities it is seeking to build stores in. "Fighting
Wal-Martization" is a hard hitting documentary that looks at how the
constant price cutting not only drives local small businesses out of the
community but how this ends up driving down the living conditions of the
very people who shop at Wal-Mart. The video also looks at the healthcare
crisis and how Wal-Mart increases its profits by sending it¹s employees
to public hospitals to get treatment thereby shifting costs back onto
the taxpayer. This video can be used at union meetings, community
meetings and on cable TV to get the message out about the Wal-Martization of America and what it means to every working person.
Please mail your check of
$20.00 and order form to
Labor Video Project
P. O. Box 720027,
San Francisco, CA 94172
For more info:
lvpsf@labornet.org, (415) 282-1908
Wal-Mart: The
High Cost of Low Prices (www.walmartmovie.com)
Independent America: The Two Lane Search for Mom & Pop
(www.independentamerica.net)
Big Box
Mart
(www.jibjab.com)
Garth
Brooks Parody
(www.walmartworkersrights.org)
"Is Wal-Mart
Good for America?" Frontline, PBS Video,
(www.pbs.org)
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NON-FICTION
The Case Against Wal-Mart By Al Norman Raphel
Marketing ruth@raphael.com
Wal-Mart: The Face Of Twenty-First Century Capitalism Edited By
Nelson Lichtenstein The New Press
www.thenewpress.com
The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health
Care and Retirement By Jacob S. Hacker Oxford University Press
www.oup.com
War On The Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special
Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight
Back By Lou Dobbs Viking, a member of Penguin Group
www.penguin.com
Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age By Allison H.
Fine Jossey-Bass www.joseybass.com
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers
and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, By Stacy
Mitchell, www.beacon.org
www.newrules.org
Wal-Mart: The Face Of the Twenty-First-Century
Capitalism, Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein, Published by The New
Press
www.thenewpress.com
The Bully Of Bentonville - How the high cost of
Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America, By Anthony Bianco,
Published by Doubleday
Email:
specialmarkets@randomhouse.com
How Wal-Mart is Destroying
America (and the world), By Bill Quinn,
Published By Ten Speed Press, Box 7123, Berkeley, CA 94707,
www.tenspeed.com (pp. 163)
Slam
Dunking Wal-Mart, By Al Norman, Published By
Raphel Marketing, 12 S. Virginia Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey
08410,
www.sprawl-busters.com (pp. 237)
The
Great American JobsScam, By Greg LeRoy,
Published By Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 235 Montgomery Street,
Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94104-2916,
www.bkconnection.com (pp. 257)
Nickel
and Dimed, By Barbara Ehrenreich, Published By
Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 115 West 18th Street, New York,
NY 10011,
www.henryholt.com (pp.221)
United
States of Wal-Mart, By John Dicker, Published
By Jeremy P. Tarcher (Penguin Group usa),
www.us.penguingroup.com (pp.257)
The Wal-Mart Effect, By Charles Fishman
www.penguin.com
Megamall On The Hudson, By David Porter and
Chester L. Mirsky
www.trafford.com
FICTION
Death
By Discount, By Mary Vermillion, Published By
Alyson Publications, P.O. Box 4371, Los Angeles, CA 90078-4371,
www.maryvermillion.com (pp. 275)
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