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COLUMN: Wal-Mart: America's unethical empire(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)LUBBOCK, Texas, Apr 18, 2006 (Daily Toreador, U-WIRE via COMTEX) --As this column is being written, construction is continuing on an "upscale" Wal-Mart Supercenter at Fourth Street and Avenue Q. Proponents of the new Wal-Mart herald the new Wal-Mart store as an improvement to Central Lubbock, and a sure sign of future business development. But there are other issues as stake here, ones much more important than the obvious paradox of "upscale" and "Wal-Mart" being used in the same sentence. The major problems with Wal-Mart includes, for a start, parking- lot crime, bad environmental policy, human rights and social justice issues, and the depressing homogeneity the stores bring to our urban landscapes and communities. It makes sense that Wal-Mart parking lots are a popular haven for criminal activities. An enormous parking lot full of unsuspecting targets with wallets in tow, plus hundreds of cars that can be used as cover as the criminal waits for just the right moment is a pretty idyllic landscape for potential thugs. According to The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, just within the past few months, there has been an attempted kidnapping, one man was shot in the leg and two elderly women were robbed - all in Wal-Mart parking lots in Lubbock. Not exactly your friendly neighborhood store. This isn't just a local trend, though. A Lexis-Nexis search reveals crimes including theft, rape, shootings, drug dealing, stabbing and car-jacking were all reported occurrences in Wal-Mart parking lots last year. One reason for this is because the bulk of Wal-Mart security includes cameras are security personal inside of the store protecting the merchandise. Security in parking lots pales in comparison. Once they have your money, they don't seem to care what happens to you. Environmental practices are another big concern. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Wal-Mart is one of the most heavily fined corporations in the world for environmental non-compliance. Their actions continue cost them millions of dollars in fines from the EPA because of violations on the Clean Water Act. A favorite method of violation is storing fertilizers near sources of drinking water and in parking lots near storm drains. The biggest problem with Wal-Mart, though, is their low prices are secured by the back-breaking labor of the poor. In supporting Wal-Mart, a person basically supports indentured servitude. In the Pulitzer prize-winning article published by The Los Angeles Times, "Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt," Nancy Cleveland, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall wrote about the poor working conditions of factory workers in Honduras, Bangladesh and China. In Honduras, workers earn the equivalent of $35 per week working 10-hour shifts and sewing 1,200 shirts per day. In Bangladesh, women and children work for pennies an hour working from 8 a.m. until 3 a.m. to fill big orders from Wal-Mart. Workers in China and Bangladesh receive abysmally low wages (often less than $3 per 12-hour shift) to work in Wal-Mart factories. According to chinalaborwatch.org, the conditions in these factories are unsafe and often inhumane. Additionally, employees sometimes are forced to live in cramped dormitories provided by Wal-Mart; their rent and utilities are deducted from their wages. Some say if workers didn't have the "opportunity" to work in these sweatshop conditions, they would have no income at all. The questionable validity of this argument aside, this is a poor excuse for unacceptable treatment of workers. A company that retails $288 billion per year according to Fortune 500 can afford to do better. When it comes down to it, the ability to purchase $10 sweaters is made possible in part because the exploitation of these workers. In our own country, the average Wal-Mart sales associate earns about $14,000 - several thousand dollars less than the poverty line of $20,000 for a family of four as reported by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Meanwhile, the CEO makes more than $27 million per year. The Walton Family consists of multi-billionaires, while many of the workers that made them rich live on government subsidies. According to a recent documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price", Wal-Mart, by not providing a decent living wage, costs taxpayers $1.557 trillion to support its employees because of the high percentage of them that are on Medicaid or some other form of government help. You would think a corporation as big and wealthy as Wal-Mart could afford to provide adequate wages and health care for its employees. On the contrary, employees of Wal-Mart in several states, including Texas, have taken class-action lawsuits against Wal-Mart because of unpaid wages. According to an article in The New York Times, "Suits Say Wal-Mart Forces Workers to Toil Off the Clock," it is estimated that in Texas alone, Wal-Mart cheated workers out of more than $150 million. Given this, it hardly seems worth mentioning a pesky $11 million settlement over the systematic hiring of illegal immigrant employees. In the words of James Linsey, the attorney leading the class-action lawsuit on behalf of former janitors, "The sworn testimony (in the federal affidavit) establishes that top Wal-Mart executives conspired with contractors to exploit undocumented immigrants." Immigrants aren't alone. One and a half million women are represented in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. which is the largest civil rights class action ever certified against a private employer. U.S. District Court Judge Martin Jenkins described the case as "historic in nature, dwarfing other employment discrimination cases that came before it."? Additionally, the proliferation of Wal-Mart stores across the U.S. decreases diversity by taking away business from mom-and pop-stores in the name of cost-effectiveness, efficiency and profit. It is true Wal-Mart is an extremely successful business, but we must ask ourselves if cheap products in the short term are worth the poor treatment of people, communities and the environment in the long term. For these reasons and more, I personally have not purchased a single item from Wal-Mart in years. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to exist and not patronize Wal-Mart. By not buying items from Wal-Mart, local businesses and community leaders are supported, and consumers can rest a little easier knowing their purchases didn't support one of the sweat shops that Wal-Mart relies so heavily on. |