Human rights groups urge holiday shoppers to steer clear of Wal-Mart.
By Benjamin Youngquest
NEW YORK — Many New York area holiday shoppers may be headed to Wal-Mart this holiday season in search of affordable gifts for their friends and relatives. And why not? Wal-Mart has an enormous selection at prices that just cannot be found elsewhere. But have bargain seekers asked themselves how this is accomplished? Just how does Wal-Mart keep their prices so much lower than their competitors?
At a press conference last Friday in Midtown Manhattan, members of the National Labor Committee and China Labor Watch provided the public with an answer. According to their research, Wal-Mart operates over 1,000 "secret" factories in China. One of these, a factory in Lungcheong, requires its workers to work 13 hour days, six to seven days a week, for as little as 18-33 cents an hour — well below the already abysmal Chinese minimum wage.
Mr. Li Qiang of China Labor Watch said that his organization has been at the forefront of a push to publicize the awful conditions at Lungcheong and other sweatshop locations. He stressed that the Chinese government is complicit in the human rights violations that occur on a regular basis at these factories, as they allow Wal-Mart to circumvent Chinese law.
"We are a small organization and we obviously have no way of investigating all of the factories, plus they are all secret," said Li, "but we hope that they will change conditions not only in these two factories, but in all factories throughout China. They need to absolutely publicize what factories they work in. This is the only way to have a good beginning, to have a positive change."
Charles Kernaghan, an executive director of the National Labor Committee (NLC), says that it is Wal-Mart's willingness to continue to roll back their production costs, always at the cost of the worker, that has created the especially appalling situation in these Chinese factories.
"At some point that model cannot go forward unless you begin to drag wages down across the developing world, eliminate benefits, and 'roll back' respect for women's rights, and workers rights, and human rights," he said.
Wal-Mart claims that it has addressed these concerns by adopting methods of internal regulation and corporate standards that supposedly aim to combat these types of workers exploitation and abuse, but the NLC is convinced that these measures are largely ineffective.
For instance, it has a policy to not require its employees to work "forced overtime" and to pay employees for every hour worked. But it also has a rigid internal system that forbids managers from scheduling employees for on-the-clock overtime in all almost all circumstances.
And, at least in China, it is documented that laborers are routinely forced to work days in excess of 11-13 hours. "It's a deliberate effort to confuse the American people with a corporate code of conduct and internal regulations that have never actually worked," said Kernaghan.
So, what can be done this holiday season to help brighten the lives of these desperate Chinese workers?
Mr. Li strongly urges American consumers of Chinese goods, at Wal-Mart and other stores of its kind, to take it upon themselves to send a message to these companies that their business practices are unacceptable. "Americans should put pressure on Wal-Mart to change the situation there, and to follow Chinese law in China," said Li.