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For more information contact:
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| Michael Passoff |
| As You Sow Foundation |
| San Francisco, CA 94104 |
| Phone: (415) 391-3212, extension 32 |
| email: |
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| Conrad MacKerron |
| As You Sow Foundation |
| San Francisco, CA 94104 |
| Phone: (415) 391-3212, extension 31 |
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Walmart
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| CAMPAIGN SUMMARY |
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The New York City Employee Retirement Funds and other concerned investors have filed a resolution on Wal-Mart's 2003 proxy statement that seeks to mitigate growing liabilities at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in relation to alleged labor violations at thousands of factory suppliers worldwide.
Wal-Mart Stores is the world's largest retailer, with $220 billion in sales annually, and the most profitable company in the world. But many of these profits may be made unfairly on the backs of poorly treated and underpaid contract supply workers. Labor rights activists charge that the company is able to virtually dictate prices for thousands of goods around the world through a vast chain of contract suppliers. Shareholders are concerned that the company often demands that goods be made under these contracts at prices which cannot ensure that workers will be treated and paid fairly. As a result, sweatshop conditions may thrive.
In the mid-1990s, Wal-Mart became an international symbol of abusive contract labor practices when human rights groups revealed that Wal-Mart clothing using Kathie Lee Gifford’s label was being produced under sweatshop conditions and, in at least one case, using child labor.
Shareholders have good reasons to be concerned. While the company says it has cleaned up its act, it has provided little evidence to support this contention. It has released a simple chart about which facilities it believes are not in compliance with its code of conduct, but provides no details on how these figures were assembled.
The company has yet to answer damaging revelations by Business Week more than two and a half years ago, regarding compromised auditing of supplier factories. The company was forced to acknowledge that its own auditors failed to uncover serious abuses, including the beating of workers and confiscated identity papers. After the unfortunate press of this incident, Wal-Mart seemed committed to making improvements by setting up an independent monitoring project, but the company later backed out of the project. [See Links for a link to this story.]
The National Labor Committee discovered abusive conditions in Wal-Mart factories the auditors had missed. For example, it discovered Kathie Lee handbags being made for Wal-Mart at the Qin Shi factory in China, where 1,000 workers were being held under conditions of indentured servitude, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with only one day off a month, while earning an average wage of 3 cents an hour.
After months of work, about half of the workers surveyed earned nothing at all--in fact they owed money to the company. When workers protested being forced to work from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., seven days a week, for literally pennies an hour, 800 workers were fired.
KLP, one of Norway’s largest insurance companies, includes Wal-Mart on a list of 27 companies it refuses to do business with because it does not meet its minimum ethical standards, including labor rights conduct.
Wal-Mart was also removed from the Domini 400 Social Index in 2001 because of its poor record on vendor standards compliance.
A good start to restoring the faith of investors and consumers seriously troubled by Wal-Mart's workers' rights liabilities would be to implement a basic, widely-recognized code of conduct for the treatment of workers and protection of fundamental human rights.
Shareholder Proposal No. 6, International Labor Organization Standards, asks investors to prompt the company to implement core ILO standards which:
- Prohibit child labor
- Prohibit forced, bonded or prison labor
- Prohibit discrimination or intimidation in employment, regardless of sex, race, color, religion, political opinion, age, nationality, social origin, or other distinguishing characteristics
- Protect workers' right to form and join trade unions and bargain collectively
- Assert that workers' representatives shall not be the subject of discrimination, and shall have access at the workplace to carry out their duties.
Other labor concerns at Wal-Mart Stores include:
- Wal-Mart's bid for UK-based Safeway PLC was troubled by its labor reputation: "So allegations that its 1 million U.S. workers are being exploited are damaging." ["Wal-Mart is Anti-Union and Has Used Sweatshops," Walsh, Conal, The Observer (UK), pg. 3, 1/26/03]
- "Wal-Mart is notorious for ignoring federal laws protecting workers' freedom of association. The company has been found guilty of retaliating against - even firing - workers for union organizing. Wal-Mart has also been accused, in class action suits filed in more than 30 states, of breaking federal overtime laws. In many cases, workers say, managers locked the store doors and would not allow workers to leave." ["Meet the Enron of Workers Rights," Featherstone, Liza, Newsday, 5/1/03]
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