12/02/2008 - In Regards to the article “ Saint Wal-Mart? well lets look at the record,” published February 9, 2008 in the Vancouver Sun. I was surprised and disgusted to see this article in the Vancouver Sun. Fazil Mihlar has written a wonderfully biased article on Wal-Mart that is nothing short of atrocious. Though many weak arguments were made in favour of the Big Box chain wal-mart (as you can read in Mr. Mihlars article if you so choose), the facts remain. Wal-Mart knowingly uses child labour. Child Labour is a term tossed around in conversation these days. What does it really mean? Can you picture 100 children? Now picture them in nice neat rows, sitting at large industrial sewing machines. The room is dimly lit and the air quality is poor. Now picture the managers. Picture them with large wooden canes. Now picture them encouraging the children to work fast and harder to meet the Wal-Mart deadlines. Are they being encouraged by health benefits and wage increases. No. They are being encouraged by lashings. They have to make those $9.99 “everyday low price” T-Shirts. Considering the minimal wages made by the children, I wonder why the shirts are even that expensive.
Obviously, not every single thing about Wal-Mart is bad. Wal-Mart provides jobs for people. The jobs and wages are, however, specifically designed to keep workers under-educated and unable to advance their quality of life. Though $10 an hour is higher than our ludicrous minimum wage, this is not a living wage. You cannot raise a family or buy a small apartment making this amount of money. In fact, you can hardly pay your rent and eat at that hourly wage, let alone saving for your future or retirement.
How about community impact? First off, can you say eyesore. The Big box store takes up so much floor space it’s ridiculous. The Greater Vancouver Area has a limited amount of space to grow out. At the same time, the GVA has a huge amount of people immigrating here from other countries and parts of Canada. We need to conserve as much land as possible and increase density to accommodate growth. The amount of green space a Big Box store takes up is astronomical because not only do you have the store, but also the attached parking.
Consider also that communities need public space. Though Wal-Mart is accessible to the public, it is a privatized public space filled with corporate slogans and advertising. The best most offensive sign you’ll see in a Wal-Mart is the no loitering sign. Though it may not be enforced regularly, a no loitering sign tells the public that this is not a place to talk with your neighbour. This is not a place to think critically about child labour. Wal-Mart is a place to leave money and take home inexpensive (and often unnecessary) products. So when you get that “everyday low price” item home, take it out of the plastic wrapper. Then press your nose to it and take a deep breath. Can you smell the sweat and fear? That’s the scent of the child labour sweatshop that made your beautiful T-Shirt. If you think that everyday low price is all you paid for your purchase, you’re wrong. Wal-Mart saw it fit to save you money by paying for the rest of your item with the lives of innocent children.
By the way, I’m not one of the “anti-Wal-Mart do-gooders” Mr. Mihlar trash talked in his article. I’m not a specialized political activist. I’m just a person that believes children have rights. I understand that Wal-Mart is affordable for some families where independently owned retailers are more expensive. If the media would publish articles on child labour and which companies use child labour we may be able to work together and fix these problems.
In closing, I must state that I am deeply disgusted that Mr. Mihlar compares the positive qualities of Wal-Mart to Mother Theresa. Can we as humans be so ignorant to over look this comparison? Mother Theresa fought for human and more specifically child rights! Do not compare a true saint to a corporation
Thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this. In context of media time constraints I have not included many more of the ‘evils’ of Wal-Mart. Please take the time to seek out alternative media both in print and the Internet. Though hearing about societies failings can be painful, it is necessary to learn about them to make positive change.
RAF, www.4thercrd.com
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Anti-Violence, Controversy, Criticism, Culture, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Great article RAF. Not only does Wal-Mart engage in predatory pricing, it is anti-union and they are blatantly anti-rights (e.g. teenagers in Bangladesh working for $0.14 an hour for Wal-Mart supplier Beximco). Also, I believe its the single largest importer of foreign goods in the US.
What’s also disgusting is, Wal-Mart used to take out corporate-owned life insurance policies on low-level employees. This basically means that Wal-Mart took advantage of the deaths of their low-level employees by deducting the premiums according to tax law. This ‘Dead Peasants Insurance’ stopped in the mid ’90s when the US federal government began pursuing Wal-Mart on this issue.
I could go on and on here…I strongly encourage those interested to do some sleuthing on-line; you’ll be shocked at what you find!
Kamal! You rule. I didn’t even know about dead peasant insurance. Corporate America makes my tummy ache. The more i research the more I see ties between government corruption and the almighty dollar…. but I guess it wasn’t that hard to see once I opened my eyes.