Bush Shops at Wal-Mart

Here are some anecdotal excerpts from a NYTimes article on the current flap stemming from a recent in-house audit of Wal-Mart's labor law violations:

...several current and former Wal-Mart employees confirmed in interviews that violations of state law on child labor and breaks were a recurring problem at many understaffed Wal-Mart stores. Leila Najjar said that when she worked for a Wal-Mart in a Denver suburb at age 16 and 17, she sometimes was forced to miss breaks, work past midnight and work more than eight hours a day even though Colorado bars minors from doing that. Time records from a court case showed that her store sometimes forced her to work illegal hours. During the holidays, Ms. Najjar, a recent graduate of the University of Colorado, recalled, "the store closed at 11 and there were nights we had to stay to clean up until 12:30, 12:45. It was a long day, and I was tired the next day at school. And sometimes, I'd have to work 10, 11 hours on a Saturday or Sunday." If the same rate of violations were found throughout the Wal-Mart system, that would translate into tens of thousands of child-labor violations each week at Wal-Mart's 3,500 stores and more than one million violations of company and state regulations on meals and breaks. Company officials said such extrapolations were misleading, noting that many of the seeming time-record problems could be explained by legal behavior. Wal-Mart employees clock in and out by swiping their identity badges, which the time clock reads electronically. Ms. Williams said employees sometimes forgot to swipe when they arrived at work or when they took lunch. Sometimes, she said, workers missed breaks not because management pressured them but, for example, because they wanted to finish early to take a child to the doctor. John Lehman, who ran several Wal-Mart stores in Kentucky, said he was sure that large-scale violations on child labor, breaks and meals continued at Wal-Mart. In the months after the company distributed the audit internally, he said, store managers like him received no word to try harder to prevent violations. "There was no follow-up to that audit, there was nothing sent out I was aware of saying, `We're bad. We screwed up. This is the remedy we're going to follow to correct the situation,' " said Mr. Lehman, who said he quit in 2001 because he was disgusted with the company's treatment of employees. He now works for a union trying to organize Wal-Mart workers. "Wal-Mart stores are so systematically understaffed that they work minors just like they do adults," he said. "They don't have enough workers to take care of the business. Yes, their prices are low but then the stores are so understaffed that workers often don't have time to take their breaks or lunches." Maria Rocha, who ran the restaurant inside a Wal-Mart in Dallas, said her workload was so great and the restaurant so understaffed that she never took breaks and often missed lunch. "It was just too busy to take a break," said Ms. Rocha, who quit in October. "There were a lot of customers, and the managers would be mad if you took a break." Verette Richardson, a former Wal-Mart cashier in Kansas City, Mo., said it was sometimes so hard to get a break that some cashiers urinated on themselves. Bella Blaubergs, a diabetic who worked at a Wal-Mart in Washington State, said she sometimes nearly fainted from low blood sugar because managers often would not give breaks. As for claims of child-labor violations and stores too understaffed for worker breaks, Ms. Williams said, "In a company that has more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone, I have no doubt that in some individual instances that can happen."

Typical Wal-Mart salary: Minimum Wage.
Typical Wal-Mart owner net worth: Billions.
Typical Wal-Mart employee benefits package value: Priceless. Literally.
Number of times Left is Right ever has made a purchase at Wal-Mart: 0.

Stop letting the low prices lure you into your local Wal-Mart. Resist the urge to save money at the expense of increasing the desperation of the lower income class. Stop shopping at Wall-Mart; there are plenty of other stores that sell what you need. JUST STOP GOING TO WAL-MART. It's wrong.