Through its entire chain of production, distribution, retailing and consumption, guess what, ladies? Yes, Wal-Mart profits from women's losses. In their pursuit of ever-lowering prices, Wal-Mart exacts a high price for its largest constituency: women.
Women work in the factories that manufacture the products for sale in Wal-Mart stores and it is most likely a woman who sells that product to the consumer (70% of Wal-Mart cashiers are women.) And who is Wal-Mart's largest customer base? Yes, those without a penis or peripheral vision come time to get behind the wheel of a car. Despite this, the company has a history of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, wage disparities between male and female employees and health care inequalities for women.
A couple months back, Claire Watts, executive vice-president of apparel merchandising, even quit the company since the retailer was facing the US's biggest-ever biggest sex discrimination class-action lawsuit and another class-action from employees who claimed they were locked inside stores after closing time to perform extra work without pay. In May '07, Human Rights Watch accused Wal-Mart of undermining workers' rights to form unions.
Wal-Mart's 2006 Annual Report reported that the company faced 57 wage and hour lawsuits. Major lawsuits have either been won or are working their way through the legal process in states such as California, Indiana, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington. [Wal-Mart Annual Report 2006]
In December 2005, a California court ordered Wal-Mart to pay $172 million in damages for failing to provide meal breaks to nearly 116,000 hourly workers as required under state law. Wal-Mart appealed the case. [The New York Times, December 23, 2005]
A Pennsylvania court, also in December 2005, approved a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. by employees in Pennsylvania who say the company pressured them to work off the clock. The class could grow to include nearly 150,000 current or former employees. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 12, 2006 ]
A story even recently surfaced about a Florida woman who bought a pair of flip-flops at Wal-Mart, and after wearing them for the first time, they began to burn her feet quite badly. After contacting Wal-Mart HQ, the woman---a former Wal-Mart employee--- received rude service and basically no help. She was told this wasn't Wal-Mart's problem because the shoes, like so many products in their stores, came from a factory in China.
Wal-Mart Stores said it issued warnings to two Chinese suppliers following reports of labor violations at the factories, which also make official Olympic merchandise. China is particularly sensitive to sweatshop allegations, therewith its status as a major apparel manufacturer---by some estimates, as much as half of the world's clothes. Concern has deepened after the discovery in August '07 that dozens of young people had been kidnapped and used as slave labor at brick kilns and coal mines.
China is fucked, so it's no surprise that in 2001, Wal-Mart moved their world-wide purchasing headquarters to China. Some of us still remember the ol' "Made In America" sig. Not lately . . . and why would you when Wal-Mart has turned into the biggest trick/whore on the planet. And why??? Figure it out:
This Slope makes $1.20 an hour. She replaced a Tennessee housewife who made $14.60 an hour, plus health insurance benefits. The housewife paid taxes which paid for local schools.
The Fuck Stories Don't Stop There.
Now in the real down under, there are debates about the ethics of using unpaid teenagers to bag groceries in Wal-Mart's Mexico stores. As several sources point out, Wal-Mex is doing just fine and could pay the workers if it wanted to. Then again, Wal-Mart could afford to pay ALL its workers better if it chose to, as thousands of adolescents work as unpaid baggers in Wal-Mart's Mexican stores. The retail giant isn't breaking any laws, but that doesn't mean the government is happy with the practice.
1 x 2 x 3 x 40 x 500 = The Amount Of Complaints.
After receiving complaints from several customers, Wal-Mart had to quietly pull certain brands of dog food off its shelves. Unsure whether to issue a recall or not, the company sent the food to for testing: results came back showing the food was tainted with melamine, a potentially lethal chemical. Why did the company wait so long to inform customers about the dangerous product? Well I have a pretty good fuckin' idea, as do you, I'm sure.
But fuck the pets. What about the kids?
Wal-Mart officials said a few months back they were asking toy suppliers to submit recent safety documentation or re-test their products in response to the wave of recalled merchandise from China that had cast a shadow over this past years' holiday shopping season.
The efforts were in part of a five-step plan to improve safety that the company is calling the Toy Safety Net Program. It has promised to work with the Toy Industry Association, a trade group, on new safety standards later this month and help Chinese leaders who are implementing new testing procedures.
"Wal-Mart's not addressing the larger problem of why Chinese toy suppliers are cutting corners with lead paint and melamine," spokesman Nu Wexler said, referring to a harmful additive found in pet food made in China. "It's because they're under enormous pressure from buyers like Wal-Mart, and they're sacrificing child safety to keep costs low."
As millions of toys with dangerous components and materials are recalled, manufacturers and retailers alike are asking, "What should be done with all of the recalled toys?" Many of toys will likely end up in dumpsters, raising concerns about such large quantities of plastic and lead in the nation's landfills. As worries about ever-bulging landfills and groundwater contamination grow, the headache of getting rid of the toys may just be the start of problems to come.
The Complaints Still Keep Coming In.
Wal-Mart once again came under scrutiny for its in-store food labeling: this time, it was the term "all natural."
Tysons Food's habit of injecting poultry with additives but still labeling them as "all natural" has all of us asshole consumers wondering, "Hey, dickweeds, what's really in my food?" Wal-Mart is primarily responsible for the practice, as "the use of salt solution first occurred in 2003 after Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reportedly approached all the major U.S. chicken processors about standardizing the packaged weight of fresh chicken to use one bar code for like items."
I guess my question is, can chicken injected with up to 15 percent salt water and seaweed extract be packaged with a "100 percent all natural" label?
Sure. I guess. I mean, if you also feel comfortable labeling your local cock-grinding stripper as her performing "community service" instead of calling it "freelance prostitution." Call that food whatever you want; long as you can sleep at night.
Wal-Mart could have issued a recall: it didn't. It could have at least investigated: it didn't. It could have contacted the manufacturer themselves and demanded that the factory stop producing dangerous products: it didn't. There's nothing wrong with lowering prices, but endangering consumers is inexcusable.
And why is it like this???? Figure it out:
Wal-Mart Woes Got You Down?
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
1-800-WAL-MART
Or mail a letter.
Biggest Dickweeds On The Planet.
Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611
Or call the Employee Complaint line; hopefully it's NOT like talking to a douche-brained Sprint PCS representative:
1-800-WMETHIC (No joke. They purposely used "ethic." Kinda like a stripper saying I'm a "good" girl.)
When Wal-Mart fails to help, you can always contact the next level:
U.S. Department of Labor
Better Business Bureau
OSHA
Essentially shopping at Wal-Mart, you might be buying a $25 item for $20, but it is slowly wrecking our economy, and eventually you will be paying full price. Nike shoes pulled the identical scam when it gave you $22 sneakers for $12, but as soon as they bankrupted their competitors, you were paying full price.
The company provides a 401k and profit sharing. They use the employees' pension plans to buy Wal-Mart stock. Wal-mart's Plans: 80% Part Time and 20% Full Time Staff, Wal-Mart Letting go 25% of Staff.
Wal-Mart's failure to provide healthcare to their employees is costing American taxpayers over 1.5 billion dollars every year and leaves an estimated 46% of the children of Wal-Mart employees on publicly-funded healthcare programs.
Taken Straight From Wal-Mart Employees.
"About ten years ago I worked for Sam's Club (which is Wal-Mart owned). They have horrible pay and benefits. They would show us anti union videos and tell us if we saw any union reps in the store to call security. In the beginning I did not know what a union was. They say they have benefits but the money that was taken out of my check and the co-pays and deductibles were so high it was a joke. I was in charge of marketing and made about seven dollars an hour which was somewhere around minimum wage. I live in California and it is not cheap to live here. They also used to make us watch this live satellite show from Arkansas were the corporate office is and it was like watching televangelism t.v.. I eventually got a job at a local supermarket that was union and was working both jobs. I told some co-workers at Sam's about how good the pay and benefits were at the union job and Sam's fired me for being a union organizer."
Could it be if you work for Wal-Mart, you're not that bright to begin with? Ahh, a telling tale here:
"My fiancé and I plan to have our wedding at the Wal-Mart where I work. The problem is that we are moving to a bigger location a few miles away and the grand opening of "Super Wal-Mart" is the same week as our wedding. My supervisor, Skippy, told me I have to either change the date of the wedding or get married elsewhere. I pleaded that I was a loyal employee of the store for more years than he's been alive. He just shrugged and continued drinking his Mountain Dew. I don't want to change the date because I already bought tickets to the Brickyard 400 for our honeymoon. If I got married at Wal-Marts grand opening, I am sure I would get national media attention. How can I convince Skippy to change his mind?"
Wow. Heh. Now that was a quote, verbatim. Umm . . . if you're like me, you'll want to read it again just for amusement. Progressing . . .
Is Wal-Mart Trying to Fuck With The Space/Time Continuum?
If you go into a Wal-Mart a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, aside from assholes running their shopping carts into you, you'll see Christmas stuff out for sale, then two days after that nightmare of a holiday passes, you'll see Valentine's Day shit out, which is basically Easter: Part 1. Fourth of July happens, then suddenly in the sultry weeks of the year, you can buy your snotty-nosed brat a Halloween costume when its last school year isn't even fuckin' over with yet. Sell, sell, sell, you cocksuckers.
Wal-Mart Music.
Why does Wal-Mart sell edited music yet around the corner one can buy, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Director's Cut?" Is "fuck," "shit," and "bitch" worse than mutilating human beings while they scream in agony? Nirvana's "In Utero" contains a song we've all heard entitled, "Rape Me." Of course, if you buy this CD at Wal-Mart, the song has been changed to "Waif Me." But then in the same department of the store, you can go pick up "The Hills Have Eyes," which has scenes of women being treated in this unkindly manner. Hypocrisy at its finest.
So what's the only good thing about Wal-Mart? The cashiers!!
I recommend all the males out there to start dating one real soon because I know she will obey everything that comes out of your mouth. For real. She will be so used to eating shit in life because seven hours of her day consists of it, you'll be able to pretty much get away with anything while she's off the clock.
You might be able to slap her in the face with raw fish. You also might be able to discipline her 3-year old in your very own special way without her saying, "Stop acting like my ex and put that knife down!" Who knows, she might even take it in the ass without whining about it.
April's approaching as well, so keep checking the mailbox for her tax-return . . . Don't let her keep a fucking dime.
