posted 10-22-2003 03:47 PM            

By Karen Olsson
March/April 2003 Issue

Jennifer McLaughlin and her boyfriend, Eric Jackson, say Wal-Mart has held anti-union meetings and closely monitored employees who are trying to unionize the company's store in Paris, Texas.

Jennifer McLaughlin is 22, has a baby, drives a truck, wears wide-leg jeans and spiky plastic chokers, dyes her hair dark red, and works at Wal-Mart. The store in Paris, Texas -- Wal-Mart Supercenter #148 -- is just down the road from the modest apartment complex where McLaughlin lives with her boyfriend and her one-year-old son; five days a week she drives to the store, puts on a blue vest with "How May I Help You?" emblazoned across the back, and clocks in. Some days she works in the Garden Center and some days in the toy department. The pace is frenetic, even by the normally fast-paced standards of retailing; often, it seems, there simply aren't enough people around to get the job done. On a given shift McLaughlin might man a register, hop on a mechanical lift to retrieve something from a high shelf, catch fish from a tank, run over to another department to help locate an item, restock the shelves, dust off the bike racks, or field questions about potting soil and lawn mowers. "It's stressful," she says. "They push you to the limit. They just want to see how much they can get away with without having to hire someone else."

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· Made Over There
· Ghostwriting the Law
· John T. Walton profile (the Mother Jones 400)

· The United Food and Commercial Workers Union
· Wal-Mart

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Then there's the matter of her pay. After three years with the company, McLaughlin earns only $16,800 a year. "And I'm considered high-paid," she says. "The way they pay you, you cannot make it by yourself without having a second job or someone to help you, unless you've been there for 20 years or you're a manager." Because health insurance on the Wal-Mart plan would deduct up to $85 from her biweekly paycheck of $550, she goes without, and relies on Medicaid to cover her son, Gage.

Complaints about understaffing and low pay are not uncommon among retail workers -- but Wal-Mart is no mere peddler of saucepans and boom boxes. The company is the world's largest retailer, with $220 billion in sales, and the nation's largest private employer, with 3,372 stores and more than 1 million hourly workers. Its annual revenues account for 2 percent of America's entire domestic product. Even as the economy has slowed, the company has continued to metastasize, with plans to add 800,000 more jobs worldwide by 2007.

Given its staggering size and rapid expansion, Wal-Mart increasingly sets the standard for wages and benefits throughout the U.S. economy. "Americans can't live on a Wal-Mart paycheck," says Greg Denier, communications director for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). "Yet it's the dominant employer, and what they pay will be the future of working America." The average hourly worker at Wal-Mart earns barely $18,000 a year at a company that pocketed $6.6 billion in profits last year. Forty percent of employees opt not to receive coverage under the company's medical plan, which costs up to $2,844 a year, plus a deductible. As Jennifer McLaughlin puts it, "They're on top of the Fortune 500, and I can't get health insurance for my kid."

Angered by the disparity between profits and wages, thousands of former and current employees like McLaughlin have started to fight the company on a variety of fronts. Workers in 27 states are suing Wal-Mart for violating wage-and-hour laws; in the first of the cases to go to trial, an Oregon jury found the company guilty in December of systematically forcing employees to work overtime without pay. The retailer also faces a sex-discrimination lawsuit that accuses it of wrongly denying promotions and equal pay to 700,000 women. And across the country, workers have launched a massive drive to organize a union at Wal-Mart, demanding better wages and working conditions. Employees at more than 100 stores in 25 states -- including Supercenter #148 in Paris -- are currently trying to unionize the company, and in July the UFCW launched an organizing blitz in the Midwest, hoping to mobilize nearly 120,000 workers in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana.

Wal-Mart has responded to the union drive by trying to stop workers from organizing -- sometimes in violation of federal labor law. In 10 separate cases, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Wal-Mart repeatedly broke the law by interrogating workers, confiscating union literature, and firing union supporters. At the first sign of organizing in a store, Wal-Mart dispatches a team of union busters from its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, sometimes setting up surveillance cameras to monitor workers. "In my 35 years in labor relations, I've never seen a company that will go to the lengths that Wal-Mart goes to, to avoid a union," says Martin Levitt, a management consultant who helped the company develop its anti-union tactics before writing a book called Confessions of a Union Buster. "They have zero tolerance."

posted 10-22-2003 05:15 PM            

Also visit http://www.nocards.com

BIG BROTHER COMES TO WAL-MART
By Mary Starrett, NewsWithViews.com

Starting this week, the nation's largest discount retailer will quietly begin selling tracking-chipped products to clueless shoppers. The first volley in their war against our privacy is set to start at their Brockton, Massachusetts store.

Wal-Mart will put Radio Frequency I.D. sensors on shelves stocked with RFID-tagged Gillette products, but they'd rather you didn't know about it, because, hey, you might not like it, and then you might make noise and then they'd have a big PR mess on their hands.

You might even stop buying Gillette products or, say, refuse to shop at Wal-Mart.

These chips, researched at M.I.T.'s Auto-ID Center are about the size of a grain of sand. Chipsters say the technology will only be used to help retailers keep track of inventory - like bar codes. But privacy-loving consumers question the very concept of a device that sends out radio waves to "readers" that not only identify the article, but where and with whom it's going.

The Big Brother implications of this thing need little hyping to get your skin crawling.

Wal-Mart's putting the pressure on its top 100 suppliers to make sure their inventory is all chipped by the end of next year.

But why start this in Brockton, Mass?

Could it be because the store's customers are typically lower income minorities who'd be less likely to be aware of the tracking devices, and even less likely to make a fuss about them?

Their thinking? Let's foist it on folks who're too concerned about paying the electric bill to be aware of these types of issues.

Retailers are SUPPOSED to alert their customers to the tracking chips and offer to "kill" the tags at the checkout counter.

Don't count on it, because what you don't know won't hurt you, right? And to PROVE those RFID tags won't be "killed" at the cash register one of the ways they're planning on convincing you, the shopper that these tags are A-OK is by touting how "hassle-free" returns will be. Huh? If the tags are supposedly turned off at purchase, how can they be read after the item's brought back to the store? Just one of the myriad lies you'll be told about this technology.

Are we to expect that in addition to being asked the "paper or plastic" question we'll get an option on whether the RFID tags are left on or turned off? Not only will consumers be witnessing the death throes of privacy, but it's going to cost them. Currently, the chips cost about 60 cents each. Add that to the cost of each and every item that uses this Orwellian technology. Gillette and Wal-Mart are only the pioneers here, the stated plan is to affix each item produced on the planet with RFID tags. Each pack of gum, each roll of film, each bottle of Merlot.

So what's a freedom-loving shopper to do?

Fortunately for us, there's a really smart lady finishing up a Ph.D. at Harvard. She started a group that's bellowing out the urgency of fighting this technology; her name is Katherine Albrecht and she's founder of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering). Albrecht's CASPIAN has proposed a piece of federal legislation called "RFID RIGHT TO KNOW ACT OF 2003". It's a law that would let consumers know which products had tracking chips attached to them. In short, the proposed bill would amend the Fair Packaging and Labeling Program by adding language that requires manufacturers to state (in a conspicuous location) that the package contains a radio frequency identification tag that can transmit unique identification information to a "reader" device both before and AFTER it's purchased(!).

This is where you come in.

The bill needs a sponsor.

Maybe YOUR Congressional Representative would like to go on record as having helped stop this assault on our privacy. Forward this article to him/her and tell them the entire text of the bill can been seen at nocards.org.

Will you make it a point to email, call or fax your representative today, before our Big Brother gets any bigger? Do it NOW before the lobbyists and big money special interests get to them and convince Congress these RFID chips are consumer-friendly!

And while you're at it, why not tell the suits at Wal-Mart and Gillette (and Home Depot, Proctor and Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, too, by the way) that from here on out you wouldn't go near their stores or their products with a ten foot pole.

It works. Remember back a few months when I told you how Italian clothing company Benetton had chipped their Sisely line of clothes and was all set to roll out the garments with RFID tracking devices? Well your outrage and feedback caused them to put the scheme on hold.

Let's make sure the behemoth Wal-Mart is similarly put on notice. (By the way, IBM's planning to add RFID to it's products; so if Wal-Mart manages to sneak this past us, all bets are off and then every corporate giant will be able to inflict this chilling, tracking/monitoring horror on us.)

If RFID gets off the ground as planned, that would make George Orwells' predictions off by just 20 years. It's up to us.

IMPORTANT: US NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERN
This is not intended to scare you, but rather inform you
of a real and increasing threat. [Please forward after reading].

When you buy a Chinese product, for instance at Walmart,
you are contributing to the moderization and buildup of the
world's largest military, and this military is Communist
owned and operated. There is a large trade imbalance
benefitting China, which is getting roughly 87 billion/year
from US consumers. The profit gained is not going for the
people, but mostly for the moderization of the military, which
aims to defeat the US in the Asia Pacific region and abroad.
China is investing the largest percent of her income to the
military, more than any other country in the world. If the
world's largest military, and that being Communist, also
becomes even one of the most advanced, democracy is
threatened everywhere.

American businesses, such as Walmart, and others, do not
care that these products are made by forced labor, and
namely forced child labor. China can offer American
companies cheaper products, because there are no labor
costs, because the labor is forced by the government.

While US consumers shop, China makes more money and
points more missles towards the US and Taiwan. You can
help stop China's economic buildup by not contributing. The
big misconception among Americans is that China is
becoming more of a democracy, this couldn't be more
untrue. China's new President taking office in October, is
also known as, 'The Communist Chinese Party Goldenboy'.
Communism will continue in China. This is not going to
away.

In short, we are asking you to stop buying Chinese products
when possible. Most of all, boycott Walmart. Walmart's
inventory is over 93% Chinese made products. If enough
people realize this real and increasing threat, it can be
stalled and disrupted by simply not buying Chinese made products.

One Chinese living in Taiwan put it best 'Keep buying
Chinese, and pray for your childeren'.

Here is some of the things China is doing, and why you as
an American citizen should not support China, by buying
Chinese made products:

-- building up China's economy through free trade, with a large imbalance favoring China

-- China's military excercises going through the motions to take over Taiwan

-- The Code Red and later Nimda virus created at the University of Technology in Guang
Dong China todisrupt US business systems causing major financial loss

-- Proliferating of weapons to tyrant controlled states such as Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Lybia, North Korea,
Pakistan, and now Egypt(the only non-tyrant controlled, but intended to get sided with China)

-- Supplying weapons and training to the Taliban before and more importantly, after
September 11.

-- Constructing an advanced anti-aircraft network using fibre optics in Iraq so the the planes in the
no-fly zones would be in more danger

-- building up missles aimed at Taiwan, and buying atomic subs, fighter planes and destroyers from Russia

-- Accusing the US of not being in international waters and purposely hitting fighter plane with Spy
plane

-- Smuggling missles to Cuba, so that targets could be sited in middle and western US

-- Sending Chinese muslims wanting to fight with the Taliban by the shiploads to help the Taliban

-- launching a military satellite in orbit using what was US technology for the purpose of real-time
combat control communications

This doesn't even address the anti Christian, and persecuted church issues!

posted 10-22-2003 05:20 PM            

It may shock America to find out that slavery still exists. Today thousands of children work inside Chinese prison labor camps making exports for America. The children are separated from their parents by a brutal communist state and exploited as cheap labor. They work seven days a week for no pay, under horrific conditions.

The output of their enslavement is sold openly and proudly in almost every major shopping mall in America. Prison-made goods have been sold by Chinese officials for inclusion in the ever popular fast food children's meals. They have appeared as plastic monsters based on the latest movie blockbuster, hats for professional basketball teams and cartoon favorites from TV.

For example, one special China contact was to OLMEC toys, now based in Richmond, Virginia. In the 1980s Olmec founder, Yla Eason, started a toy company in New York with $60,000 borrowed from her family. Since then, Ms. Eason has been able to spin the $60,000 into a multi-million dollar toy business. Olmec toys are sold by Walmart, Kmart, KayBee and Toys R Us.

Ms. Eason credits herself with the creation of the first African American super hero toy, Sun Man. After creating Sun Man, Eason landed big backing from U.S. toy maker Hasbro to found a line of "ethnically-correct" dolls. She soon obtained the rights from Hasbro to the 3 3/4 inch GI Joe plastic molds. Eason then put a new head on the good characters, gave them a new paint scheme and created the "Bronze Bombers," a line of African-American super-heroes. Of course, Olmec manufactures the "Bronze Bombers" in China.

Curiously, Eason left the GI Joe bad guys -- better known as "Cobra" -- intact with no changes, complete with their original paint scheme. This little toy fact flies in the face of marketing 101 and seems contrary for someone who claims to be the wizard of ethnic toys. Who would pay extra for an "ethnically" correct bad guy that is identical to a not correct villain? Many toy enthusiasts were not impressed with the "Bombers" simply because they were nothing more than leftover GI Joe dolls. One collector called even called them "racist."

It is certain that Eason had far more help than just $60,000 from mom and a single toy maker backing her idea. For example, Hasbro executives donated thousands of dollars directly to the DNC just prior to the November 1992 elections. Moreover, documentation obtained from the U.S. Commerce Department shows that Ms. Eason also attended the Presidential Business Development mission to China in August 1994. President Clinton personally invited Eason to attend the trade trip with Ron Brown.

Ms. Eason met in Beijing with officials of the China National Toy Association (CNTA) at the personal arrangement of Ron Brown. According to the 1994 Commerce trade documents, Olmec had been working with a Chinese partner to "handle shipping, sourcing of products and manufacturing." Olmec was in China to "explore joint venture projects, especially with the mold machinery makers and toy manufacturers."

The CNTA is actually a front for the People's Armed Police (PAP) and the Chinese Army (PLA) prison factory system. According to Chinese dissident Harry Wu, the Chinese police and Army run prison factories that produce a wide variety of goods using forced labor. Prisoners work from 12 to 16 hours a day making highly volatile plastic products with no masks, no training and little ventilation. Statements provided by former prison camp guards to Mr. Wu show that torture and starvation is common policy at Chinese prison factories.

Ms. Eason left New York and set up Olmec head-quarters in Democratic dominated Richmond, Virginia. The new site is nothing more than a warehouse on a rail line where a handful of American employees work, packaging the Chinese made toys for resale. The new site also included low cost federal loans, and is located inside a federal tax free zone. Curiously, the former mayor of Richmond is now under investigation for offering political friends similar special incentives such as loans and tax free zones.

Ms. Eason, a young single mother with striking features, allegedly was close to Ron Brown. Ms. Eason traveled with Brown frequently and highly favored by the Clinton administration. Ms. Eason went to China, and was included on the Ron Brown trade mission to South Africa. The Commerce Department picked Eason to serve as a speaking panelist at the 1995 BEM (Big Emerging Market) Conference in Washington. Some of her companions at these events include other infamous Democratic donors such as Bernard Schwartz, Sanford Robertson, John Huang, and Nora Lum.

Furthermore, Ms. Eason even took a 1994 Hong Kong cruise on board the luxury liner Pacific Princess with Brown. Ms. Eason and Brown sailed the south pacific waters while attending a very posh and private party thrown by their Asian hosts. Invitees to the "Love Boat" party included the president of the China CITIC bank, a firm closely linked to international arms traffic.

However, Ms. Eason's only prior experience in business was her idea to create ethnic dolls. Her only funding was the $60,000. In the world of retail toys, dominated by mega-buck market share, fad based sales and self-space, $60,000 would not even get you lunch with a local buyer much less major outlets such as Toys R Us and Walmart. Eason's toy business success rivals the quick profits made by First Lady Hillary Clinton from her one time foray into Arkansas cattle futures.

Olmec is not the only U.S. toy maker that played the China doll game. Other toy companies set up by the PLA pay wages as low as 17 cents an hour to young girls aged from twelve to nineteen. Again, these companies exploit the children, forcing them into fixed terms of service inside plastic factories with no protection gear and no regard for safety. One such Chinese factory, which produced the "Mutant Nija Turtle" line of plastic dolls, burned down and killed forty children because management locked the doors to keep them from running away.

Furthermore, Defense, Commerce and Customs officials are very aware of the connection between the PLA and imported goods. The sale of goods made by forced labor and front companies provide cash for the Chinese Police and Army. The GAO noted that official Chinese armed forces spending reflects only a small portion of the over-all defense budget and could represent as little as one third the real funding available.

President Clinton and Ron Brown were certainly aware of exactly whom they arranged Ms. Eason to meet in Beijing. Even the August 1994 briefing package for Ms. Eason noted that China had previously violated international laws against such commerce. According to the Commerce China trade document, "Customs is investigating allegations that prison-made goods from China are entering the U.S. in violation of U.S. law."

Yet, Ron Brown said nothing about import violations to his Chinese hosts, and that pleased his U.S. corporate sponsors. According to DNC donor Sanford Robertson's 1994 letter to President Clinton, Brown "deftly navigated the human rights issues by obtaining an agreement on further talks, and then moved directly into the economic issues at hand, i.e. helping Chrysler, Sprint and others with their joint ventures."

Clinton has done little about prison made goods from China. President Clinton "de-linked" human rights from China trade at the behest of many close associates who profited from the separation. Ms. Eason is but one.

Clearly, big money backed Ms. Eason and she had the opportunity to shine. She was given a chance to prove that America does indeed reward good ideas and hard work. Her toys could have offered hope, honor and pride so badly needed in a world with few heroes. Instead, she sold repainted Chinese made GI-Joe dolls to minority mothers on a low income budget.

The total amount of PLA made toys imported into the U.S. can be measured by the ton. The profit from the China toy trade is also measured in the billions of dollars a year. Ironically, the profits from many of the Chinese toys being sold in America also provide hard cash for the Chinese police and armed forces. Thus, with each purchase, American parents are paying for the bullets, bombs, and missiles of the Chinese Army.

Hasbro recently announced they are re-introducing the 3 3/4 inch GI Joe dolls in time for Christmas 1998. The toy figures are aimed at U.S. children ages four to ten. They serve as holiday gifts and birthday presents, bringing joy into the homes of America. The cruelest irony of all is that half a world away a child will never know the happiness of Christmas, Hanukkah, or birthday parties.

RELATED ITEMS:

Source documents obtained from the U.S. Dept. of Commerce using the Freedom of Information Act:

- BROWN & EASON inside the files of Brown
http://www.softwar.net/toys.html

- BROWN & EASON on 1994 China Trade Trip Meets PLA

posted 10-22-2003 05:24 PM            

WalMart Baby Crib Toy
Says Subliminal 'I Hate You'
From Paul Watson
paul@propagandamatrix.com
1-13-3

Parents in Clark County Washington discovered that their baby's crib toy was playing a low level voice repeatedly saying "I Hate You" - when they went to the store they discovered that the whole product line contained the message.

This is something straight out of Brave New World or akin to a B.F. Skinner brainwashing experiement.

Since the whole product line contained the message, we can rule out the possibility that this was a practical joke.

Regards,
Paul Joseph Watson

posted 10-22-2003 07:32 PM            

Most Americans DON'T CARE that they are undercutting their own jobs..much less care about other human beings right to a living wage .

I see people EVERY DAY at the Wal-Mart in my hometown when I drive by loading up their SUV's with cheap Chinese commie SLAVE MADE JUNK.

Kind of reminds me of the story of Pinnochio...remember the part where the boys were partyting and staying up all night gambling and "making merry".....then the next day they wake up as jackasses and slaves to the SALT MINES?

The "PARTY" may be ending here soon too in America if we don't WAKE UP!!!!!!!!

Makes me want to puke!!!!

posted 10-23-2003 01:04 PM            

*******************************************************

Feds Arrest 300 Workers at 61 Wal-Marts
2 hours, 43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials arrested about 300 workers at 61 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. locations on immigration charges as part of an investigation into contractor cleaning crews, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

They said the investigation, known as "Operation Rollback," involved allegations the contractor had recruited illegal immigrants, mainly Eastern European nationals, to work on cleaning crews at the stores for the world's largest retailer.

A federal law enforcement official said some Wal-Mart executives had direct knowledge of the scheme, based on recorded conversations that have been made, surveillance and monitoring.

They said federal grand jury subpoenas have been issued for the Wal-Mart executives to testify. The executives were not identified.

Garrison Courtney, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the arrests in 21 states were part of a "worksite enforcement" effort.

"If a company knowingly hires illegal workers it can be penalized up to $10,000 per person," he said.

Most of the 300 workers belonged to contract cleaning crews, he said.

The latest arrests stemmed from two prior investigations by federal immigration officials involving contractors and Wal-Mart stores, one in 1998 and the other in 2001, the law enforcement official said.

The company did not immediately comment.

**************

DENY

DENY

DENY

posted 10-23-2003 03:58 PM            

.....who can AFFORD it.

posted 12-03-2003 11:08 AM            

In mid-November, Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and leader of the "globalization" drive, forced the closing of a national children's clothing store, Kids 'R' Us, and pushed the famous Hoover vacuum cleaner manufacturer to the brink; by the end of November, it is expected that Hoover may announce the shift of a substantial portion of its production facilities to Mexico, laying off hundreds of American workers.

Forcing the closure of competing retail stores is a Wal-Mart specialty, as is its destruction of many of America's leading textile and apparel manufacturers and food companies.

As EIR has shown in a series of articles (Nov. 14, Nov. 21), Wal-Mart is a driving force for America's implementation of the Imperial Rome model: Unable to reproduce its own population's existence, the United States has, for the past two decades, used an over-valued dollar to import goods from abroad. Wal-Mart markets an immense volume of these goods, many of which are produced under slave-labor conditions. It pays below-subsistence wages to its American workers, and drives down the wages of competing retail stores.

On Nov. 1, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche put a spotlight on the matter, with a call for a national and international boycott of Wal-Mart. On Nov. 18, he told a campaign meeting in St. Louis, Missouri: "The most important subversive enemy against the United States people and economy today, is Wal-Mart!" He denounced Wal-Mart's forcing companies to outsource, causing the exodus of millions of manufacturing jobs. The reason households shopped at Wal-Mart, he said, is that their collapsed incomes make them unable to purchase goods at higher prices.

Gutting Companies

On Nov. 17, the national retail chain Toys 'R' Us, announced that it would close 146 of the stores of its Kids 'R' Us subdivision, which sells clothing, as well as 36 of its Imaginarium stores (which sell "educational" toys and games). The shutdowns will be completed by Jan. 31, 2004, eliminating up to 3,800 jobs. Kids 'R' Us was unable to slash the prices of its children's clothing deeply enough to compete with Wal-Mart.

Moreover, Wal-Mart has launched an aggressive campaign, through cut-throat pricing, to destroy the parent company, Toys 'R' Us, the second-largest toy seller (after Wal-Mart) in America. As an example of how this strategy operates: The popular Hot Wheels T-Wreck Play Set toy sells for $42 wholesale. However, according to the Nov. 19 Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is now selling that very toy at $29.74, a loss of more than $10 per unit. Wal-Mart sells 21% of all toys sold in America, and if it knocks out its leading competitor, its share could reach 30%.

Hoover has been a leading name in vacuum cleaners for nearly 100 years. During the third quarter of this year, Hoover's vacuum-cleaner sales declined by 20%, which the company blamed on competitors' models priced at $79-made in Asia to meet Wal-Mart's price demands-outselling Hoover's $100-plus vacuums produced in the United States. Hoover cannot withstand such drops in sales volumes.

Hoover's parent company, Maytag, is demanding cuts in health insurance and other benefits, plus changes in job-security rules for production workers at its Hoover vacuum manufacturing plant in North Canton, Ohio. If the workers don't cave in, Maytag has stated that it will move Hoover vacuum production to cheap-wage sites in Texas, and to maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Textile and Apparel, and Food Sectors

No company is safe from Wal-Mart's unswerving assault, but particularly at risk are manufacturing concerns in the textile and apparel sector, and in the food sector.

Wal-Mart has ravaged companies by leveraging its enormous sales power, and its access to products produced by slave-labor, to make suppliers follow its pricing decisions. If the supplier company doesn't sell its goods at the price Wal-Mart sets, Wal-Mart denies them shelf space at its stores, which destroys that company. However, even when a supplier meets Wal-Mart's prices, the prices are so low, and the supplier loses so much money, that the supplier is forced into bankruptcy. Wal-Mart's 2002 sales of $244.5 billion were larger than the sales of Sears, Target, J.C Penny, K-Mart, Safeway, and Kroger combined.

Textiles and Apparel:
* Carolina Mills is a 75-year-old company that supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel-makers-half of which supply Wal-Mart. But since 2000, Carolina Mills' customers have begun to find imported clothing sold so cheaply at Wal-Mart, that Carolina Mills could not compete even if they paid their workers nothing! Since 2000, Carolina Mills has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees to 1,200. Steve Dobbins, the CEO of Carolina Mills, told the December issue of Fast-Company magazine: "People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs" (emphasis added).
* Lovable Garments, which was founded in 1926, had, by the 1990s, become the sixth-largest producer of women's lingerie in the United States, employing 700 workers. Wal-Mart became the biggest purchaser of Lovable's goods; in 1995, Wal-Mart demanded that Lovable slash its prices to compete with cheap imports. When Lovable indicated it could not do that, Wal-Mart illegally reneged on its contract, and outsourced the lingerie production to Ibero-America, Asia, and China. Without the Wal-Mart market, in 1998 Lovable had to close its American manufacturing facilities and fire the workers. Stated Frank Garson, who was then Lovable's president, "Their actions to pulverize people are unnecessary. Wal-Mart chewed us up and spit us out."

Food:
* Vlasic Pickles was roped into a contract with Wal-Mart, in which Wal-Mart sold a 3 gallon jar of whole pickles for $2.97. Wal-Mart sold 240,000 gallons of pickles per week. But the price of the 3 gallon jar was so low, that it vastly undercut Vlasic's sales of 8 ounce and 16 ounce jars of cut pickles; further, Vlasic only made a few pennies per 3 gallon jar. With its profits tumbling, Vlasic asked Wal-Mart for the right to raise the price per 3 gallon jar to $3.49, and according to a Vlasic executive, Wal-Mart threatened that if Vlasic tried to back out of this feature of the contract, Wal-Mart would cease carrying any Vlasic product. Eventually, a Wal-Mart executive said, "Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it"-meaning it had wiped out competitor products. Finally, it allowed Vlasic to raise prices; but in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy.

Destroying Labor Overseas
Wal-Mart buys a lot of its goods from China, which in many sections of the country, pays very low wages. One case that has come to light concerns the Ching Hai Electric Works Co. in Shajing, which produces electric fans. The factory makes several million fans per year, and sells them under many of the world's leading brand names, and also under two of the company's own names. The workers' starting salary is $32 per month, which is more than 40% below China's minimum wage of $56 per month. There are also reportedly many workplace accidents in the factory. In the late 1990s, Wal-Mart started making demands that the price of the fans be lowered, and they have fallen from approximately $7, to $4 per fan. But to lower the price, the manager of the plant had to cut its workforce in half, to 1,500 workers, while maintaining the same level of orders. This has led to many workers working 14 hours per day, for a pittance.

Meanwhile, American factories that produce fans are shutting down.

International Spotlight

The situation has become so outrageous, that it is drawing international attention. On Nov. 19, the Observer of London carried an article on the destruction of the City of Buffalo, New York, mentioning the role of Wal-Mart. The article tells the story of Buffalo Color, a manufacturing plant where indigo dye for denim was produced. Once employing 3,000 workers, Buffalo Color lost business to plants established in China, which produce the indigo dye at half the cost that Buffalo Color does. The indigo dye is used to color the denim, most of which is used in clothing, and Wal-Mart has driven down the price it will pay for clothing, and thus all its constituent ingredients must be cheaper. Buffalo Color now employs 12 people, and functions strictly as a resale operation. The article also reports on the Made in the USA group, which consists of many small- and medium-sized manufacturers, whose chairman states that its primary enemy is Wal-Mart.

On Nov. 18-19, the City of London's mouthpiece, the Financial Times, ran four articles on Wal-Mart, centered on Wal-Mart's practices of hiring and directing cleaning companies that employed foreign illegal workers who cleaned Wal-Mart stores, seven nights a week, under hideous conditions.

ALL MADE IN USA DATABASE AND SEARCH ENGINE http://w3f.com/usa/

Find and Support American Business:
Thomas Register of American Manufacturers http://www.thomasregister.com/

U.S. Stuff- Product List and Index, Products Made in USA, Start Page http://www.usstuff.com/prodlist.htm

BuyAmerican.com ONLINE SHOPPING http://store.manufacturedinusa.com/cgi-bin/shop.storefront

How Americans Can Buy American http://www.howtobuyamerican.com/

"..It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.." Samuel Adams"

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posted 12-03-2003 11:54 AM            

I can just see the sign at the front of the store now...

"We're rolling back Americas future!"

That's really what it should read.

My high school buddy used to work there while he was going to College. He called it Walcatraz.

posted 12-03-2003 11:59 AM            

They say the are the friend of small town America, but go into any small town they are in, and you see all the boarded up small and family businesses that are not able to exist with walmart.

And unfortunately people are all too willing to neglect their friends and neighbors shops and businesses, and their own communities, to give even more money to Bentonville Arkansas

posted 12-03-2003 08:41 PM            

Just having checked the expiration dates on my canned goods, to find the local markets sold cans about to expire, within weeks in many cases.
Just having pulled out the bags of dried beans, rice, peas, and such, and finding tiny maggots all through almost all of them.
Why did I do these things?
Because a relative just gave me dozens of year old bags of 'cup of soup' type dried noodles w/ flavor packet.
I opened a sealed container to add them to my months old same product from th elocal markets...
locally purchased stuff was full of maggots,
even the bags of dried beans, noodles and such I had placed, "from shopping bag to jar" in sealed storage.

The stuff purchased from Wal-Mart had no worms despite being stored on shelves in the same exact environmental conditions.
Must have been fresher due to
Wal-Mart's huge volume of purchases.

The three local markets seem to be buying up outdated goods on the cheap and still selling for more than Wal-Mart.

I went today and checked expiration dates on shelved cans at two of those markets.
Some of it expired last year!
(Yet sits today on shelves for sale)

I don't like to buy any foreign goods.
I have a relative who just quit Wal-Mart because said person takes a bus to work and got scheduled for shifts when busses do not run.
Talking to management got only a demand to show up as scheduled.
"Your problem how you get to work; Not ours."

Meanwhile thinking about that already soured milk I bought at our good local market, and wondering where to buy food other than Wal-Mart, since the locals are crooks.

BTW the same brands are in local general merchandise stores (whose owners are crying loudest about Wal-Mart)

And now that I know the owner of a local 'American' furniture store;
He told me all his stuff is Chinese made,
and advises that
"If you want American made, buy antiques."

It's global folks, like it or not.
I closed a silk-screen business in 97, because the last American manufacturer of t-shirts joined Fruit of The Loom, and all others, in buying foriegn made.
Their costs had dropped but their prices stayed the same.

It's American businessmen doing it to us and subsidizing that slave labor, in their increasing greed.

posted 12-08-2003 05:26 PM            

It seems that she has a history of slip and fall claims.

posted 04-15-2004 03:38 PM            

Moscow Looks Like Wal-Mart's Next Big Move

By Greg Walters
Special to The Moscow Times

Jaconna Aguirre / AP

Wal-Mart posted worldwide revenues of $256 billion in 2003, making it the the world's largest company.


They swore their contacts to secrecy and slipped into the country by stealth. But they still couldn't keep their mission a secret.

Perhaps a quarter of a trillion dollars had something to do with it.

When Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company with sales of $256 billion last year, sent a scout patrol to sniff around Moscow earlier this month, people in the know just couldn't stop talking about it -- off the record.

"It's the best way to have no chance of working with Wal-Mart when they come," said one prominent real estate consultant.

Notice the word "when."

Although the company insists that it hasn't decided whether or not it will roll into Russia, at least six Moscow-focused retail and real estate consultants say they have been advising Wal-Mart confidentially.

The decision is eagerly awaited. A commitment to Russia by Wal-Mart, consultants say, would be a public relations coup akin to oil giant BP's record tie up with TNK last year. More important, it will be a forceful stamp of approval heard by investors worldwide -- particularly Americans, they say.

"For North American companies considering new or further investment in Russia, I think it will be quite significant," said Reece Jenkins, a partner at Ernst & Young. "IKEA and Metro are well respected companies, but to a North American board member, it's not quite as tangible as saying, 'Hey, Wal-Mart's here.'"

Part of the reason for that, of course, is Wal-Mart's sheer size. It generated slightly less than three times more revenues than the Russian government did last year, and more than four of its top competitors -- Kmart, Target, Carrefour and Royal Ahold -- combined.

Since 1991 the company has moved into Germany, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, China, Canada and Mexico.

Where Wal-Mart goes next is a closely guarded secret, but the company does give clues. In January, CEO Lee Scott named China, Russia and India as prime candidates for future expansion. And although, as Scott said, China is the only country where the company could "replicate" what it has done in America, it doesn't represent a new market.

So if it is down to Russia and India, Russia has at least one distinct advantage. "At the moment India does not allow foreign direct investment in our sector," Bracy said. "Obviously, if we can't invest, we can't be there."

Still, Russia presents its own unique set of problems for a company like Wal-Mart, whose business model is built on mass sales. Its strategy has always been to offer a staggeringly wide range of products under the same roof at discount prices. Success in Russia would mean figuring out how to move massive amounts of goods around the country reliably and cheaply.

"If you come into this market and you have a global supply and inventory management system, you have to work out how you're going to plug that into this environment," Reece said. "It's going to involve even more of a partnering approach, figuring out who the local partners are, and who the distributors are you're going to work with. The product supply and distribution market here is less developed, but it's moving quickly."

In addition to solving logistics issues, the Wal-Mart advance team is likely looking at cultural peculiarities that might affect their strategy, retail analysts say. In Germany, for example, Wal-Mart failed to pick up on certain social nuances -- such as not recognizing that most Germans weren't used to other people bagging their groceries. Partly for this reason, the company has struggled to turn a profit since its entered the country nearly a decade ago.

Wal-Mart admits it's been rough going. "We've had to invest more in people, stores, supply chains," Bracy said.

If the problems were unexpected, so were the solutions. Under its "Singles Shopping" program, which it launched in Germany just before Valentine's Day, customers who want to flirt while they shop were able to pick up special baskets with big red ribbons on them to make it clear they were looking for more than bratwurst.

"It could be quite clever, if it works," said Thomas Lindau, a retail analyst in the Hamburg office of Research International. "We have a large proportion of singles in Germany."

If the decision is made to go forward in Russia, the next question will be how. The move could be sped up if the company buys a pre-existing operator, as Wal-Mart did in Britain in 1999 and Japan in 2002.

But retailers in Russia are generally smaller than Wal-Mart's usual 15,000-20,000 square meter stores. A smattering of big Western retail outlets -- like Auchan's three Moscow hypermarkets, which range between16,000 and 18,000 square meters -- are the exceptions that prove the rule.

"If we're talking about 15,000 to 20,000 meters of retail space, there are no chains that have that kind of format," said Natalya Oreshina, senior director of the retail department at Stiles & Riabokobylko, a commercial real estate agency. "If they come, I think they would try to work on their own. But you never know."