posted September 07, 2004 08:52 PM         

Her blood boils at the sight. "It is an attack on our heritage," fumes Ms Ortega, a colorful figure in a small but vocal protest movement against the construction of a Bodega Aurrera superstore, a Wal-Mart Mexico subsidiary, half a mile from the monuments. "It is an attack on our cosmic equilibrium."

A pyramid at Teotihuacanis shown in this Sept. 18, 2003, photo at the archeological site 18 miles from Mexico City. A Wal-Mart store is being built a half-mile from the ancient ruins of Teotihuacan and a small, embattled group opposed to seeing the store from atop the pyramids is fighting a lonely battle for what it calls Mexico's landscape and culture.(Photo/Marco Ugarte)

The movement gives full rein to spiritualists, such as Ms Ortega, who believe Teotihuacan's pyramids and temples possess a special energy that Wal-Mart's presence threatens to throw off balance.

The protest is brought down to earth by traditional conservationists who fear that the development will encourage urban spillover from the capital 30 miles away and spoil the largely rural valley for ever. Then there are the local shopkeepers and stall owners from the small town of San Juan who cannot compete with the biggest retailer in the world.

Most recently the anti-Wal-Mart campaign in Teotihuacan has attracted support from other campaign groups because of the undeniable importance of the ruins.

One of Mexico's oldest and most mysterious civilizations, Teotihuacan boasted a population of up to 150,000 about 300AD. It faded away a few centuries later for unknown reasons and leaving few clues about what life was like. Archaeologists furiously debate issues such as whether it was ruled by kings or collectives.

"A big supermarket so close to the monuments sounds worrying," says Javier Villalobos, of the Paris-based International Council of Monuments and Sites, an influential conservation group. Mr Villalobos is planning to visit Teotihuacan this weekend to evaluate the threat.

But even if the protesters get international heavyweights on their side, theirs is no easy battle. There are many who welcome Wal-Mart, seeing modernization where the protesters fear desecration.

"These people who are trying to stop it [the supermarket] don't understand the meaning of progress," says Victor Hernandez, a bicycle salesman who is fed up with traveling 15 miles to shop in bulk. He is hopeful that Wal-Mart will give his son a job. "This is progress," he says.

The protesters are also having a tough time challenging a construction that apparently has all its permits in order.

The development on an alfalfa field, just outside the zone where all building is prohibited, was approved by the archaeological authorities on condition that Wal-Mart employed archaeologists to survey the site.

The archaeologists have reported that there is little worth saving beyond a semi-rural domestic compound unlikely to produce anything of value when excavated.

They have also questioned the authenticity of the protesters' claims to have found pots and ceramic figurines in waste heaps from the site.

It is very difficult to find out what is actually being uncovered behind the perimeter fence; the company refuses to let visitors in and armed guards keep a watchful eye for snoopers.

In the meantime, less than a month after construction began the gray concrete warehouse shell is already largely in place and the roof supports will be constructed shortly.

Still, Ms Ortega insists that Wal-Mart has met its match in Teotihuacan.

"We are going to make them demolish what they have already built, and return things to the way they were," she says.

She will need all the extra cosmic energy she can get.

posted September 07, 2004 08:58 PM         

One of Don Miguel Ruiz's books is sorta about Teotihuacan. I can't remember which one. I'll have to check my book shelf.

posted September 07, 2004 10:17 PM         

That kind of thing upsets my cosmic balance.

quote:

---

"These people who are trying to stop it [the supermarket] don't understand the meaning of progress," says Victor Hernandez, a bicycle salesman who is fed up with traveling 15 miles to shop in bulk. He is hopeful that Wal-Mart will give his son a job. "This is progress," he says.

---

Oh yes, progress. Someday when the ENTIRE WORLD can drive their atmosphere-polluting internal-combustion-engine vehicle a needless 100 feet to home from their thankless job at the Villainous Conglomerate -- with a quick stop at Mickey D's halfway to Super-Size Themselves on sterile lumps of matter called "fast food" devoid of any nutritional value -- and let themselves into their eerie, cookie-cutter government subdivision housing, via the biometric eye scanner on the front door, to keep all us evil-natured human monkeys in line.... yeah, baby, that's progress.

:P

<wanders off to puke>

posted September 07, 2004 10:21 PM         

P.S.

posted September 08, 2004 10:02 AM         

Worldwide wage-depressor

Then there’s China. For years, Wal-Mart saturated the airwaves with a "We Buy American" advertising campaign, but it was nothing more than a red-white-and-blue sham. All along, the vast majority of the products it sold were from cheap-labor hell-holes, especially China. In 1998, after several exposes of this sham, the company finally dropped its "patriotism" posture and by 2001 had even moved its worldwide purchasing headquarters to China. Today, it is the largest importer of Chinese-made products in the world, buying $10 billion worth of merchandise from several thousand Chinese factories.

As Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports, "In country after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst," adding that the bottom-feeding labor policy of this one corporation "is actually lowering standards in China, slashing wages and benefits, imposing long mandatory-overtime shifts, while tolerating the arbitrary firing of workers who even dare to discuss factory conditions."

Wal-Mart does not want the U.S. buying public to know that its famous low prices are the product of human misery, so while it loudly proclaims that its global suppliers must comply with a corporate "code of conduct" to treat workers decently, it strictly prohibits the disclosure of any factory names and addresses, hoping to keep independent sources from witnessing the "code" in operation.

Kernaghan’s NLC, acclaimed for its fact-packed reports on global working conditions, found several Chinese factories that make the toys Americans buy for their children at Wal-Mart. Seventy-one percent of the toys sold in the U.S. come from China, and Wal-Mart now sells one out of five of the toys we buy.

NLC interviewed workers in China’s Guangdong Province who toil in factories making popular action figures, dolls, and other toys sold at Wal-Mart. In "Toys of Misery," a shocking 58-page report that the establishment media ignored, NLC describes:

13- to 16-hour days molding, assembling, and spray-painting toys—8 a.m. to 9 p.m. or even midnight, seven days a week, with 20-hour shifts in peak season.

Even though China’s minimum wage is 31 cents an hour—which doesn’t begin to cover a person’s basic subsistence-level needs—these production workers are paid 13 cents an hour.

Workers typically live in squatter shacks, seven feet by seven feet, or jammed in company dorms, with more than a dozen sharing a cubicle costing $1.95 a week for rent. They pay about $5.50 a week for lousy food. They also must pay for their own medical treatment and are fired if they are too ill to work.

The work is literally sickening, since there’s no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint-dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there’s no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day.
As for Wal-Mart’s highly vaunted "code of conduct," NLC could not find a single worker who had ever seen or heard of it.

These factories employ mostly young women and teenage girls. Wal-Mart, renowned for knowing every detail of its global business operations and for calculating every penny of a product’s cost, knows what goes on inside these places. Yet, when confronted with these facts, corporate honchos claim ignorance and wash their hands of the exploitation: "There will always be people who break the law," says CEO Lee Scott. "It is an issue of human greed among a few people."

Those "few people" include him, other top managers, and the Walton billionaires. Each of them not only knows about their company’s exploitation, but willingly prospers from a corporate culture that demands it. "Get costs down" is Wal-Mart’s mantra and modus operandi, and that translates into a crusade to stamp down the folks who produce its goods and services, shamelessly building its low-price strategy and profits on their backs.

The Wal-Mart gospel

Worse, Wal-Mart is on a messianic mission to extend its exploitative ethos to the entire business world. More than 65,000 companies supply the retailer with the stuff on its shelves, and it constantly hammers each supplier about cutting their production costs deeper and deeper in order to get cheaper wholesale prices. Some companies have to open their books so Bentonville executives can red-pencil what CEO Scott terms "unnecessary costs."

Of course, among the unnecessaries to him are the use of union labor and producing goods in America, and Scott is unabashed about pointing in the direction of China or other places for abysmally low production costs. He doesn’t even have to say "Move to China"—his purchasing executives demand such an impossible lowball price from suppliers that they can only meet it if they follow Wal-Mart’s labor example. With its dominance over its own 1.2 million workers and 65,000 suppliers, plus its alliances with ruthless labor abusers abroad, this one company is the world’s most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class aspirations of workers everywhere.

Using its sheer size, market clout, access to capital, and massive advertising budget, the company also is squeezing out competitors and forcing its remaining rivals to adopt its price-is-everything approach.

Even the big boys like Toys R Us and Kroger are daunted by the company’s brutish power, saying they’re compelled to slash wages and search the globe for sweatshop suppliers in order to compete in the downward race to match Wal-Mart’s prices.

How high a price are we willing to pay for Wal-Mart’s "low-price" model? This outfit operates with an avarice, arrogance, and ambition that would make Enron blush. It hits a town or city neighborhood like a retailing neutron bomb, sucking out the economic vitality and all of the local character. And Wal-Mart’s stores now have more kill-power than ever, with its Supercenters averaging 200,000 square feet—the size of more than four football fields under one roof! These things land splat on top of any community’s sense of itself and devour local business.

By slashing its retail prices way below cost when it enters a community, Wal-Mart can crush our groceries, pharmacies, hardware stores, and other retailers, then raise its prices once it has monopoly control over the market.

But, say apologists for these Big-Box megastores, at least they’re creating jobs. Wrong. By crushing local businesses, this giant eliminates three decent jobs for every two Wal-Mart jobs that it creates—and a store full of part-time, poorly paid employees hardly builds the family wealth necessary to sustain a community’s middle-class living standard.

Indeed, Wal-Mart operates as a massive wealth extractor. Instead of profits staying in town to be reinvested locally, the money is hauled off to Bentonville, either to be used as capital for conquering yet another town or simply to be stashed in the family vaults (the Waltons, by the way, just bought the biggest bank in Arkansas).

It’s our world

Why should we accept this? Is it our country, our communities, our economic destinies—or theirs? Wal-Mart’s radical remaking of our labor standards and our local economies is occurring mostly without our knowledge or consent. Poof—there goes another local business. Poof—there goes our middle-class wages. Poof—there goes another factory to China. No one voted for this . . . but there it is. While corporate ideologues might huffily assert that customers vote with their dollars, it’s an election without a campaign, conveniently ignoring that the public’s "vote" might change if we knew the real cost of Wal-Mart’s "cheap" goods—and if we actually had a chance to vote.

Much to the corporation’s consternation, more and more communities are learning about this voracious powerhouse, and there’s a rising civic rebellion against it. Tremendous victories have already been won as citizens from Maine to Arizona, from the Puget Sound to the Gulf of Mexico, have organized locally and even statewide to thwart the expansionist march of the Wal-Mart juggernaut.

Wal-Mart is huge, but it can be brought to heel by an aroused and organized citizenry willing to confront it in their communities, the workplace, the marketplace, the classrooms, the pulpits, the legislatures, and the voting booths. Just as the Founders rose up against the mighty British trading companies, so we can reassert our people’s sovereignty and our democratic principles over the autocratic ambitions of mighty Wal-Mart.

posted September 08, 2004 11:38 AM         

LS, can't say I've read much about the Toltecs.. Facinating stuff I'm sure...

talaith, thanks for the article.

Okay my turn to rant..

The thing is..it's not enough to just argue against Walmart. They just happen to be the most successful of the multinational corporations. The problem is inherent in the structure of the corporation. They are designed to be everywhere (in terms of exploitation of resources) and nowhere (in terms of accountability) at the same time. Walmart is the perfect example of why this must change. Unless we want the nightmarish scenario wherein EVERYONE works for some multinational corporation who views it's workers as nothing more than numbers on a balance sheet to become reality, we must reform our laws governing corporations.
Here's a frightening quote from the president of the Nabisco Corporation as quoted by Holly Sklar in Trilateralism-

"One world of homogenous consumption...[I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latins and Scandinavians will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as thy already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate."

Sklar goes on: "Corporations not only advertise products, they promote lifestyles rooted in consumption, patterned largely after the United States. ...[They] look forward to a postnational age in which [Western] social, economic, and political values are transformed into universal values...a world economy in which all national economies beat to the rythym of transnational corporate capitalism...The Western way is the good way, national culture is inferior."

A corporation is a machine. It is inherently amoral. It operates by very certain rules-

1. The Profit Imperative- profit takes precedence over EVERYTHING- community, ecosystems, worker safety..

2. The Growth Imperative- the corporation Must grow. No matter what gets destroyed in the process.

3. Competition and Aggression- this allows no room for real human emotions of compassion, or loyalty to places or people.

4. Amorality- No responsibility or interest in community goals except the ones that serve their purposes of profit and growth.

5. Hierarchy- Corps are required by law to be structured into classes of superiors and subordinates. The effect is that this is seen by society as 'natural'. Most people don't even realize the existence of effective non-hierarchal modes of organization that have been around for millenia.

6. Quantification, Linearity, adn Segmentation- Corporations must translate subjective information into objective form- i.e numbers; thereby excluding from the decision making process any values that do not translate- i.e. spiritual value of a forest. Things that pose dangers to public health are translated into value-free objective concepts like "cost-benefit ratio" or "trade-off". So the operative corporate standard isn't "as safe as humanely possible" but rather, "as safe as possible commensurate with maintaining acceptable profit."

7. Dehumanization- Employees are viewed as numbers, cogs in the wheel, replaceable by others or machines.

8. Exploitation- Profit is based on paying less than actual value for workers and resources. That's one thing Marx was right about.

9. Ephemerality- Corporations are legal creations that only exist on paper. They are not tied to any one community and at the first sign of trouble they can move to a different community to exploit. The traditional ideal of community engagement is antithetical to corporate behavior.

10. Opposition to Nature- Manufacturing of all things depends on the intervention and reorganization of nature. This is true in all manufacturing communities but in capitalist ones it is accelerated because of the growth imperative. A corporation ravages one ecosystem until it is exhausted and then moves on to the next one. All the while touting the satisfaction people are to find in hyper-consumption of products. Self-sufficient modes of fulfillment- contentment in nature, lack of desire to aquire wealth- are subversive to corporate goals.

11. Homogenization- The rhetoric Americans push is that commodity society delivers greater choice and diversity than other societies. In actuality that 'choice' is simply a choice between many brands that market nearly identical products. The truth is that corporations share an identical vision- that all people will live their lives in a similar fashion, achieving pleasures from the things we buy. Corporations seek to accelerate society's acceptance of vision. Indigenous societies that have a non-material relationship to life and the planet and live communal lifestyles are seen as "inferior and unenlightened" and we are told they envy the choices we have. As these societies represent a threat to homogenization of markets worldwide, corporate society works hard to retrain such people in attitudes and values more appropriate to corporate goals.

So until we decide to restucture how corporations are allowed to exist, fighting Walmart on these little battles are unlikely to amount to much of any real change.

posted September 08, 2004 12:23 PM         

Hey, Harpyr, looks like I didn't take anything out of your mouth! You said it all... there is a need to restructure many of the methods of the modern world, and all for those very reasons.

The thing I hate most about these problems is that they are so LARGE and so ENTRENCHED in our world already. They will be difficult to dislodge, even with a mass of people behind the movement. What is one person to do??

Keep up the faith, and fight the good fight, I suppose...

posted September 08, 2004 01:55 PM         

However, I find it helpful to first realize that they may not be as entrenched as they appear on the surface. I try and give myself little pep talks every now and then.
This consumer mindset, while it may seem pevasive to those of us living smack dab in the center of the whirlwind that is the U.S., is still a relative newcomer on the global scene in some senses. It is a relatively recent concept- this hyper-capitalistic, free market globalized corporatism.. It was only around the turn of the last century that the laws were changed in the U.S. to allow this to happen. Our country was founded by men who feared this very thing.

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
-- Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.

And there's Lincoln who was witnessing the beginnings of it all...

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war."
-- Abraham Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov 21, 1864. Reference: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

Roosevelt saw it coming too...

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."
--President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (One Thousand Americans, George Seldes, page 5.)

There is no doubt that our governmental processes have been hijacked by corporate interests. I think that people along a wide spectrum of political beliefs could possibly agree on that and it's just a matter of awakening a public debate about this. Our country was not founded on the pricipals that these corporations operate by and I believe that there must be some way to remind the public of that and spur them to reclaim for the country the means to control the direction we take as a society.

To look outside the bubble that is the U.S. is to find hope as well. If you know where to look. There is an ever growing movement among the global south to resist corporate takeover of their lives. I believe that the greatest hope we as Americans have is that this resistance will be successful. The brutal repression that these movements are subjected to is evidence that the corporate stranglehold is tenuous at best. Look at the U.S. backed coup to oust Hugo Chavez in Venuzuela... Go to any anti-globalization protest... The fear that these corporations have is palpable. I'm not talking about fear of a few windows being smashed either. The corporate masters are so afraid that the people of America are going to emerge from their stupor and realize what has been going on behind those closed doors that they have to do everything possible to silence the global justice movement. Even though I found the experience of protesting the FTAA in Miami to be quite terrifying due to the little military state that the robo-cops created there, I also found it inspired me to believe that we can make a difference. The media blackout of anything positive about the protesters to the point of ridiculousness to anyone who was there to see for themeselves what happened served to confirm my belief that they are afraid of us. Because we absolutely can effect social change of the magnitude required to reign in the mulitnationals.
Because the fact is, there are more of us then them. They may have more resources at their disposal in terms of money but we have many more people.

It won't be easy by any stretch but I am optimistic that we can change the direction of this train which we as a planet are on collectively.. a train that is hurling towards oblivion as we speak thanks to a very small fraction of the population who have hijacked control from everyone else.

posted September 10, 2004 06:07 AM         

quote:

---

Workers typically live in squatter shacks, seven feet by seven feet, or jammed in company dorms, with more than a dozen sharing a cubicle costing $1.95 a week for rent. They pay about $5.50 a week for lousy food. They also must pay for their own medical treatment and are fired if they are too ill to work.

The work is literally sickening, since there’s no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint-dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there’s no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day.
As for Wal-Mart’s highly vaunted "code of conduct," NLC could not find a single worker who had ever seen or heard of it.

---

Harpyr: "None of their activities bother you, Randall?"

Randall.

How on earth can you not answer a resounding YES to that question?? How do you weigh real human suffering against the financial interests of a corporation and not come off on the side against human suffering?

Who ARE you??

The elusive, enigmatic Randall. Bet your birth data's never been posted, eh?

I'm starting to wonder if maybe you and jwhop aren't government agents, running this site just to keep an eye on all us "radical astrology people"...

posted September 10, 2004 12:46 PM         

Wal-Mart Dungeon in China

Qin Shi Handbag Factory
Sanxiang Town
Zhongshan City
Guangdong Province, China

Wal-Mart discloses factory location to government in China
Working for Wal-Mart in China... for Nothing

Earning 36 cents a month, 8 cents a week
Wal Mart bags made under slave like conditions
Workers held in Indentured Servitude
- Making Kathie Lee handbags at the Qin Shi Factory –
14-hour shifts, 7 days a week, 30 days a month.
Average take-home pay of 3 cents an hour, $3.10 for a 98-hour workweek.
One worker earned 36 cents for an entire month’s work.
46 percent of the workers earned nothing at all and were actually in debt to the company.
Housed 16 to a room and fed two dismal meals a day.
Physical and verbal abuse.
Held as indentured servants, identification documents confiscated, allowed to leave the factory just 1½ hours a day.
800 workers fired for fighting for their basic rights.
Wal-Mart audits a total farce.
There are 1000 workers at the factory; 90% of them young men 16 to 23 years of age; almost all migrants are from rural areas.

Wal-Mart started producing Kathie Lee handbags at the Qin Shi factory in September, 1999. The workers passed us a Qin Shi/Wal-Mart invoice form dated September 2, 1999 which calls for the production of 5,400 Kathie Lee handbags (style #62657 70575) to be delivered no later than October 20, 1999.

Before that Qin Shi produced handbags for Payless carrying the Predictions label. (In 1999, Payless was the eighth largest importer by weight of goods entering the United States. Wal-Mart was, of course, the first. In the latest six-month period available—October 1999 to March 2000-a search of U.S. Customs Department shipping records made available in the PIERS database, show that 53 percent of Wal-Mart’s total imports worldwide come from China.)

Qin Shi Factory/Wal-Mart:
Indentured Servants held under prison-like conditions
The daily work shift at the Qin Shi Factory is 12 to 14 hours, seven days a week, 30 days a month. At the end of the day the workers return “home” to a cramped dorm room sharing metal bunk beds with 16 other people. At most, workers are allowed outside of the factory for just one and one half hours a day. Otherwise they are locked in.

Working up to 98 hours a week, it is not easy to find the time to go out. But the workers have another fear as well. Before entering the Qin Shi factory, management confiscates the identification documents of each worker. When someone goes outside, the company also takes away their factory I.D. tag, leaving them with no identification at all. If you are stopped by the local security police you could be detained and deported back to your rural province as an illegal migrant.

When you need to use the bathroom the company again confiscates your factory I.D. and monitors the time you spend. If you are away from your workstation for more than eight minutes you will receive a severe fine.

All new employees are illegally charged a deposit of 80 rmb ($9.64 U.S.) for a three year work contract, along with another 32 rmb ($3.86) for the first 10 days living expenses, which includes two dismal meals a day.

Further deductions from the workers’ wages are made for the temporary residency and work permits the workers need, which the factory management intentionally delays applying for for several months. This also leaves the workers trapped and afraid to leave the factory grounds, since without these legal permits they can be deported at any minute.

Qin Shi management also illegally withholds the workers first month’s wages, so it is only at the end of the second month that the workers receive, or may receive, their first pay. Because of all of the deductions and fines, many workers earn nothing at all after two months work, and instead, are actually in debt to the company.

Fines for violating any of the strict company rules are severe, a practice made even worse by the fact that armed company security guards can keep 30 percent of any fines they levy against the workers.

The workers making Wal-Mart Kathie Lee handbags report being subjected to body searches, as well as physical and verbal abuse by security guards and quality control supervisors.

The workers are charged 560 rmb ($67.47 U.S.) for dorm and living expenses, which is an enormous amount given that the highest take home wage our researchers found in the factory was just 10 cents an hour. There were others who earned just 36 cents for more than a month’s work, earning just 8/100th of a cent an hour. Many workers earned nothing at all and owed money to the company.

Seventy percent of the workers said they lacked money for even the most basic expenses, and were forced, for example, to go without even bread and tea for breakfast.

Lacking money and with constraints on their freedom of movement the Qin Shi workers making Kathie Lee handbags were being held in conditions resembling indentured servitude.

In a vicious trap, they did not even have enough money to travel to look for other work.

The Qin Shi factory has such a notorious reputation for cruelty and exploitation that the workers admit they are ashamed to tell anyone where they actually work – to endure such conditions must mean that you are very, very poor and down on your luck.

Wal-Mart carried out an inspection/audit at Qin Shi in early November 1999 and the factory passed with flying colors. The audit was obviously a farce – as will become clear later – and one can only conclude that Wal-Mart simply does not know and does not care what its contractors are doing.

Eventually the workers at Qin Shi could stand no more abuse, and fought back. Eight hundred workers were fired in December, but they did at least win some of their back wages.

Hours: 12 to 14 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week, 30 Days a Month
The “regular” daily work shift is:

>7:00 a.m. to 12 noon

>(noon to 1:30 p.m. lunch break)

>1:30 to 5:30 p.m.

>(5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. supper break)

>6:30 to 9:30, 10:30 or 11:30 p.m.
The workers are at the Qin Shi factory up to 115½ hours per week, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., or 16 1/2 hours a day, seven days a week. This was the schedule in September, which is their busy season, when they were making the Wal-Mart handbags.

But they were paid for only 14 hours a day, and 98 hours a week.

Working seven days a week and 30 days a month, essentially the workers would receive one day off every other month.

All overtime work is mandatory. The 98-hour workweek at Qin Shi exceeds the legal limit on total overtime by 200 percent. (China’s labor law states that overtime cannot exceed 36 hours a month, or 9 hours a week over the regular 40-hour, 5-day workweek).

Despite these excessively long hours, the workers receive no overtime premium, earning always the same standard piece rate.

Wages: Average wage - 3 cents an hour! Highest wage 10 cents an hour, 46% of the workers earn nothing at all and in fact owe the company money.
All the workers at Qin Shi are paid according to a piece rate system, which varies given the type of operation required. Piece rates per unit completed ranged from 1/10th of a cent to 4/10ths of a cent, with the average being just a little over 2/10ths of a cent. So, for example, if a worker sewed 100 pieces for the Kathie Lee handbags, he or she would earn 24 cents.

In September and October, when the factory was producing Wal-Mart, the range of the workers wages varied wildly, but no one came even remotely close to making the already below-subsistence legal minimum wage of about 31 cents an hour, on which no one can possibly survive.

The highest take-home wage we found in the factory was just 10 cents an hour, or $1.20 a day -- $44.22 for 37 days of work.

The average wage in a sample of 24 workers amounted to only 3 cents an hour. However, of that sample 46 percent of the workers earned nothing at all after more than a month’s work, and in fact owed the company money due to all the deductions for company dorm and food expenses, fines and other illegal withholdings.

One worker earned 36 cents for the entire month of August, which would amount to 8 cents a week, or 8/100ths of a cent an hour.

The Kathie Lee handbag the workers make at the Qin Shi Factory retails at Wal-Mart for $8.76, which by American standards is quite cheap. However from the perspective of the average worker in the factory, earning just 3 cents an hour, the Kathie Lee handbag is very expensive indeed. At 3 cents an hour, he would have to work 299 hours to purchase such a handbag for his girlfriend.

Average Wage at Qin Shi

3 cents an hour

44 cents a day (for a 14-hour workday)

$3.10 a week (for a 7-day, 98 hour work week)

$13.43 a month

$161.16 a year
Highest Wage at Qin Shi

10 cents an hour

$1.40 a day (for a 14-hour workday)

$9.80 a week (for a 7-day, 98-hour work week)

$42.47 month

$509.60 a year
Legal Minimum Wage in Zhongshan City
(Which is already below subsistence levels)

31 cents an hour

$1.79 a day (for an 8-hour workday)

$12.51 a week (for a 5 day, 40 hour work week)

$54.22 a month

$650.60 a year
Because of the pitiful and illegally low wages at the Qin Shi factory the workers were forced to go without even the most basic necessities. Seventy percent of the workers reported lacking the money for even a tiny breakfast. Kept in the position of indentured servants, the workers had no money or savings even to leave the factory to look for other work.

The Wal-Mart Audit: A True Farce
After having begun production at the Qin Shi factory in September, Wal-Mart sent an inspection team to visit the factory in early November to conduct an audit.

The visit was announced in advance and Qin Shi management was well prepared. Before Wal-Mart arrived, management split the factory in two. Those still working on the first and second floors of the building remained Qin Shi employees, while those working on the third and fourth floors would now be working for a separate front company called the Yecheng Leather Parts Factory. This factory was illegal and unregistered, and in fact the 800 workers there still continued to do the same work producing the Kathie Lee handbags. The Yecheng Leather Parts Factory was simply a front company set up to fool or appease Wal-Mart. On the third and fourth floors conditions remained wretched with excessively long overtime hours till 11 p.m. and criminally low wages, since the workers had to strain to also finish uncompleted production quotas from the first two floors, which were now turned into a “model” factory of sorts.

Meanwhile, in November, the 200 workers left on the first and second floors started to receive 350 rmb ($12.17 U.S.) a month in back wages, to make up for the below-minimum wages they had been earning since September when the Wal-Mart work began. Also, from November onward these workers were to be paid the legal minimum wage $12.51 a week, even if the company continued to cheat and fudge on the amount of overtime actually worked.

The first and second floors were cleaned, and fancy high quality toilet paper was installed in the bathrooms. Wal-Mart’s Code of Conduct went up on the wall. Even Wal-Mart’s human rights hotline numbers were posted: 1-800-WM-ETHIC for the U.S. and 1-800-963-8442 for outside the U.S.

Any serious auditor would realize rather quickly that those 200 workers alone could not be producing the amount of goods Wal-Mart ordered, and might even have walked up the flight of stairs to see the other 800 workers doing the vast majority of the work.

But Wal-Mart’s audits are a farce, and one can only conclude that Wal-Mart does not care, and really does not know what its contractors are doing. Wal-Mart then covers this farce by threatening to pull out of any factory violating Wal-Mart’s Code of Conduct --that is, in the unlikely event that they are actually exposed by a handful of tiny NGOs searching for the estimated 1,000 hidden contractors Wal-Mart uses in China alone. Of course, Wal-Mart refuses to publicly disclose to the American people even the names and locations of the factories they use in China. They claim this information is a trade secret.

The Workers Fight Back and 800 are Fired.
But They Did Win a Significant Victory.
On November 28, Qin Shi management posted an announcement stating that the 800 workers on the third and forth floors would, as of December 10, have to start purchasing food coupons in order to eat in the factory canteen. But the workers were already penniless and miserably underpaid, and lacked even the money to purchase the food coupons. It was another way of saying that many of the workers would now have to starve.

That was the last straw. A group of workers went on the offensive publicly denouncing the exploitive conditions at the Qin Shi factory including:

The use of child labor
Body searches
Confiscating worker identification documents
Fines
Below-minimum, starvation wages
Excessively long overtime hours, working until 11:00 p.m., seven days a week
Physical and verbal abuse
Recruitment fees and other illegal deductions
The total repression of all human and worker rights, even the right to complain or raise a grievance, which were immediately met with firings
In mid-December, Qin Shi management shut down the third and fourth floors, firing all 800 workers.

But the workers refused to leave until they received their back wages and the deposits which they were owed – and they won!

This might not seem like much of a victory, unless one understands the climate of total suppression of all worker rights in China.

A Worker Tries to Call Wal-Mart’s Hotline
A worker at the Qin Shi factory tried to call Wal-Mart’s human rights complaint phone number: AT&T Direct 1-800-963-8442 (outside the U.S.). The worker could not get through.

Later a letter was sent to Wal-Mart headquarters on Bentonville, Arkansas. It is not known if that got through. At any rate, there has been no response from Wal-Mart.

As of our last contact with the workers in mid-January 2000, Wal-Mart production continued at the Qin Shi factory.

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Wal-Mart Discloses Factory Locations
To Government in China
Why does Wal-Mart refuse to provide this same
information to the American People?
The National Labor Committee recently purchased a Disney garment in a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Shenzhen in the south of China. A hangtag on the garment identified the specific name and location of the factory in China where the Disney child’s sweatshirt was made.

The question is: If Wal-Mart and Disney will provide the authoritarian government in China with the names and addresses of the factories in China where they are making their goods, then why do they continue to refuse to release this very same information to the American people?

In China, under the Law of Consumers Rights (Chapters 2 and 3), consumers have the right to know the origin of the products they purchase, including supplier information. Of course, like all laws in China, implementation can be weak and spotty. Still, the principle exists and in some cases Wal-Mart and Disney respect the law and make available their suppliers’ names and locations.

Why is it that Wal-Mart can trust the Chinese government, but it will not trust the American people?

From the hangtag on the Disney garment we learn that it was sewn at the Midway Daily Products Factory, located in Dongguan City, Guanghou, Guangdong Province, China.

Not that Wal-Mart or Disney would have much to brag about regarding conditions at the Midway factory. During the busy season, workers will be at the factory up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, from seven a.m. to 10 p.m. earning just 33 cents an hour. Ten workers share a single dorm room. Any attempt to form an independent union will be crushed. If a worker is absent for three days, he or she is fired. Arriving at work 15 minutes late is punished with a fine amounting to more than a full day’s wages.

During the slow season, when workers are in a 50-hour weekly schedule, they earn $16,68. Overtime is rewarded with an extra 10-cent-an-hour premium.

See: “Mulan’s Sisters/Working for Disney is No Fairy Tale”
by Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee and CAFOD
Hong Kong, April 1999

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Working for Wal-Mart in China…For Nothing

10 cents an hour is the highest wages

Nearly half the workers surveyed (46%) actually owed the company money after a month’s work!
The pay records below were drawn from a sample of 24 workers from the Qin Shi Handbag Factory in Zhongshan, China, where they sew Kathie Lee handbags for Wal-Mart. The workers are paid according to a piece rate. They work 12 to 14 hours a day. The paycheck they received on October 31, 1999 covered the 31-day period from August 20 to September 27. The names of the workers are being withheld to protect their security. Since Qin Shi factory management fines the workers $2.49 for failure to return their pay records, the workers had to take advantage of their one-hour supper break to sneak out and xerox their pay stubs.

Note: The monthly payday is on an irregular schedule, varying according to production volume and delivery date. Deductions are withheld from the workers’ wages for living/dorm expenses, food, job placement fee, temporary residency permit and various fines (e.g.-for not returning ones pay record). The exchange rate is 8.3 rmb to $1.00 U.S.

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Working for Wal-Mart in China:
Earning 36 cents a month, 8 cents a week
or, 1/10th of a cent per hour
Another example of wages at the Qin Shi Factory, where they sew Kathie Lee handbags for Wal-Mart, is outlined below. At Qin Shi, the regular shift is 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with one day off per month.

1.) Mr. X, Shandong Province: Started working in the trimming section of the factory in March 1999, earning just 65 cents an hour (5.4 rmb) in August and around $6.02 (50 rmb) in September. This would put Mr. X’s average wage for these two months at 77 cents a week—8/10ths of a cent per hour.

2.) Mr. Y, Guangxi Province: Started working in the factory on April 30, 1999 and by October 29, after working 5 months and 29 days—had earned a total of $19.52 (162 rmb). This amounts to 75 cents for a full 91-hour workweek, or 8/10ths of one cent per hour.

3.) Mr. A, Guangxi Province: Started working in the factory May 4, 1999, and after nearly six months of work, on October 30, was paid a total of $42.17 (350 rmb). This would come to $1.62 a week—2 cents an hour.

4.) Mr. B, Guizhou Province: Was able to earn just $39.76 (330 rmb) in five months of work, and received his first pay only after completing three months of work. His pay averaged $1.84 a week—2 cents an hour.

5.) Mr. C, Henan Province: Started working on July 22, 1999, receiving his August wages on September 30, earning $30.24 (251 rmb). This was the highest wage in the group, coming to $6.98 a week—8 cents an hour. However, the following month, he received only partial payment.

6.) Mr. D, Henan Province: Started working on June 18, 1999 and received just 36 cents for the full month of August. This amounts to earnings of 8 cents a week, or 1/10th of a cent (.09 cents) an hour. The following month, Mr. D did much better, earning $14.46 (120 rmb) for September. His 4-cent-an-hour wages, $3.34 for the week—ranked him among the top 30 percent of wage earners in his production team of 80 people.

7.) Mr. E, Henan Province: Started working on June 7, 1999, but by the end of October had earned nothing at all, and in fact owed the factory $12.05 (100 rmb). After 19 weeks of work, Mr. E had actually lost money.

8.) Mr. F, Henan Province: Started working on June 14, 1999 and received $24.14 (200.4 rmb) for July, ranking him 10th in earnings among his 100-member production section. For August, Mr. F received $12.05 (100 rmb) which still ranked him in the top 14 percent of his team. For the two months, Mr. F’s average weekly wage was $4.18—5 cents an hour.

Pay for the top 14% of Wage Earners at Qin Shi

5 cents an hour

60 cents a day (for a 13-hour shift)

$4.18 per week (for a 91-hour, 7-day workweek)

$18,10 per month $217.16 per year

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Wal-Mart Bags Made Under Slave-like
Conditions in China
A Wal-Mart Production order was carried out of the Qin Shi Handbag Factory by the workers. The production order was signed on September 2, 1999 by Yu Lin Chen and Su Chun Wong.

The Qin Shi Handbag Factory was to produce 5,400 Kathie Lee handbags, style #62557 70575 with a delivery date of October 20, 1999. The invoice notes that Wal-Mart will accept no late deliveries.

Kathie Lee Handbags

#62657 70575

Made in China

All Man Made Materials

Dept. 31

KL 6021E

$8.96

Label notes: “A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this product will be donated to various children’s charities.”

The National Labor Committee Website

posted September 12, 2004 12:02 PM         

What we're forgetting is that we're talking about a different culture here. We may see these workers as being poorly paid, but how do they see it? They have a job. They get paid. In their economy it may be a good amount. We cannot place our Western economic values on a society so different from ours.

Let me put it this way. According to the government I live well below the poverty level. I don't see myself that way. I earn a living that allows me to pay my bills and have a little left for "frivolous" things. I don't spend my days and nights worrying about my economic situation, and I am HAPPY. Most people wouldn't do the job I do at the wage I make, but I do. It's not beneath me. It's not less than I'm worth. It's a job. I am not my job. My economic status does not define me. Many people would look at my situation and say that I am being treated poorly and I need more, that I should be given more money and benefits that would raise my economic status. If I wanted those things I would get off my rear and work for it, but I'm happy as is. I constantly have to tell people to stop pushing their values off on me.

The same is true for workers in other countries. Are they complaining? Are they going to find better paying jobs? Or are they thankful for the chance to earn a salary that allows them to live?

Blessings to all