NYT: Illegally in the U.S., and Never a Day Off at Wal-Mart

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/national/05WALM.html?...

They came from Russia, Poland and Lithuania, and their tales of washing and waxing Wal-Mart's floors for seven nights a week sound much like Pavel's.

Last February, Pavel responded to an intriguing Web site that boasted of cleaning jobs in the United States paying four times what he was earning as a restaurant manager in the Czech Republic. He flew from Prague to New York on a tourist visa and took a bus to Lynchburg, Va., where a subcontractor delivered him to a giant Wal-Mart.

Pavel immediately began on the midnight shift and said he soon learned that he would never receive a night off. He said he worked every night for the next eight months. In this way, Pavel, who refused to give his last name, became one pawn among hundreds employed by subcontractors that clean Wal-Mart stores across the nation, paying many workers off the books.

Pavel's unhappy stay in the United States ended with a shock when federal agents raided 60 Wal-Marts on Oct. 23 and arrested him and 250 other janitors as being illegal immigrants. Yesterday, the company acknowledged that it had received a target letter from federal prosecutors accusing it of violating immigration laws and saying that Wal-Mart faced a grand jury investigation.

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Wal-Mart: The new slaveholders...

I wonder if they'd shoot you if you ran away...

[Voltaire99]

2. And lethal to democracy

Agreed completely.

Already Bush's speeches are piped over the PA systems. And as the SF Chronicle reported the other day, Wal-Mart's hiring tele-flaks at $10/hr to campaign against local ordinances in order to keep Wal-Mart wages frozen at $8/hr. How is that for an FU to its virtual prison labor?

Orwell warned us to imagine the future as a place where a boot stamps a face, forever. Orwell hadn't seen Wal-Mart.

[teryang]

3. Virtual slave labor in Asia supplies Walmart

...with much of their goods. Many of these workers get 18 cents an hour. While Walmart has american flags everywhere over 90 percent of what they sell is imported, usually from countries with no unions or protection for labor of any kind. No unions in Walmart either.

[brainshrub]

4. God, I hate this company soooo much!

They are sheer evil.

[progressiverealist]

5. my staunchly repug in-laws refuse to shop anywhere else

and, they tell my wife and I that not buying at Wal-Mart, we are subverting, more or less, the american free enterprise system, since Wal-Mart does have the lowest prices.

[LizW]

6. Yes, I hear that too

My mother claims that WalMart keeps the prices at other stores down. Plus, people around here say, "But those workers wouldn't have any jobs at all if it wasn't for WalMart." The ignore all the employers that WalMart has put out of business.

[Habibi]

7. Geez, that's stupid.

Isn't it quintessentially American to be able to *choose* where one shops?

I know how you feel--my best friend refuses to stop shopping there. For so many people, "the lowest price" is their bottom line.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. Hand copies of this article to your friends and family who still. .. .

. . .. shop at that pit of despair.

As I've mentioned in a couple of other threads on this subject, people can be turned toward the light. My husband has gently but persistently plied one of his co-workers, a notorious defender of Wal-Mart, with news and views on the evils thereof. It took about a year, but this guy and his wife now no longer shop there.

Hubby will be taking a copy of this article with him tonight, just as reinforcement. Can't have any backsliding!


Tansy Gold, ex-Wal-Mart associate who knows the evil from the inside

[Habibi]

10. Actually, I emailed them

your post from last week about working at Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, my best friend told me she would never stop shopping there, I would just have to get over it.

On the bright side, another friend responded and we are having a very civilized discussion about it.

[mumon]

9. If't that's "subverting" "free enteriprise"

then it's time we ditched the "free" enterprise system (or should we say "enslaving" enterprise system) altogether.

We certainly have to ditch the Walmart method.

They should be FORCED to use the following slogan in all their advertisements:

"Cheap junk made by slave labor sold to you by underpaid, overworked, workers."

You know those workers in their ads in the Sunday paper?

The first time I saw that I did a double-take- "These are the fatest, ugliest, models wearing the shoddiest clothing I ever saw..." Then I realized that they were employees and that what they were really saying is working at Wal Mart makes you look like this!

The idea of "models" for Walmart clothes etc. makes me shiver.

They sell diamond engagement rings at Wal Mart for $50.

That sums it up for me.