MONITORING WAL-MART’S MONITORING PROGRAM
Wal-Mart has been running splashy ads asserting that, far from being a global sweatshop profiteer, it’s a model employer that constantly monitors its worldwide network of factories to assure humane treatment of workers. Before swallowing that, you might want to hear from one of Wal-Mart’s own factory monitors.Jim Bill Lynn was recruited by the retailer, and he readily bought into what’s called “the Wal-Mart culture,” which, on paper, stresses honesty and openness. A hard and loyal worker, Lynn soon was assigned to monitor the labor conditions in all of the factories of Wal-Mart’s direct suppliers in Latin America.
Jim Bill was shocked at what he found in factory after factory: padlocked fire exits, heat so extreme that workers passed out, unsafe drinking water, mandatory overtime, shorting workers on wages, and many more blatant abuses. More shocking to him, when he alerted Wal-Mart higher-ups … nothing happened.
Finally, his chance to get action from the top came when Mike Duke, now Wal-Mart’s number two honcho, visited the Latin American office. Lynn was called in and asked directly by Duke what grade he’d give the company for its labor conditions there. “A C-minus or D-plus,” Lynn bluntly told the roomful of startled executives. But, he added, all the violations could be corrected quickly with the support of headquarters.
Jim Bill did get quick action this time: He was fired shortly after Duke left. Wal-Mart claims the firing was because he was having an affair with a female colleague. Lynn flatly denies this, and so does the woman – even though Wal-Mart managers took her into an interrogation room and grilled her, banging their fists on the table and demanding that she say what they wanted to hear.
Trying to reverse his unjust firing, Jim Bill finally got a brief meeting with Duke, who told him: “You didn’t stick with our culture.”
For more info and action tips, contact the National Labor Committee: 212/242-3002.
THE REALITY OF IDEOLOGICAL THEORY
The problem with America’s economic policy today is that it’s written by economists. And the problem with too many economists is that they live in a world of theory … or, worse yet, a world of ideological delusion.
For example, George W’s plan to privatize Social Security is written by a bunch of laissez-faire economic ideologues who theorize that Americans really don’t want a guaranteed security program, but would prefer a chance to “own” their retirement. How? By investing their monthly Social Security payments in the stock market. Let the people manage their own retirement accounts, cry these free-market theorists, and they’ll make wise decisions that’ll put the gold in their golden years!
But in real life, most people (including – big surprise – top economists) have neither the time nor inclination to be savvy investors. Even with the private retirement funds that people already “own,” they fail to do the homework it would take to maximize their investments, mostly tucking their money in low-return safe havens, like money market accounts.
Even the brainiest economists do poorly. The Los Angeles Times surveyed the 11 economists who are the most recent winners of the Nobel Prize and found that nearly half of them are poor managers of their savings, failing to get even the most elementary investment decisions right. One Nobel economist confessed that he even messed up the investment of the money he got for winning the prize. Another conceded that his retirement nest egg is drawing only about 2% a year in the market – way below the 6% return you’d have to get just to break even under Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme.
Being good at making investments takes lots of time and a money-focused mind-set. Most of us have real lives and work to do, and no interest in shuffling through a jungle of investment accounts – and we damned sure don’t want our basic retirement security based on doing it – no matter what the economic and political ideologues theorize.
This article appears in August 5 • 2005.