Behind the Scenes of Wal-Mart's Success

Some workers in South China receive only 33 cents an hour with no benefits

Our topic Wal-Mart Finally Gets It paints a fairly rosy picture of Wal-Mart's recent success in international trade from a business perspective. But there is a darker side to this coin.

Wal-Mart is shifting its manufacturing to foreign countries particularly in Asia. The reason for this can be summed up in two words: cheap labour.

One Wal-Mart factory in Southern China produces toys including battery-operated trucks for a paltry hourly wage of 33 cents. Factory workers are crowded into hot dormitories and work for up to 13 hours a day seven days a week. During the August peak production period, factory temperatures swelter above 90 degrees with 93 percent humidity. The pace is exhausting, since a worker has to paint one truck ever 14 seconds. And should an employee become ill from inhaling the paint fumes, it is the worker who is responsible for paying any medical bills.

In fact workers are denied health insurance, maternity leave, paid holiday leave, marital leave or leave to bury family members.

And factory inspections of Chinese sweatshops are not working. Factory workers are told exactly what to say to inspectors. Leading labour researchers in China are demanding open investigations by independent authorities like China Labor Watch. Also required is more thorough worker training so that laborers know their rights and can speak their minds.

It's gotten to a point where WalMart hides the location of its factories in China from the public. But out-of-sight is not-out-of-mind. For a more detailed discussion of Wal-Mart pros and cons, visit wakeupwalmart.com.

This just in from Beijing. On Saturday July 29, 2006, employees of Wal-Mart set up their first trade union in China. Twenty-five employees of a Wal-Mart store in Quanzhou in the southeastern province of Fujian, established the union. The union is a branch of the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions.