Wal-Mart Workers Detail Expoitation

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Wal-Mart’s penchant for violating worker rights and paying low wages across the United States doesn’t stop at the border. While "associates" working in U.S. Wal-Mart stores scrape by on minimum wage and less than 40 hours a week, "apprentices" in Wal-Mart factories in the Philippines get just $3 a day. More than 100 people packed the basement lounge of the Kay Spiritual Center at American University last Tuesday night to hear first-hand from workers who produce clothing for Wal-Mart. Flory Arevalo from the Philippines and Damaris Meza Guillen from Nicaragua shared stories of low-wages, mandatory overtime, bad working conditions, and union-busting at the garment factories that supply Wal-Mart. They have been traveling the country as part of the International Labor Rights Fund's national Wal-Mart Workers Speaking Tour. The AU event was organized by the American University Solidarity Committee. In the Mil Colores factory in Nicaragua’s Free Trade Zone, where Guillen works as a quality inspector, daily quotas are constantly being pushed up: that she now has to inspect 125 pairs of jeans each hour, for 39 cents per hour. Guillen works a grueling schedule from 7A to 9P most days and the company uses age discrimination to push out older workers, who they believe are less productive. Despite union-busting tactics and threats from Wal-Mart to pull work from the factory, both Guillen and Arevalo have been struggling to form unions at their factories and said they will continue to fight for justice at their factories.

- reported by Mackenzie Baris