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Rollback America: Wal-Mart Undermines Workers' Rights

© Michael J. Swogger

For 150 years the labor movement was galvanized by a common initiative towards the betterment of workers rights. The movement hinged upon the ideal that all workers should be guaranteed the right to safe working environments, a meaningful minimum wage, an end to the exploitation of children, a limited-hour work week, and pay for overtime. The foundation upon which all these rights were to be won was the right to organize. And after over a century of struggle with countless lives lost and millions more having suffered from the penury and squalor of starvation wages and deadly working conditions, the labor movement won significant victories during the 1930s: The right to organize was legitimized by the 1935 Wagner Act; minimum wage, overtime pay, and the abolition of child labor was brought forth by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

But from the very beginning companies had resisted federal and state enforcement of such laws. Many have been determined to drive wages down by resisting and often forbidding unionization, in spite of the law.* Some go to great lengths to ignore state and federal requirements to provide employees with breaks and mealtimes, to avoid paying employees overtime compensation, and even to force employees to work off the clock. Today there are many companies who fit this profile, but none other does so more blatantly than does Wal-Mart.

A recent New York Times report (January 13, 2004) indicates Wal-Mart has repeatedly violated child-labor laws and state laws governing breaks and mealtimes. All this is confirmed by the company's own internal audit involving some 25,000 employees - an internal report the company itself is telling its own management to ignore.

According to the Times, Wal-Mart's report documents 1,371 instances where minors "worked late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day." Additionally, some 60,000 instances in which employees did not take breaks were detailed, as well as 15,705 "apparent instances of employees working through mealtimes." Wal-Mart officials insist that most of the alleged violations were simply due to employees' failure to clock out for breaks and meals. "Our view," insisted Wal-Mart's vice-president for communications Mona Williams, "is that the audit really means nothing when you understand Wal-Mart's time-keeping system." Thus, Wal-Mart has decided not to worry about the results of its own sanctioned investigation.¹

If this were an isolated incident then perhaps the company's hasty dismissal of its own findings might be more valid. But there is an extensive history of the company's abuse of employee rights and breaching of state and federal laws.

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