Wal-Mart's Shirts of Misery from Bangladesh

Edited by P. Singh

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When you purchase a shirt in Walmart, do you ever imagine young women in Bangladesh forced to work from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week, paid just 9 cents to 20 cents an hour, who are denied health care and maternity leave; screamed at to work faster; with monitored bathroom visits; and who will be fired for daring to complain or ask for their rights?

At the Beximco factory in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone in Bangladesh, there are 1,000 workers, at least 80 percent of them young women, sewing shirts and pants for Walmart and other retailers. Beximco is a sweatshop, where human rights are systematically violated.

Shame on Walmart

Walmart and its contractor Beximco do not pay the overtime premium. In fact, as we have seen, they do not even pay the legal hourly wage of 33 cents. They pay only 20 cents an hour and pay overtime at this same illegal 20-cent rate.

These workers are locked in poverty, being cheated out of over $20 a week in legal wages by the largest retailer in the world. The workers are being illegally paid just $16 for a full 80-hour workweek. For the forced 80-hour week, they should be earning at least $36.96. Surely Walmart, with $7.6 billion in annual operating profits, could afford this wage!

Some of the poorest people in the world are being illegally robbed of their wages, driving them deeper into misery. Even the 33-cent an hour wage does not come close to meeting basic subsistence needs.

This is why in Bangladesh there is no difference in the malnutrition rate of children whether their parents are unemployed or are working in factories sewing garments for the largest U.S. companies. Even the legal minimum wage is set too low to allow the workers to climb out of misery.

No maternity leave: At Beximco, legal maternity leave is denied and benefits are not paid.

Denied health care: By law, a factory the size of Beximco should have a health clinic, with a doctor present. Beximco has nothing. There is an empty first aid box for show. The women workers and their children have absolutely no health coverage or protection.

Access to bathrooms limited: The workers need a ticket and permission to use the bathrooms. Access is limited and bathroom breaks are timed.

Maltreatment/cursing/yelling: There is constant pressure to meet the high daily production goal; the workers are yelled at and cursed at to work faster.

Cheated of their tiny savings: In Bangladesh there is a government regulated savings system whereby a small deduction is made each pay period from the workers' wages and deposited in the Provident Fund, which the factory maintains. The workers can withdraw their savings from this fund when they leave the factory or are fired. It functions as a kind of severance pay, to act as a bridge or means of support while new work is sought. But most workers at Beximco, who have been forced to leave, report that they are cheated of their savings.

No worker has seen Walmart's Code of Conduct: Walmart says it has a corporate code of conduct which guarantees the human and worker rights of anyone sewing Walmart garments around the world. Even by industry standards, Walmart's code of conduct is very limited and extremely weak. Yet the workers at Beximco have never even seen this weak code of conduct. Walmart's code is not posted and it has never been explained to the workers. There has been no attempt to implement the code.

No right to organize: In Bangladesh's EPZs, unions and collective contracts are prohibited by law. The workers have no rights; the government authorities do nothing to implement labor law. The workers are fired for daring to protest forced 24-hour shifts. Denied their right to organize, the workers are isolated and vulnerable -- easily cheated of their legal wages and benefits.

Falling Real Wages

Devaluation and inflation have further eroded the real purchasing power of the Bangledeshi workers' wages.

The local currency, the taka, has lost 19% of its value against the U.S. dollar since 1995. (In 1995, there were TK 40.90 to $1.00. By October 1998, the taka had fallen to TK 48.50 to $1.00).

There is a five to six percent inflation rate each year.

Greed in the Global Economy

Walmart and its contractor pay no taxes to sew their garments in the Dhaka EPZ. All that they leave behind is the illegal 20-cent an hour wages and some small rent and fees.

In 1998, total government revenues in Bangladesh amounted to $3.872 billion (TK 187.8 billion), a sum far too low to even provide the most basic services to the over 125 million people in the country.

On the other hand, Walmart's sales in 1998 amounted to $137.6 billion, which means that Walmart's annual sales are 36 times greater than the total revenues of the Bangladeshi government. Yet Walmart does not pay a single cent in taxes or tariffs! Nothing!

Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, is being forced to subsidize Walmart.

Due to an inadequate tax base and overall low government revenues, Bangladesh must rely upon foreign aid to meet more than one-half of its entire development budget.

In the United States, Walmart also seeks multi-million-dollar state, county and city subsidies as a condition for locating its stores. But there is another indirect subsidy as well: one half of Walmart's 720,000 employees, or "associates" as the company calls them, qualify for federal assistance under the food stamp program. Wages at Walmart, now the largest private sector employer in the U.S., start as low as $5.75 an hour.