Human Rights Watch Slams Wal-Mart

Human Rights Watch has issued a major report on Wal-Mart's labor practices.  For context,

Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental group based in New York, is best known for scathing reports on political issues such as the Rwandan genocide and the Congo's use of children in its military.

This is the second time it has studied an American company; the first was Enron, in 1999.  

The report takes issue both with the inadequacy of U.S. labor law, which it identifies as being in violation of international law, and with Wal-Mart's record of breaking even that pitiful level of worker protection.

Wal-Mart’s strategy to prevent union formation is complex and multifaceted.  The company does not engage in massive anti-union firings nor announce to workers that their store will close if a union is formed.  Instead, the company uses myriad more subtle tactics that, bit by bit, chip away at—and sometimes devastate—workers’ right to organize.  Many of these tactics comport with weak US labor law, notwithstanding their practical effect of quashing worker organizing efforts.  Wal-Mart’s record before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), charged with enforcing US labor laws, suggests that the company has also employed illegal tactics in addition to its lawful anti-union strategy.  Based on our research, we conclude that the cumulative effect of Wal-Mart’s panoply of anti-union tactics is to deprive its workers of their internationally recognized right to organize.

Wal-Mart's labor law violations, as measured by findings of illegal conduct between 2000 and 2005, exceed those of Albertson's, Costco, Home Depot, Kroger, Kmart, Sears, and Target combined by 15 to 4.  One part of the answer to solving the Wal-Mart problem in American labor, then, is to make them obey the damned law.

But the report also emphasizes the inadequacy of U.S. labor law, and one bill addresses several of the issues raised: the Employee Free Choice Act.  The House passed the EFCA in March by a vote of 241-185, but it has yet to pass the Senate, where, according to the AFL-CIO, it has 47 co-sponsors - all of the Democrats except for Pryor, Lincoln, and Ben Nelson, plus both independents.

Today is International Workers' Day.  Though it's not much honored in the U.S., it would be a good time to take a moment to think about the all-too-common abuses of workers in this country, from laws geared toward protecting corporations from the need to respect their workers to inadequate enforcement of the few laws protecting workers to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration which, under Bush, has removed regulations to protect workers and failed to institute new regulations to protect workers from emerging threats.  The people of this country are workers; the workers of this country are people.  We deserve better.