"Wal-Mart regularly says it does not tolerate child labor or forced or prison labor, but when it comes to walking the walk the company refuses to reveal its Chinese contractors and will not allow independent, unannounced inspections of its contractors’ facilities.
Clothing sewn in China is usually done by young women, 17 to 25 year old (at 25 they are fired as ‘too old’) forced to work seven days a week, often past midnight for 12 to 28 cents an hour, with no benefits. Or that the women are housed in crowded, dirty dormitories, 15 to a room, and fed a thin rice gruel. The workers are kept under 24-hour-a-day surveillance and can be fired for even discussing factory conditions. The factories in China operate under a veil of secrecy, behind locked metal gates, with no factory names posted and no visitors allowed. China’s authorities do not allow independent human rights, religious or women’s groups to exist, and all attempts to form independent unions have been crushed. (http://www.nlcnet.org, 10/22/02)"
When are we going to wake up and right this wrong?
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are." -H.L. Mencken
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