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A former Wal-Mart executive responsible for inspecting apparel factories in Central America has sued the company, accusing it of firing him for being too aggressive about finding workplace violations, like locked exits and mandatory 24-hour shifts.

The executive, James W. Lynn, said he upset Wal-Mart officials by complaining vigorously about apparel contractors that fired pregnant workers and about one company official who, according to several inspectors, was corrupt and treated substandard factories leniently.

In a lawsuit filed two weeks ago in state court in Arkansas, where Wal-Mart Stores is based and Mr. Lynn lives, he asserted that he was terminated in 2002 "for truthfully reporting the abysmal working conditions in Central American factories utilized by Wal-Mart and for refusing to comply with Wal-Mart's demand that he certify factories in order to get Wal-Mart's goods to market."

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Several of his monitoring reports noted that factories in Honduras padlocked exits, lacked drinking water, did not have toilet paper and did not pay overtime to some employees. He said some factories were so hot that people passed out and that several gave pregnancy tests to newly hired women, dismissing those found to be pregnant. Such tests and firings would violate Wal-Mart's rules.

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Here's the original thread for reference.

[ 01 July 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

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Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is pushing to create a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more part-time workers and scheduling more workers on nights and weekends.

Wal-Mart executives say they have embraced new policies for a large number of their 1.3 million workers to better serve their customers, especially at busy shopping times — and point out that competitors like Sears and Target have made some of these moves, too.

But some Wal-Mart workers say the changes are further reducing their already modest incomes and putting a serious strain on their child-rearing and personal lives. Current and former Wal-Mart workers say some managers have insisted that they make themselves available around the clock, and assert that the company is making changes with an eye to forcing out longtime higher-wage workers to make way for lower-wage part-time employees.

Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent. Wal-Mart denies it has a goal of 40 percent part-time workers, although company officials say that part-timers now make up 25 percent to 30 percent of workers, up from 20 percent last October.

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The program includes several new perks “as a way of saying thank you” to workers, like a special polo shirt after 20 years of service and a “premium holiday,” when Wal-Mart pays a portion of health insurance premiums for covered employees. Sarah Clark, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said the program was a “a more formalized, contemporary approach” to communicating with and collecting feedback from its fast-growing work force.

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20 years gets you a polo shirt.

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..and they're working extra hard to meet the anticipated demand...

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Originally posted by josh:
20 years gets you a polo shirt.

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Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING

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The company's growth rate has slowed to a crawl, overtaken by rivals once thought to be no match for the "beast of Bentonville." Average annual profit growth lags that of Target Corp., Costco Wholesale Corp. and other competitors. Wal-Mart's repeated efforts to push upscale merchandise have ended in tears. Expansion at home is still thwarted by hundreds of U.S. communities; and several forays abroad are struggling or have been scrapped. The stock price is down 32 per cent since the turn of the century, when CEO Lee Scott took the reins, while the Morgan Stanley retail index has soared 180 per cent....As it is, many on Wall Street are convinced Scott will be out of a job come next year if he can't show some progress over the next six months in breathing new life into the world's largest retailer. He isn't given much hope of doing so.

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OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING

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A collision with a semi-trailer truck seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons found a small source of solace: a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved. After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Mrs. Shank's care.

Instead, all of it is now slated to go to Mrs. Shank's former employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Two years ago, the retail giant's health plan sued the Shanks for the $470,000 it had spent on her medical care. A federal judge ruled last year in Wal-Mart's favor, backed by an appeals-court decision in August. Now, her family has to rely on Medicaid and Mrs. Shank's social-security payments to keep up her round-the-clock care.

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"Two years ago, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. outlined ambitious goals to turn the world's largest retailer into a more environmentally friendly company," reports the Washington Post. "Wal-Mart yesterday released its first report on its progress in meeting those goals, and showed mixed results." Among Wal-Mart's supposedly "significant gains" was "selling 22 seafood products that have been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council" (MSC). But, as the Center for Media and Democracy's Bob Burton has written, the MSC's environmental record is questionable. One independent review, "commissioned by three U.S. foundations, concluded that MSC's claim to certify 'sustainable' fisheries 'in most cases is not justified,' and fisheries 'that are not in compliance with the law can be, and have been, certified,'" states an excerpt from Burton's new book, "Inside Spin."

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The company, which earned $2.9 billion last quarter, sued a former employee who suffered permanent brain damage in a car accident to get back $470,000 it spent on her medical bills.

Here’s the story. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported yesterday that Deborah Shank, 52, who stocked shelves in Wal-Mart’s store in Cape Girardieu, Mo., was broadsided by a tractor-trailer seven years ago, causing permanent brain damage. Unable to walk without help or communicate meaningfully with her family, she now lives in a nursing home.

Wal-Mart’s health insurance plan paid about $470,000 in medical expenses. But after the Shanks sued and settled with the trucking company, Wal-Mart sued the couple and demanded its money back, plus interest and legal fees—more than the $417,477 the settlement had placed in a special-needs Medicaid trust fund for Shank’s future health care expenses.

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