[Vision2020] Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers

[Tom Hansen]

>From this week's (March 24, 2006) "7" Magazine at

http://www.spokane7.com/culture/stories/?ID=2840

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: Remove those pesky conscience stains

By Frank Sennett  .  Correspondent  .  MARCH 24, 2006

Buying clothing from Wal-Mart might not leave you with blood on your hands,
but it could put some on your pants.

That's the most surprising lesson U.S. consumers have learned so far from
the International Labor Rights Fund's ongoing effort to bring foreign
factory workers stateside to see the products of their sweat and, yes, blood
on Wal-Mart racks.

During the third such surreal shopping trip she's organized, the ILRF's
Trina Tocco escorted Nicaraguan factory worker Damaris Meza to a Kansas
City, Mo., Wal-Mart. Meza soon checked a pair of jeans for blood stains.

You see, her factory doesn't provide adequate gloves for the fabric cutters
and seamstresses. It's cheaper to have Meza send bloody clothing out for a
quick wash before shipping it from the land of low wages to the land of low
prices.

After reading about Meza's job in The Pitch, a Kansas City weekly, it gnawed
at me - especially since Spokane is a Wal-Mart growth market. So I called
Tocco to find out more.

"You guys are having a site fight, right?" she asked brightly even though it
was after 8 p.m. in Washington, D.C. Tocco then proceeded to dispel two
common misperceptions. The first one should give Wal-Mart shoppers pause.
The second might give people on both sides of the issue common ground.

Folks who pooh-pooh mistreatment of these factory workers often claim low
wages - it would take these women a week's pay to buy a pair of their pants
at retail - are no big deal because it's so cheap to live in the Third
World. "But even with the cost-of-living adjustment, they're making about 50
to 60 percent of what they need to make to fill their bread basket - meet
the needs of housing, clothing, education and food," Tocco says. So let's
not hear that argument around here anymore.

But surprisingly, the young activist doesn't suggest we stop hunting for
bargains under the watchful eyes of a certain smiley face. "I don't want
anyone to feel ashamed that they shop at Wal-Mart," she says. "The reality
is that working-class people in the U.S. don't have a whole lot of options.
They're going to go to what's the cheapest."

Instead of a boycott, Tocco recommends taking the following steps to improve
global labor practices:

1. Next time you shop at Wal-Mart, tell a manager you're concerned about the
company's labor practices here and abroad. "It's more powerful when that
message comes directly from their consumers," she says. Visitors to the
ILRF's laborrights.org site also can send the retailer an e-mail about the
issue.

2. Every year, pledge to buy one fair-trade certified product and one item
made in a union shop or worker-owned cooperative. For outlets, go to
transfairusa.org, sweatshopwatch.org and unionlabel.org. Even diehard
Wal-Mart shoppers should vote with their wallets for humane labor practices.

After all, it's not every day you get a chance to scrub a stain from your
conscience. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

*************************************************************************

"Once again here's a bunch of radicals attempting to force their lifestyle
on people who do not wish to recognize that lifestyle as normal.  What ever
happened to live and let live?" 

- Varnel W. (March 18, 2006)

**************************************************************************