It's Time for Back-to-School Shopping, but not at Wal-Mart!
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Pledge Not to Shop at Wal-Mart for Back-to-School Supplies!
Tell Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott you will not buy back-to-school supplies
from Wal-Mart this year because Wal-Mart needs a real education about
how to treat workers.
Click here to make
your pledge and send Wal-Mart this important message!
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Why we don't support Wal-Mart:
America's biggest retailer, with $10.3 billion in profits last year,
has a shameful record of child labor violations, sex discrimination,
low wages and lousy benefits.
We don't need to reward Wal-Mart for that kind of corporate behavior.
We can do our back-to-school shopping somewhere else this year.
More than 30,000 people have pledged to buy back-to-school supplies
somewhere other than Wal-Mart this year, and we've sent those pledges
to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott. Let's really get his attention with thousand
more pledges.
There are hundreds of reasons to pledge not to buy back-to-school supplies
at Wal-Mart this year. Here are a few:
As the world's largest retailer, today Wal-Mart is setting the standard
for America's workplaces -- and it's a standard of low wages, poor
benefits and worker abuse that working families cannot accept.
By demanding impossibly low prices, Wal-Mart forces its suppliers
to produce goods in low-wage factories that don't protect workers.
A worker in a Honduran clothing factory whose main customer is Wal-Mart,
for example, sews sleeves onto 1,200 shirts a day for only $35 a week.
(Los Angeles Times, 11/24/03)
In the U.S., Wal-Mart has racked up huge fines for child labor law
violations. This rich company reportedly makes children younger than
18 work through their meal breaks, work very late and even work during
school hours. Several states have found Wal-Mart workers younger than
18 are operating dangerous equipment, like chainsaws, and working
in such dangerous areas as around trash compactors. (The New York
Times, 1/13/04; Daily News, 2/18/05; Hartford Courant, 6/18/05)
Wal-Mart pays poverty-level wages and fails to provide affordable
company health insurance to more than 600,000 employees. That means
Wal-Mart workers and their families have a hard time paying the bills
and getting the health care they need, and Wal-Mart tops state lists
of employers whose workers are forced to rely on taxpayer-funded health
insurance programs like Medicaid. (Wal-Mart annual reports; Business
Week, 10/2/03; state reports)
Wal-Mart has a shameful record of paying women less than men. Wal-Mart
pays women workers nearly 40 cents less an hour than men. Some 1.6
million women are eligible to join a class-action lawsuit charging
Wal-Mart with discrimination. (Richard Drogin, Ph.D., 2/03; Los Angeles
Times, 12/30/04)
Wal-Mart can afford to do better. Wal-Mart, America's largest private
employer, raked in $10.3 billion in profits last year. CEO Lee Scott
landed nearly $23 million in total compensation last year alone. Wal-Mart
has no excuse for its behavior.
Click on the link below to send Scott your pledge not to buy back-to-school
supplies at Wal-Mart this year:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/WalMartPledge
Then click on the following link to invite your friends and family
members to join you in pledging not to buy back-to-school supplies at
Wal-Mart this year:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/WalMartPledge/forward
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PLEDGE!
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