WAL-MART 101

The last time I looked, way back in May in another life, the question about Wal-Mart was: Small-town savior or company gulag? At least that's the way I put it. Even the increasingly irritating David Brooks got off a funny satire about Wal-Mart's lad-magazine ban, "No Sex Magazines, Please, We're Wal-Mart Shoppers," although it was, in fact, about the shibboleths of liberal, not conservative, culture.

For instance, he teed off beautifully on the social consciousness of Trader Joe's, "the grocery store for people who wouldn't dream of buying free-range chicken broth from a company that didn't take a position against offshore oil drilling." But, as might have been expected, Brooks was unfailingly awed by Wal-Mart's reputation as "patriotic, community oriented, family-centered, rural and religious" -- and he never once mentioned Wal-Mart's spotty record as an employer.

Now that Wal-Mart is front-page news again following a recent nationwide raid on 60 of its stores -- federal agents arrested hundreds of illegal
immigrants working as low-paid, night janitors "forced to work seven days a week" with no time off, no overtime pay, no workers' compensation, no health insurance or any other protections -- maybe Brooks will take another crack at Wal-Mart, only this time with awe for its hypocrisy.

Is it too much to ask the nation's (and the world's) largest retailer to treat its workers decently, let alone obey the law? Wal-Mart has been dogged for a long time by stories about shabby treatment of employees. I received hundreds of e-mails from people who worked for Wal-Mart. The main complaints were that it discriminated against women employees in compensation and promotion, cheated employees out of fully earned wages and violated the rights of disabled people in its hiring practices.

Trusting soul that I am, I believed them. But just to be sure they were telling the truth, I went looking for documented evidence of such claims. It was easy to find. One 2001 class-action lawsuit brought in New York state on behalf of 80,000 employees charged that Wal-Mart systematically avoided paying them earned overtime wages. Similar cases were pending in other states. A report from The New York Times of Feb. 16, 2003, detailed a lawsuit that could become "the largest employment discrimination class action in American history." It alleged discrimination against female Wal-Mart employees, claiming they are paid lower wages than men and consistently passed over for promotion.

"More than 40 lawsuits are pending that accuse Wal-Mart of pressuring or forcing employees to work unpaid hours off the clock," the report noted. Wal-Mart officials derided all these lawsuits, of course, though a jury in Oregon found Wal-Mart guilty of forcing 400 employees to work off the clock.

Similarly, Wal-Mart officials deride the latest allegations. They deny knowing that illegal immigrants worked at their stores because the janitors who were arrested had been outsourced, that is, hired by subcontractors. Two previous roundups, in 1998 and 2001, appear to have escaped their memories. Wal-Mart and its subcontractors also seem to have forgotten to pay taxes for these workers. But I'd bet Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott didn't forget to collect every penny of the more than $18 million he was paid in 2002.