The last time I looked, way back in May in another life, the question about Wal-Mart was: For instance, he teed off beautifully on the social consciousness of Trader Joe’s, “the grocery Now that Is it too much to ask the nation’s (and the world’s) largest retailer to treat its workers “More than 40 lawsuits are pending that accuse Wal-Mart of pressuring or forcing employees Similarly, Wal-Mart officials deride the latest allegations. They deny knowing that illegal 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-7a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSmall-town savior or company gulag? At least that’s the way I put it. Even the
\nsatire about Wal-Mart’s lad-magazine ban, “No Sex Magazines, Please, We’re Wal-Mart
\nShoppers,” although it was, in fact, about the shibboleths of liberal, not
\nconservative, culture.<\/P>
\n
\nstore for people who wouldn’t dream of buying free-range chicken broth from a company that
\ndidn’t take a position against offshore oil drilling.” But, as might have been expected, Brooks was
\nunfailingly awed by Wal-Mart’s reputation as “patriotic, community oriented, family-centered,
\nrural and religious” — and he never once mentioned Wal-Mart’s spotty record as an
\nemployer.<\/P>
\n
\nnationwide raid on 60 of its stores — federal agents arrested hundreds of illegal
immigrants
\nworking as low-paid, night janitors “forced to work seven days a week” with no time off, no
\novertime pay, no workers’ compensation, no health insurance or any other protections — maybe
\nBrooks will take another crack at Wal-Mart, only this time with awe for its hypocrisy. <\/P>
\n
\ndecently, let alone obey the law? Wal-Mart has been dogged for a long time by
\nreceived hundreds of e-mails from people who worked for Wal-Mart. The main complaints were
\nthat it discriminated against women employees in compensation and promotion, cheated
\nemployees out of fully earned wages and violated the rights of disabled people in its hiring
\npractices.
Trusting soul that I am, I believed them. But just to be sure they were
\ntelling the truth, I went looking for documented evidence of such claims. It was easy to find. One
\n2001 class-action lawsuit brought in New York state on behalf of 80,000 employees charged that
\nWal-Mart systematically avoided paying them earned overtime wages. Similar cases were pending
\nin other states. A report from The New York Times of Feb. 16, 2003, detailed a lawsuit that
\ncould become “the largest employment discrimination class action in American history.” It alleged
\ndiscrimination against female Wal-Mart employees, claiming they are paid lower wages than men
\nand consistently passed over for promotion. <\/P>
\n
\nto work unpaid hours off the clock,” the report noted. Wal-Mart officials derided all these
\nlawsuits, of course, though a jury in Oregon found Wal-Mart guilty of forcing 400 employees to
\nwork off the clock. <\/P>
\n
\nimmigrants worked at their stores because the janitors who were arrested had been outsourced,
\nthat is, hired by subcontractors. Two previous roundups, in 1998 and 2001, appear to have
\nescaped their memories. Wal-Mart and its subcontractors also seem to have forgotten to pay taxes
\nfor these workers. But I’d bet Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott didn’t forget to collect every penny of the
\n