Wow! When I bought my watch last summer for $7.oo at Walmart, I thought: What a steal! I never considered what had to happen in order for me to obtain the watch, how much work went into assembling it and obtaining the parts. For homework last weekend, we had to find out information about the thing that we said in class that we always have with us. Obviously I said my watch, and I was so shocked to find out what Walmart actually does that I felt the need to blog about it. I was aware that walmart had sweatshops and that they didn't pay their employees very well, but I was shocked to find out how bad it is.
I found an article on UFCW's website, which is a website promoting unionization that was quite shocking. Some walmart employees in foreign nations such as Bangladesh make as little as 9 cents an hour! Many of the issues that we saw in the video about the Triangle Factory are still apparent in Walmarts accross the world. In foreign factories: bathrooms are locked, employees are foced to work overtime, there are starvation wages, no health care and workers are fired if they try to defend their rights. Walmart has also been implemented in child labor violations, which is another serious problem!
So next time you go to a Walmart, remember this asterisk: What had to happen in order for me to buy this? And although I love my watch, I feel guilty that someone may have received little money and had to work overtime without being able to go to the bathroom in order for me to have it. That's not right. Walmart needs to stop this and manufacture its goods the right way.
1 comment:
I completely agree. I mean, I always knew that overseas there were still sweatshops with poor conditions, but I never really realized just how bad that situations still were. I was talking to my dad the other day about the triangle factory fire and I commented on how at least it had had some positive outcomes, as a result factory conditions got better. My dad replied by telling me about a book he had just read called "factory girls" talking about, as you might imagine, girls working in factories in china. And like you talked about here, he went on to tell me about how horrible the conditions still are. Conditions got better over here, but as a result they just sent the cheap labor overseas.
Seeing the actual numbers of it really put it in perspective for me. I mean, 9 cents an hour? Imagine, working nine hours a day to make 99 cents. To us that's basically pocket change, the amount you spend to buy a song on itunes-and to them, it's their living. It really makes you think twice before buying from these big super companies like walmart.
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