Child Labor Wal-Mart

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Wal-mart is another major company in the United States operating thousands of stores all over the states, and making about $118 billion annually in sales, with employees of 825,000. "In 2000, Wal-Mart's assets totaled more than the GDP of 155 of the 192 countries in the world, with the annual sales of more than $137.6 billion."

Girls in Box Factory
National Archieves

    They mostly operate sweatshops in Saipan, China and Nicaragua that manufacture most of the clothes sold in their stores. People in the stores work for ten hours a day and seven days a week and are paid as low as twelve cents. They are unable to complain at all. The children are often strip searched for food or water being brought in to prevent them from soiling the clothes from the food and water. They are often hungry and dehydrated and are forced to work overtime without pay; it is considered as volunteer pay. Also, affiliated is Kathy Lee Gifford, where she owns her own sweatshop in Honduras selling her line of clothing to Wal-Mart.
     Wal-Mart has been fined about $200,000 for violating 1,436 child labor laws by the Maine Department of Labor, when it was discovered that Wal-Mart employed under-aged children and making them work at least ten days in a row. They had been warned several times, but they persisted. This fine was the largest fine that the state ever levied.

Sources: Forbes, 1999; Daily Labor Report, 2000 and http://www.now.org/issues
/wfw/wm-facts.html#foot2,1995-2002 and Daily Labor Report, 2000