Walmart and prison labour

[Magda Hassan]

"I Ain't Gonna Work On Martori's Farm No More"

Posted: 06/29/11 03:18 PM ET


For the past 20 years, Wal-Mart has fed its stores with agricultural produce from a company called Martori Farms. According to Hoover's profile of the company, Martori is "a fruit and vegetable grower, packer, shipper, and wholesaler and is the largest commercial agricultural company in Arizona.
The agra business was "hand-picked" by Wal-Mart, and in 2007, the giant retailer showcased Martori Farms as part of its "Salute To America's Farmers" program. The Martori farm operations took seed in the 1930s Arizona soil, later specializing in melons and broccoli. The company today has 3 major locations in Arizona, and one site in California. One of its holdings contains more than 15,000 arcres of farmland.
Wal-Mart has described its relationship with Martori Farms as an example of "fruitful collaboration." The retailer's first 35 superstores were stocked with organic cantaloupes from Martori Farms. "Our relationship with Martori Farms is an excellent example of the kind of collaboration we strive for with our suppliers," a Wal-Mart spokesman said four years ago. "Wal-Mart buys more United States agricultural products than any other retailer in the world and we're proud to salute American farmers like Martori Farms."
But new allegations about the use of prison labor at the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Martori Farms could blight the fruitful relationship between the retailer and the farmer.
For almost 20 years, Wal-Mart has had a clear policy forbidding the use of prison labor by its vendors. "Since 1992 Wal-Mart has required its supplier-partners to comply with a stringent code of conduct," Wal-Mart said in a 1997 press statement. "This code requires factories producing merchandise for Wal-Mart to be automatically denied manufacturing certification if inspections reveal...evidence of forced or prison labor."
The Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) has supplied prisoner labor for private agricultural businesses for almost 20 years. For at least the last four years, the state of Arizona has fined employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. Farmers responded by calling up the ADC for workers. "We are contacted almost daily by different companies needing labor," the manager of the business development unit of Arizona Correctional Industries (ACI) told the Christian Science Monitor in 2007. "Maybe it was labor that was undocumented before, and they don't want to take the risk anymore because of possible consequences, so they are looking to inmate labor as a possible alternative.
One of those businesses that turned to prison labor was Wal-Mart's vendor, Martori Farms. According to a disturbing story published June 24th by Truth-Out.org, Martori Farms "pays its imprisoned laborers two dollars per hour, not including the travel time to and from the farm." Women from the Arizona state prison complex at Perryville Unit are assigned to work at Martori Farms." Arizona law requires that all able bodied inmates work.
One of the women prisoners at Martori Farms told Truth-Out: "We work eight hours regardless of conditions .... We work in the fields hoeing weeds and thinning plants ... Currently we are forced to work in the blazing sun for eight hours. We run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don't check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! If we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break we get a MAJOR ticket which takes away our 'good time'!!! We are told we get 'two' 15 minute breaks and a half hour lunch like a normal job but it's more like 10 minutes and 20 minutes. They constantly yell at us we are too slow and to speed up because we are costing $150 an acre in labor and that's not acceptable... In addition, the prison has sent women to work on the farms regardless of their medical conditions."
Wal-Mart's focus on labor conditions has basically been in Third World producer nations, not on domestic shores. In 1997, Wal-Mart wrote: "The issue of global sourcing and factory conditions is very important to Wal-Mart and to our suppliers. Since 1992, we have spent enormous amounts of time and money to assure compliance with our standards and there has been much improvement."
Yet here in America, prisoners are working under intolerable conditions picking produce for Wal-Mart superstores. In its Standards for Suppliers, Wal-Mart acknowledges that "the conduct of Wal-Mart's suppliers can be attributed to Wal-Mart and its reputation." If for no other reason than to protect its reputation, Wal-Mart should take immediate action against Martori Farms. Such actions should include:
1. an unannounced inspection of working conditions at Martori Farms by an independent auditor
2. enforcement of the Wal-Mart's own Conditions for Employment, including fair compensation of wages and benefits which are in compliance with the local and national laws, reasonable employee work hours in compliance with local standards, with employees not working in excess of the statutory requirements without proper compensation as required by applicable law.
As long as Wal-Mart allows Martori Farms to exploit its prison workers, Wal-Mart is complicit in the scheme. This arrangement violates the company's ethical sourcing standards. Such working conditions are not right in Sri Lanka, not right in Bangladesh, and they are not right in Scottsdale Arizona either.
The next time you squeeze a melon at Wal-Mart, think about the prison farmworkers who got squeezed to produce it.
Wal-Mart's Global Ethics Office can be emailed at ethics@wal-mart.com.
Al Norman is the founder of Sprawl-Busters, and is the author of organizer's classic big box story, Slam-DunkingWal-Mart.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/...86596.html

[Magda Hassan]

Demanufacturing Wal-Mart: Profiting From Prison Labor

[COLOR=#696969 !important]Posted: 12/03/2012 8:37 am
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One thing you can say about Wal-Mart chain stores: at every link in the chain, someone is being exploited, from head to tail. The public knows next to nothing about the exploitation which takes place at the tail end of the business cycle -- something called "demanufacturing."
Every year, Wal-Mart has to dispose of millions of dollars worth of customer returns, buy-backs, over-stocks, shelf-pulls, scratch-and-dent, and excess inventories. The giant retailer sells this merchandise to liquidators, who scrub the products of any Wal-Mart serial numbers, UPC bar codes -- and then resell them to after-market retailers, who re-sell them to the public.
The workers used to strip these Wal-Mart products clean are often prisoner laborers, under a program made possible by the federal government. In effect, the liquidators are partially subsidized by federal taxpayers, who provide the 'demanufacturing' facilities, and cheap, captive labor -- usually female prisoners. This form of corporate welfare allows salvage companies to offer Wal-Mart a low price for their cast-off products.
According to a confidential agreement between Wal-Mart and one of its major salvage buyers, the Jacob's Trading Company, "demanufacturing" means "to remove all of the identifying marks, including, but not limited to, manufacturer's or retailer's names, logos, serial numbers, UPC numbers, RA numbers, and other identifying marks... from the packaging, or to clearly and conspicuously mark the packaging so that it is readily apparent and obvious that the Merchandise has been through a salvage process. Contractor agrees to further demanufacture the Merchandise by making a vertical mark through the bar code of the Merchandise."
Jacob's Trading Company (JTC) was founded by Wall Street Icon Irwin Jacobs, once described byForbes as "Irv the Operator," a "corporate raider (who) terrorized chief executives" by purchasing shares in companies like Walt Disney.
According to Minnesota-based Jacobs Trading, when Irwin Jacobs was 18 years old he "stumbled into" the closeout merchandise business when he bought and sold a pile of skis from the U.S. Customs Service. In 1996, JTC became a prime liquidator for 'a major retailer' (Wal-Mart). JTC was purchased in 2011 by Liquidator's Supply for $140 million.
Over the years, Irwin Jacobs has had to do some salvage on his own reputation. In 2010 he was prominently featured in an ugly bankruptcy process when Jacobs Trading had to take a $20 million loss on investments it made in another company that Jacobs headed at the time, the now-bankrupt Genmar boatmaker.
In 2007 Jacobs was ensnared in lawsuits between Wal-Mart and a fired SVP of Marketing at the Arkansas retailer, who charged that while Jacobs held exclusive rights to purchase unsold Wal-Mart merchandise, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott had purchased from Jacobs' boat companies "a number of yachts at preferential prices" and "a large pink diamond for his wife at a preferential price." Scott was also accused of accepting "jet aircraft travel (for his own personal use) on private airplanes provided by Mr. Jacobs... for Mr. Scott and his wife to travel to their residences in Longboat Key, Florida and Las Vega, Nevada." Jacobs also reportedly hired Lee Scott's son, Eric to work at Jacob's Trading and in his boat company. Jacobs told the Wall Street Journal that these accusations were "totally outrageous," and that he had never shown any favoritism to Lee Scott or his son. "I swear to God Lee never called me about... putting Eric to work." The lawsuits were eventually dismissed.
But Irwin Jacobs put prisoners to work to help make his fortune. JTC built its reputation on selling customer returns from the "nation's most well-known retailers" and offering "closeout prices" by the truckload. The company maintains a network of 9 distribution centers in states like Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas.
In Taft, Oklahoma, for example, JTC's purchases from Wal-Mart are "demanufactured" at the Eddie Warrior Correctional Center. According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, JTC delivers semi loads of merchandise to the prison weekly, which are cleaned of any identifying bar codes and company specific labeling, repackaged, palletized and shipped nationwide for resale. "This operation employs approximately 18 female offenders," the ODOC says.
In Nevada, the entire JTC operation is housed inside the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas. Jacobs is the only private employer of female prisoners in Nevada. In 2000, a female prison laborer working 40 hours a week kept just over half of what she earns. After several deductions mandated by the state prison department, she took in about $460 per month. That's net pay of $2.67 an hour. Even updated to today's wages, this pay is not comparable to private sector wage levels. These women strip original store labels and price tags off surplus wholesale items, and repackage the compressors, ceiling fans, yard lights and other products that originally did not sell. "It's physically demanding," one worker said. "It requires cognitive and motor skills and problem-solving abilities."
The federal law that makes this prison labor possible, the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) was created by Congress in 1979 "to establish employment opportunities for inmates that approximate private-sector work... to place inmates in a realistic work environment, pay them the prevailing local wage for similar work, and enable them to acquire marketable skills..."
It's not clear what kind of prevailing wage or marketable skills these women inmates get from removing Wal-Mart labels from returned products, but it has provided a very clear subsidy to Wal-Mart and to its wealthy partners in liquidation.
Not bad for a retailer that says in its Standards for Suppliers: "Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart."
Al Norman is the founder of Sprawl-Busters. His latest book is Occupy Walmart. He has been helping communities fight big box stores for nearly 20 years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/...24743.html

[Adele Edisen]

From the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/busine...d=all&_r=0

And here is a pageful of other articles and other places in the world:

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesear...+in+Mexico

Adele

[Adele Edisen]

Wal-Mart is a 'universal exploiter' in the US and elsewhere in the world. Wal-Mart exploits its own workers and customers, as well. That company needs to be unionized...

Adele