NEWS: Wal-Mart Keeps On Wal-Marting

POLITICS: Wal-Mart Keeps On Wal-Marting

Wal-Mart has finally achieved what can be considered their greatest success: Hiring Mexican teenagers to work for free. Wal-Mart opened in Mexico 16 years ago and is now Mexico’s largest private sector employer, with 150,000 people working for the demon company. They also employ 19,000 kids between the ages of 14 and 16 for nothing. Zip. Nada.

The kids work as baggers. Wal-Mart actively seeks these free employees by posting signs in their stores.

I understand that you are douchbags – and you’re welcome. There is nothing more beautiful that seeing a large corporation take advantage of horrible poverty. My guess is that we have yet to see the depths to which Wal-Mart will go for profits. What about slave monkeys? Why not adopt female babies from China and raise them only to understand the world of stocking shelves? Keep them in cages during the day and then release them at night to replace the merchandise.

The policy in Mexico is legal because the kids are “volunteering,” which allows the store to bypass labor regulations. To some, like Labor Undersecretary Patricia Espinosa, Wal-Mart is exploiting the teenagers.

How poor? Many people make less than $4 a day in Mexico, so the kids will work for handouts to help their family. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart barely scraped by with a profit of $280 million for their Mexican stores in the first quarter of this year. So, obviously they need free labor. Wal-Mart isn’t the only company taking advantage of the volunteer law, but they have hired far more of the kids than any other company.

Wal-Mart defends the practice by saying it is legal. Also, the company gives the kids bonuses for getting good grades and they cover the kids with accident insurance on the job as well as while they are traveling to and from work. How awesome is that? If a kid gets hit by a car in the parking lot while working for free, Wal-Mart will throw him a couple of pesos. It’s called looking after your workers.

Wal-Mart also cited a UN study, which reported that the kid baggers were less likely to do drugs than their fellow teens who were begging or selling trinkets on the street. But the study did not say anything about whether or not the kids would do drugs if Wal-Mart was actually paying the kids money for working at their stores. Wal-Mart seems to think it has done a great service to society by making the kids parking lot beggars. Maybe the baggers should just be thankful that they don’t have to handle chainsaws.

The kids should just be happy they are not forced to wear the toxic flip-flops that the store sells. Or work in one of the many sweatshops that make Wal-Mart products. But at least the store is sticking to its corporate policy of keeping most of its workers living below the poverty line.

Viva Wal-Mart!

precious.

Yes this is common in Mexico. Does this excuse one of the worlds richest Corp.'s
abso-fucking-lutely not.

http://www.walmartmovie.com/

I really hate Walmart, I'm glad I live in a pro union town that has voted to keep Walmart out.

If kids are willing to do the work, why is it a big deal? It's not like Wal-Mart is holding a gun to their heads

It's better than the kids lounging around being watchacaros

They Dont pay them because they would buy drugs with the money.

like their friends maken money selling sea shells bye the sea shore.

Interesting.

What's a watchacaro?

The problem is once they have kicked out all of the competition in an area you pretty much have no choice. I shop at walmart only if I absolutely HAVE to and ther eis no other choice. I think my 4 purchases a year can be excused.

/wrist

Hey, it beats selling chiclets on a bicycle. You don't get bonuses for good grades, or health insurance when you do that, do you.

Is Walmart taking advantage of kids? Sure. Are the kids benefiting? A little bit.

If Walmart had to pay them, there would be no reason to hire them. That would solve the problem right away. Then everyone would be happy, except the kids.

enabler
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/enabler

Nice. Just another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.

On-the-job accident insurance and health insurance are a tad different, non? One is genuinely looking after the welfare of your employees, while the other is covering your ass from a lawsuit.

It makes me so angry that they can really get away with this, to take advantage of a society of people, time and time again. This and for many other reason's is why I don't step foot into a Walmart! No matter how desperate I am for whatever supplies, I just wont. I go without it then. I don't care how cheap they are or if I could save a couple of extra dollars, I'm not putting a penny into a corporation that has practices that are inhuman, that practice gender inequality and so on.

I don't know that they're "willing" to work as much as they have to . These kids do it for their families. So they can eat, buy school supplies, afford clean water, I could go on and on. Wal-mart didn't put a gun to their heads life did. And just like all the other corporations wal-mart is just sitting there watching. Instead of trying to make a difference.

As if the poverty in Mexico wasn't bad enough, I didn't realize that they had kids working for f'ing free.

I unfortunately make a few trips to the evil waldemart here sometimes, but I am so glad I never went to the walmart in Queretaro. Now I have to bug my Mexican friends and ask them about this...

I've never been in Wal-Mart, or the like. They don't have anything in there that I could possibly want - especially considering the down-sides of their business practices.

There's nothing that I want or need that could justify slave labor. I can get everything I need from small co-operatives.

i've lived in mexico city, where my boyfriend shops at the local wal-mart (not for everything- but for many items the competition is just gone now). i am sorry, most of the kids bagging groceries don't look anywhere near 14. i know that this could be due to poor nutrition, but i find it hard to believe that wal-mart really enforces the age limit.

i suppose you can say that working keeps these kids off the streets and their noses out of the paint rag, but would it kill wal-mart to pay them a small salary?

its a tough topic. when in mexico you are consistantly confronted with children in situations that would horrify anyone in the US. in context, kids picking up a little coin in a clean and safe environment, doesn't look so bad compared to the 3 year olds begging in the street, or the 5 year olds wandering into bars alone at night, selling bootleg cds.

my problem with wal-mart is- if they can't get free labor out of children in the US- why should they feel entitled to do it in mexico? i've never seen children working in any of the other mexican chains.

you can blame mexico's laws for allowing it, but that doesn't make it okay.