Walmart's Sweetheart Deal

[Guest guest]

From the TomPaine.com site (this is why we boycott):

 

Jonathan Tasini

February 16, 2005

Wal-Mart may be the most visible offender of good workplace practices—it's the

retail giant progressives love to hate, with good reason. Exhibit A: In a recent

deal with the government, Wal-Mart agreed to pay a small fine for breaking child

labor laws,

with the understanding that next time the feds want to investigate, the retailer

will be warned ahead of time.

Jonathan Tasini says we can't reform the corruption of the corporate landscape

overnight, but a Safe Workplace Act would at least mandate true punishments for

offenders—not sweetheart deals.

 

Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his

" Working In America " columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

The administration has gotten used to the idea that it can hoodwink us (weapons

of mass destruction, a phony Social Security “crisis”), which is part of the

lens through which we should view the recent Wal-Mart scandal. After Wal-Mart

was found breaking the law on child labor, the government fined the company a

measly $135,000 (and change) and signed a deal with Wal-Mart that says " Next

time we want to investigate what laws you might be breaking, we’re going to tell

you about the investigation before we do it " —just to give you enough time to

cover your tracks, shred documents or muddle the trail.

Of course, this is absurd and can only exist in a world where a tax cut for the

rich is called the “Jobs and Growth Plan.” But there is a different part of this

whole game that has annoyed me for a long time and has been missed by the media

coverage (which has been scant).

WhileThe New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse deserves kudos for bringing to light

the story of the Department of Labor’s promise to alert Wal-Mart prior to

launching an investigation, the big point is this: Wal-Mart endangers children

and then gets away with a fine of 135 grand and change.

Does anyone have a calculator to figure out what percentage that financial

“penalty” represents to a company that had sales of $256 billion in 2003 or to

the five Walton kids who are worth almost $100 billion? And, by the way, that

damn fine is considered a business expense that Wal-Mart deducts from its taxes

(unlike poor slobs like you and me, who cannot deduct legal fines).

Moreover, as part of the deal with the government, the company signed a paper

that says it denied any wrongdoing. So the whole game is a hoax and charade.

Everyone knows Wal-Mart broke the law. But using spin and doublespeak befitting

a political race, the government says Wal-Mart will pay a fine, making it appear

as if the government is really doing something about an act the company

continues to say it didn’t do. It’s appalling.

We have a system in America that encourages companies to violate the law because

it’s a tiny cost of doing business. Sure, it’s a scandal that Wal-Mart will now

get tipped off when the feds want to come visit. But even if investigators

descend like Elliot Ness on Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Ark. headquarters, Wal-Mart

will happily write a check for 135 grand and change 10, 20 or 100 times a year

if the trade-off is to keep those registers humming and piling up the cash.

Crimes against people at work will never stop until we start putting corporate

executives in jail, and not just for stock manipulation and accounting frauds.

How fast do you think Wal-Mart would clean up its act—stop violating child labor

laws, stop locking store cleaners inside the stores at great risk to their

lives, stop illegally firing workers who try to unionize, stop discriminating

against women—if Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott or maybe one of the Wal-Mart kid

billionaires spent a few days, weeks or months (I won’t be so naïve as to

suggest years) in the pokey?

Indeed, our standards for crimes against people at work verge on the

hypocritical. Outside of the workplace, endangering the welfare of a child can

land a parent in jail. We easily pass laws for drug crimes, and in some states

like my own New York, we plop people behind bars for life terms if it’s a third

offense—for a crime that is often less severe than the death or severe injury of

someone at work.

As an aside and a topic for a future column, jail sentences are just a reaction

to a symptom of a deeper flaw in our system: Once a person walks through the

door of the workplace, he or she loses basic rights we all take for granted like

liberty and free speech. The only way to stop corporate misconduct against

workers is to empower people to shape the conditions at work (mainly by having

the real right to unionize), and strip away the power corporations have under

our system to create conditions that lead to child labor violations.

 

But until we can reconfigure the corporate landscape, there is a place here for

action. Wal-Mart’s crimes against children should spark a push for a Safe

Workplace Act.

With mounting pressure on workers—weak wages, vanishing pensions, evaporating

health care, crushing personal debt—there is unease over the ever-growing

untrammeled power of corporations.

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Maybe Barbara Boxer, the Senate’s heir to the legacy of Paul Wellstone, or

George Miller, the most tenacious defender of workers rights in the House, could

team up on a sweeping bill that calls for mandatory jail times for corporate

executives who violate workplace laws. It would be great policy—and good

politics.

 

 

 

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