UPDATE: Walmart is no longer doing business with this supplier, and the workers were given their passports back. However, Walmart still has no system for preventing situations like this in its supply chain. Earlier this month, in a factory in Thailand that processes shrimp for a major supplier to Walmart there was a revolt.2,000 guest workers from Cambodia and Myanmar angrily protested the seizure of their passports by factory owners in Thailand. Police were called. Shots were fired. But it wasn’t just the passport seizure that incited the workers’ anger — it was management slashing wages again. Their wages already didn’t cover the most basic needs, and this action put workers deeper into the factory’s debt — it’s called debt bondage. At this moment, many of them are still legally and financially trapped at the factory, victims of human trafficking. Sign our petition to Walmart’s VP of Ethical Sourcing Rajan Kamalanathan to demand these factory owners end human trafficking immediately and allow independent monitors to audit all of their factories. This is not an isolated incident. Also in Thailand, a pineapple factory had similar protests over wage reductions. There are now reports of human trafficking and that children under 15 have been bought and sold to work there. More than 73% of this factory’s shipments to the USA go to Walmart. Walmart’s own internal system claims to protect against these abuses, some of which the Bangkok Post Editorial staff have described as “the equivalent of actual slavery”. But these two cases highlight a chronic problem — human trafficking, identity document seizure, child labor, forced unpaid overtime, and debt-bondage are found across Walmart’s supply chain. Walmart’s internal system that audits factories to prevent these kind of abuses is broken at its core. We only know about these abuses abuses because the workers’ revolt spilled out onto the streets. The problem is almost certainly far worse — and extends beyond the borders of Thailand. But we don’t know for sure and neither does Walmart.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:00:25 +0000
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