Wal-Mart "violates workers' rights"

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, Wal-Mart interferes with workers' rights to organize and violates the human rights of its employees. You can read an article on it here.


While I have no trouble believing that the evil empire really does those things, I find it a little dubious that 41 people out of a 1.3 million person workforce would represent a scientific sample.

Of course, Wal-Mart spouted the usual corp-babble:

"Wal-Mart provides an environment of open communications and gives our associates every opportunity to express their ideas, comments and concerns," said David Tovar, a spokesman at Wal-Mart, in a statement. "It is because of our efforts to foster such an environment that our associates have repeatedly rejected unionization attempts."

That and when a store does unionize, Wal-Mart closes it.

Not that I'm a big fan of unions mind you... it's no longer the 1800s and now unions mostly exist to perpetuate the wealth and influence of the people that run them. But maybe if the unions pose a credible threat, Wal-Mart will clean up its act to keep enough employees from getting so disgruntled that they'll have to close more stores.