The Wal-Mart name has become synonymous to many with worker exploitation in the global economy today. A presentation was held on Jan. 31 as part of a series of Annual Heritage Conferences that are put together by NEIU.
The panel presented a synopsis and all-around discussion and response to Liza Featherstone’s Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker’s Rights at Wal-Mart.
The panel also discussed the ongoing debates about Wal-Mart’s current place in communities and what can be done to combat the racial, gender and economic injustices it represents to some.
The conferences celebrate collective cultural experiences and heritage. The conferences put together panels to discuss issues that not only affect people locally, but on a global scale as well.
The keynote speakers for this discussion were NEIU’s Nancy Matthews, associate professor of justice studies and women’s studies and David Leaman, associate professor of political science.
In her presentation, Matthews asked, “Why talk about Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart is now a symbol of contemporary globalized life. Due to its size, they have a great impact on our community and our overall economy.”
Wal-Mart has one and a half million employees worldwide and they are the largest employer in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
A clip from a movie about Wal-Mart shows CEO Lee Scott talking about record sales, record reinvestment into the company and how “anyone would be proud to be CEO of Wal-Mart.” Lee goes on to say that Wal-Mart has grown so much and expanded to so many areas that they have “generated fear in some circles and envy in others.”
According to Scott, their goal is to do two things. They are first to “tell the story of Wal-Mart” and to “stay the course.” Scott feels that Wal-Mart is so important to families that are working on a budget, and to their suppliers and to their associates, that they have to remain consistent in how they run their company.
In her presentation, Matthews touched on the history of Wal-Mart. The history goes back as far as 1940 when store founder Sam Walton first began his career in retailing. He later went on to open Wal-Mart’s first store in Roger, Arkansas in 1969.
The presentation pointed out how the company was structured towards a gendered division of labor where the men were the managers and the women were the supervised workers.
Things continued on this way for some time until Wal-Mart expanded into areas where this was not an acceptable practice. “Wal-Mart is a major player in mass production and consumption, so they play a key role in the work force,” said Matthews.
They were not the only company offering low prices to their consumer, but they were the first to use the UPC barcode to keep track of their merchandise and monitor goods being sold. Furthermore as a result of improving and time saving technology, Wal-Mart was able to hire low-skill and low-wage workers.
Today Wal-Mart is still fighting a class action lawsuit that represents 1.6 million female workers both past and present.
Further movie clips showed some of those women attesting to the fact that they were mistreated and passed over for promotions, regardless of the fact that they had put in the time with the company and had the skills to do the job.
The fight has been going on since 2002, and it remains to be seen whether it will change the company for past, current and future employees.