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The Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled two ‘Princess and the Frog’ charm necklaces today due to high levels of Cadmium, a dangerous heavy metal. The necklaces are sold exclusively at Walmart stores. It may sound like many other recall stories, but this is actually the first time the CPSC has recalled anything for containing Cadmium. The metal was spotlighted in a recent Associated Press investigation which discovered high levels of Cadmium in many pieces of children’s jewelry.

Cadmium, like lead and other heavy metals, is a known carcinogen and can cause stunted brain development in children.

The Associated Press found that Chinese factories had started using Cadmium in products after they stopped using lead due to scrutiny from the US government during the last product safety scare.

In our opinion, it is no coincidence that this first Cadmium recall happened at Walmart, either. First because the use of cadmium seems to be linked with Chinese factories, at least so far. More than 70% of Walmart’s goods come from China, making it likely that these toxic metal products could end up on Walmart’s shelves. Second, Walmart has a history of using its size and clout to push suppliers to produce at a lower cost, forcing them to cut corners to meet Walmart’s price demands and still make a profit. One of the areas that suppliers could cut corners is product safety.

We think it’s pretty irresponsible for Walmart to be selling cadmium laced children’s necklaces, or anything else with highly toxic chemicals, for that matter. That’s why we launched a campaign over the holiday shopping season demanding that Walmart remove dangerous products from its shelves. Obviously they haven’t listened.

You can read more about Walmart’s dangerous products and sign an open letter to Mike Duke demanding that he take responsibility for consumer protection here.

The official CPSC press release about the Disney ‘Princess and the Frog’ necklaces is here.

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After our national campaign over the holidays focusing on product safety, an Associated Press report about the use of Cadmium in Chinese made products, especially children’s jewelry, and a huge crib recall back in November comes news of a second crib recall.

The Associated Press reports that more than 600,000 cribs are being recalled today after an infant died because of faulty hardware. Twenty models of cribs are being recalled due to issues with drop-side hardware and with slats that can break. The cribs were manufactured in China and Vietnam and sold at Walmart as well as other retailers.

According to the AP, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the company producing the cribs,

“have received 31 reports of incidents involving drop-side cribs, including six incidents of children being trapped between the mattress and the drop side. The agency and company have also received 36 reports of broken slats, including two reports of trapped children.”

This second recall highlights a disturbing trend of dangerous products on Walmart’s shelves. Walmart has a history of using its size and clout to push suppliers to produce at a lower cost, forcing them to cut corners to meet Walmart’s price demands and still make a profit. One of the areas that suppliers could cut corners is product safety. Walmart has repeatedly carried products that have been identified as unsafe or dangerous by reputable consumer safety organizations and the CPSC. It is truly sad that it took a death to bring attention to these cribs.

You can read the full article here and the full CPSC press release here for more information.

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The following article was originally published on Huffington Post.

You steal, you die.

That’s the international policy apparently at Wal-Mart stores, where reports indicate another alleged shoplifter has died at the hands of a gang of overzealous Wal-Mart workers—this time in China.

According to the Associated Press report this week, Yu Xiachun, a 37-year-old woman, died 500 yards from the Wal-Mart store in Jiangxi province. Based on the local police report, Yu had exited the store and was on her way home on August 30th when she was surrounded by five Wal-Mart workers, who accused her of shoplifting.

The Wal-Mart workers asked Yu to produce a receipt, which she did. But then Yu tried to take the receipt back—questioning who the four men and one woman were, because no one was wearing a Wal-Mart uniform. The police say that the Wal-Mart workers fought with Yu, and she was knocked to the ground. She was taken to the hospital, where she died three days later. The police have arrested two of the young Wal-Mart workers who fought with Yu. It is not clear yet what they are being charged with, if anything.

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The following article was originally posted on Huffington Post:

While many American retailers are just one lackluster back-to-school season away from disaster, the malingering recession has been very good to some retail manufacturers—especially in China.

American shoppers at Wal-Mart have made investors in Hong Kong very wealthy. By one estimate, in 2006 every Wal-Mart store in the United States caused the loss of about 77 American jobs due to Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China. Without knowing it, millions of American consumers have been shopping at Fung-Mart.

A Chinese global conglomerate little known in this county has been ‘living better’ off of Wal-Mart’s sales. Li & Fung is not a household word in Kansas or Arizona—but it’s one of the main beneficiaries behind the Wal-Mart sales numbers. Described as the biggest supplier of clothes and toys to companies like Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s, Li & Fung has been one of the fireworks of the Hang Seng Index, and its stock has more than doubled this year.

Li & Fung describes itself as “one of the premier global consumer products export trading companies managing the supply chain for high-volume, time-sensitive consumer goods including garments, fashion accessories, toys, sporting goods, promotional merchandise, handicrafts, shoes, travel goods and household items.” Its products are sourced through a network of offices in nearly 40 countries for customers in the US, Europe, Asia and the Southern Hemisphere.”

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The U.S. International Trade Commission has made an announcement, and that announcement is one we shouldn’t be surprised by at this point. The ITC has ruled that U.S. tire companies are being harmed by cheap products from China, and as a result President Obama will have to decide whether to impose tariffs or quotas on the country that, thanks to Wal-Mart, is now America’s largest source of imports.

Of course, Wal-Mart’s tire business isn’t the only factor behind the ruling, but it certainly is one of the biggest. China sent 21 million tires to the U.S. in 2005, and that more than doubled to 46 million by last year. For its part, Modern Tire Dealer reports that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has close to 3,200 outlets selling tires, although most of those sales are concentrated in its approximately 2,435-store Tire & Lube Service Centers nationwide.

The (United Steelworkers) union said China has more than tripled its tire exports to the U.S. between 2004 and 2008, ending jobs for 5,100 American workers. The union said another 3,000 workers would lose their jobs by the end of the year.

The next move for the ITC will be to come up with come up with recommendations on what the President should do to help U.S. companies, including a couple familiar names based in Ohio - Akron-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Findlay-based Cooper Tire.

The case is the first test for Obama on trade with China, after he vowed during his presidential campaign last year to help unions or domestic industries seeking relief from foreign competition. Since the election, he also has pledged to avoid protectionism so as not to exacerbate the global recession.

U.S. agency rules for tire producers in China case [Bloomberg News]

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Much is made of Wal-Mart’s presence in China - from the fact that many of its products are sourced there to the realization that the growing power remains a prime target for Wal-Mart’s expansion.

Harold Meyerson, in his Washington Post column marking the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, poses that it has been American capitalism - chiefly the Wal-Marts of the world - that has spurred the growth of China into a rising superpower:

The transfer of manufacturing from the United States to China—driven by the rise of mega-retailers such as Wal-Mart that have been able to enforce a regime of low wages all along their global supply chains—has diminished our middle class and expanded theirs.

In fact, Meyerson points out it was American businesses and their representative groups (here’s looking at you, U.S. Chamber of Commerce) that opposed legislation in China aimed at strengthening worker rights. The goal was to improve working conditions and arrest the practice of withholding wages and forcing employees into working insanely long hours, but American business interests succeeded in pushing amendments to “make it more acceptable to foreign firms” - a fancy way of saying weakening the effect the bill would actually have on workers and the businesses that depend on keeping costs down. No wonder they’re such close buddies nowadays.

You can read the whole column, but Meyerson unleashes his most venomous critique in his closing:

Wal-Mart, which used to lock its night-shift stock clerks and janitors inside a number of its stores until the morning managers arrived, prefers production in Guangdong to manufacturing in the Midwest. Indeed, the director of purchasing for Wal-Mart is based in China.

As historian Nelson Lichtenstein and others have documented, Wal-Mart inspires in its managers an almost fanatical allegiance to the company’s cause. In Wal-Mart world, the provincialism (if not “idiocy") of rural life is fused with a brilliance in the art of low-cost, low-wage logistics to create a company that is both authoritarian in its inner workings and a friend of authoritarian regimes abroad. The butchers of Beijing could not have found any more compatible capitalists.

Beijing’s Favorite Capitalists [Washington Post]

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CALIFORNIA WAL-MART FINED FOR NOT PROTECTING WORKERS FROM HEPATITIS B

• NorCal Wal-Mart workers to be tested for Hepatitis [San Jose Mercury News (Calif.)]
  About 20 employees of Wal-Mart's Yuba City store will be tested for Hepatitis B after one worker was diagnosed with the bloodborne disease in December.

AMERICA'S OLDEST STATE PRESERVATION GROUP JOINS FIGHT TO SAVE WILDERNESS BATTLEFIELD

• Preservation group: Civil War battlefield at risk [Associated Press via Forbes]
  Preservation Virginia has joined a growing opposition that says a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter near the Wilderness Battlefield threatens the Civil War site where nearly 29,000 troops were killed or injured 145 years ago.
  

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REPUBLICAN APPOINTEES BLOCKED FEC CHARGES AGAINST WAL-MART

• Republicans Block Election Complaint against Wal-Mart [AllGov]
  Republican appointees to the Federal Election Commission found nothing illegal in the actions by Wal-Mart during last year’s election when the giant retailer was accused of pushing its employees to vote against Barack Obama and other Democrats.

• FEC Dismisses Wal-Mart Complaints [CQpolitics]
  The Federal Election Commission deadlocked on whether Wal-Mart violated campaign finance laws during the 2008 campaign. Because of the tie vote, complaints against the retailer were dismissed, documents released Thursday show.
  

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LONG ISLAND STAMPEDE VICTIMS WIN SETTLEMENT, SAFETY CHANGES FROM WAL-MART

• Wal-Mart to pay victims of stampede [Newsday via Chicago Tribune]
  Mega-retailer Wal-Mart will pay an unspecified sum to victims hurt in a stampede that left a security guard trampled to death at a Valley Stream store during an after-Thanksgiving sale.
  

• NY prosecutor ends investigation into Wal-Mart trampling death, creates pact with retailer [Associated Press via Chicago Tribune]
  A New York prosecutor is ending a criminal investigation into the post-Thanksgiving trampling death of a temporary employee at a Long Island Wal-Mart.
  

• Wal-Mart To Announce Changes In Wake Of Trampling Death [NY 1-TV (N.Y.)]
  Wal-Mart officials are expected to announce today an agreement to improve safety measures following the trampling death of an employee from Queens last year.
  

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SENATOR HARKIN OPEN TO COMPROMISE ON EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE

• Harkin May Drop ‘Card-Check’ to Pass Milder Labor-Law Changes [Bloomberg News]
  The chief Democratic sponsor of a measure to promote union organizing says he may have to sacrifice its “card-check” centerpiece in favor of more modest labor-law changes that could clear the U.S. Senate.
  

• Card-check may be stripped from bill [Philadelphia Business Today (Pa.)]
  U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who sponsored legislation to make it easier for workers to join unions, has said the main provision of the proposal may have to be dropped to get the votes to pass it.
  

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES TOUR WILDERNESS BATTLEFIELD WITH ROBERT DUVALL

• Actor Duvall enters battle to save Va. battlefield [Associated Press]
  Academy Award-winning actor Robert Duvall has fired a verbal salvo against plans to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter near a Virginia Civil War battlefield where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee first fought the Union's Ulysses S. Grant.
  

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Wal-Mart has agreed to revise a plan on a payroll cut involving 2,000 mid-level managers across its outlets in China after a trade union stepped in to mediate, state media is reporting. Here’s a quick recap of today’s stories. You can find our previous posts on the issues here and here.

Row at Wal-Mart China settled after unions step in [MarketWatch]

Wal-Mart China had planned to relocate about 2,000 mid-level managers at existing stores to new stores it planned to open, the China Daily reported in its online edition Friday, citing a senior official at the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions.

The report said the workers union became involved after Wal-Mart employees reported that senior management announced the relocations under threat of demotion or dismissal, the report cited the federation’s Vice Chairman Wang Tongxin as saying.

Wal-Mart Bows to Union Pressure on China Restructuring [Wall Street Journal Blogs]

Wal-Mart (WMT) has made adjustments to its restructuring plans in China after objections from the state-backed All-China Federation of Trade Unions, state media reported today.

Last week, the company said it planned to trim management positions, a move that would have involved 1,400 (about 2.5%) of its employees in China. The affected employees would have faced pay cuts, relocation to other stores or possible job losses. This upset union leaders, who said their members hadn’t been consulted. (Under government pressure, in 2006 the famously union-resistant Wal-Mart allowed unions to form in China).

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We reported earlier this week on Chinese workers protesting a Wal-Mart “job optimization” program that would have led to layoffs for many mid-level executive positions. In fact, managers included in the optimization program were actually to be given three options: demotion with reduced salary, relocation, or leaving the company with compensation.

Today, however, the China Daily is reporting that Wal-Mart has decided to backtrack on its optimization plan.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to adjust its plan to streamline staffing in China, and will keep positions and salaries unchanged for employees who don’t want to be reassigned to other locations, the China Daily reported Wednesday. The report, citing Chen Lu, a Wal-mart public relations official in China, said the adjustment to the plan came after a breakthrough in talks between the U.S. retailer and its Chinese union.

So THIS is why unions can be a beneficial tool for workers, eh??

The report did, however, go on to say that Wal-Mart will keep pushing forward its program to redeploy workers.

Wal-Mart reportedly to ease up on China staff streamlining plan [MarketWatch]

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In China, Wal-Mart’s “job optimization” program was just a fancy way of saying you’re fired. That is, until the country’s government-run trade union stepped in.

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart announced it could need to slash some mid-level executive positions in an effort to adapt to “the changeable market situation.” At the time, however, company officials refused to say how many people would lose their jobs. The plan that was ultimately unveiled was dubbed the retailer’s “job optimization and regrouping” program, aimed at relocating some mid-management staff to similar posts in new stores.

Angry staff affected by the plan were not buying it, however, and labeled the program as a “de facto layoff plan.” In fact, managers included in the optimization program were actually given three options: demotion with reduced salary, relocation, or leaving the company with compensation - with those choices, Wal-Mart was obviously aiming to trim staff.

“I came to work for Wal-Mart in my 20s. I have been always working hard and never made any major mistakes. I am now pushing 40. If I have to leave Wal-Mart, I really don’t know where to find another job.” said a department manager at Wal-Mart’s Shekou store in Shenzhen.

The optimization program has been thwarted for now, however, as the country’s government-run trade union stepped in and blocked the restructuring. That decision came after over 50 staff protested the plan at Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China.

“Three mid-level executives came to my office this morning and told me the plan was shelved and they have resumed their work,” Xinhua news agency quoted Yang Fengzhi, a union official in northeast China, as saying. The managers in Jilin province, who earlier had been told they would be laid off, were asked to return to work after the union stepped in, the report said.

See, but that’s the thing. China is what it is, yet for all we complain about that country’s methods of doing things, workers there can still band together to fight for their jobs. Yet here in the land of the free, Wal-Mart workers attempting to flex their muscles will find themselves quickly unemployed.

What do you think? Does it make sense that workers in China have more rights that those right here at home?

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For an appealing market with 1.4 billion people, a booming middle class and a fascination with Western products, Wal-Mart’s performance in China has been questionable.

According to some sources, the company hasn’t turned a profit there in 12 years. And yesterday the retailer announced that it is ‘restructuring’ about 1,400 people (read: ‘transfers’ at best, layoffs at worst). The retailer says eliminating one whole layer of management is necessary to remain competitive “as the market matures.”

What Wal-Mart spokespeople didn’t mention is that the Chinese retail market has been maturing and changing for over a decade, giving Wal-Mart ample opportunity to adapt. Wal-Mart has encountered numerous difficulties in China, especially in working with its government. It needs the approval of the Department of Trade to open new stores, and in provinces all over China it has been unable to get this approval. The retailer also has been trying to enter the Guangzhou market, one of China’s biggest, for over 12 years without success.

As we’ve seen in the U.S., community and government resistance to Wal-Mart often goes hand in hand with the company’s poor labor practices. In China, unlike in the U.S., Wal-Mart workers have successfully formed a union to fight for better pay and benefits. By September 16th of last year, all 108 Wal-Mart China stores had collective contracts.

Still, in spite of last year’s successful unionization, why did it take Wal-Mart two years to respond to an All China Federation of Trade Unions and National People’s Congress blacklisting of the retailer for not allowing its employees collective contracts? This blacklisting and delay raises questions as to Wal-Mart’s ability to address the concerns of China’s government and unions alike.

Under Mike Duke’s guidance, Wal-Mart is clearly banking on most of its growth coming from the international sector. China is the biggest prize of them all, and after a decade - Wal-Mart continues to struggle there. Will it make it?

Wal-Mart China to cut jobs in management rejig [Reuters]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s (WMT.N) China unit will eliminate one management layer of its stores in China to improve efficiency, affecting up to 1,400 people, the company said on Wednesday.

The U.S. retailer, which has 147 outlets in China and employs over 50,000, will offer affected employees the option to move to new stores or take other positions with lower salaries, said Jonathan Dong, a spokesman at Wal-Mart (China) Investment Co Ltd.

“As the market matures ... we have to adjust our productivity and efficiency,” Dong told Reuters.

The reduction will affect 140 “super centres” as the layer of assistant managers or deputy mangers is eliminated. That will involve between 840 and 1,400 staff, the company said. (Reporting by Fion Li; Editing by David Holmes)

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A federal judge in Nevada has halted a class action against Wal-Mart and dog food manufacturer Menu Foods before it even had a chance to begin. His ruling held that the need for individual factual inquiries made a class action untenable. This isn’t completely surprising - the lawsuit was filed based on deceptive trade practices and claimed Wal-Mart’s Ol’ Roy pet food products were misleading in their labeling in that they claimed to be made in the USA, when in fact many ingredients came from China. The Judge argued that this meant everyone in the class would have had to purchase the food based on the misleading labeling, something that would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis. You can read the entire court order here.

While the decision wasn’t surprising, the timing might have been:

The judge’s decision was unusual in that he denied class certification before any substantial discovery had been performed. Indeed, the court noted that so-called preemptive motions are generally disfavored, since “the shape and form of a class action evolves only through the process of discovery.” However, the court determined that the class was untenable as a matter of law, and “it would be a waste of the parties’ resources and judicial resources to conduct discovery on class certification.”

So, not only will the class action not move forward, but no discovery will be done unless individual cases are filed - which means many of the facts as to how we ended up with such a far-reaching pet food scare will remain a mystery until then.

The Ol’ Roy suit was originally filed in 2007 and eventually consolidated with a class action in New Jersey which alleged that tainted food distributed by Menu Foods and others led to the death of hundreds of pets. That action consisted of over 100 suits that grew out of the largest pet food recall in U.S. history, and settled in April of last year for $24 million. The Ol’ Roy suit, however, was severed from the Menu Foods action prior to the settlement.

Wal-Mart Cuts Class Off at the Pass in Pet Food Case [Law.com]

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The speak out stories keep rolling in. Our latest entry comes from a New Jersey department manager. From low wages to managerial abuse to recalled products, things don’t seem to be going well at this Garden State store. Read the story below for a full account.

“I am a department manager at a NJ store and in every single morning meeting (which are held on the sales floor in front of customers); we are yelled at for whatever the “catch of the day” is. We have a skeleton staff because they are firing and cutting hours. We are now being verbally abused each morning. Also, during the day, managers are screaming at us to go unload trucks, get carts from the parking or run registers over the walkies.

All the customers hear everything that is said to us in the meetings and over the walkies. No one lives above the poverty level. You have to take 2 days off to be paid for one sick day. A scam if you asked me. You have to work for nine, not eight hours because management will force you to take an unpaid lunch hour. The benefits are expensive and awful. There are mice and cats running around and if the customers knew where the food sat before it went out on the floor, they would not shop there. In addition, nothing is made in the USA – everything is made in China and the quality is very poor. We now have a huge number of recalls due to lead being in a lot of products and appliances being recalled for overheating or leaking dangerous fumes. We at our store have notified the ethics department because we cannot handle the abusive harassment anymore.

The store manager does not want any more women managers. He said women are the troublemakers. The open door policy is a joke, if you have something you need to address with them it comes back to bite you. We get no cost of living raises and the most you can get once a year is .60/hour. That is the most and they are not giving that anymore. Almost 50% of our store is now out looking for another job. Most are going to give Target a try. Please as a consumer, do not shop at Wal-Mart, it is not a USA minded company and the products are overpriced and inferior and some are dangerous.”

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The latest news on Wal-Mart’s international expansion reveals plans to open Wal-Mart’s fourth Chinese Sam’s Club in the first half of 2009.  Yet the reality of the situation is that Wal-Mart has been trying to enter the Guangzhou market for over 12 years! According to the People’s Net, “That Wal-Mart has not been able to enter Guangzhou is definitely not a business insider’s secret.  When Wal-Mart initially planned for a store in Guangzhou, it had also promised to locate its headquarters in the city.  Wal-Mart ultimately set up headquarters in Shenzhen.”

Additionally, from the Nanfang Daily, “For the past few years, Wal-Mart’s expansion in China’s first tier cities has not been smooth.  For example, Wal-Mart has never entered Guangzhou [capital city of Guangdong province] and instead has spread to second and third tier cities such as Hunan Loudi, etc.”

And with Wal-Mart’s international sales falling more than 10% in December, we’re not holding our breath that a Sam’s Club will open in Guangzhou anytime soon.

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A move that many analysts have anticipated for a long time is one step closer to reality: Wal-Mart is moving into Russia. The retailer announced that it has joined the Russian Association of Retail Trade Companies (AKORT) and registered a legal entity in the country, Wal-Mart Eastern Europe Holdings. In January 2007, Wal-Mart had hinted at expansion and had begun talks with X5, Russia’s largest food retailer. The Russian market represents an awesome growth opportunity for the company: GDP grew at 8.1% in 2007 and Russian consumers have shown a preference for toys from Wal-Mart’s number one supplier country, China, with imports valued at hundreds of millions of dollars in 2006. Yet as of 2008 only about a third of Russia’s retail sales came through groceries and superstores, with independent markets and small businesses constituting the majority of the sector. Additionally, Wal-Mart’s European competitors Carrefour and Tesco have shown an interest in moving into Russia; Carrefour is already part of AKORT. As elsewhere, Wal-Mart may be trying to beat them to the punch.

Wal-Mart Moves Closer to Russia [Reuters via Moscow Times]

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has registered a legal entity in Russia and joined a local retailers’ organization, the latest in a series of moves indicating its interest in expanding into the country.

The company registered a subsidiary under the name WM Eastern Europe Holdings and joined the Russian Association of Retail Trade Companies, or AKORT, which includes the 28 largest commercial organizations in the country.

“Wal-Mart is working on the Russian market,” Ilya Belonovsky, the executive director of the 28-member industry group said Dec. 29. He declined to elaborate.

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No longer will your tootsies be kept tender by Wal-Mart’s “all man-made” Tender Tootsie slippers. The main problem, apparently, is that while Wal-Mart advertises that its slippers use 100% man-made materials, it turns out that in reality those slippers are lined with real rabbit fur.

So, either Wal-Mart is claiming to be the inventor and subsequent mass-producer of the bunny, or Wal-Mart’s packaging is inaccurate. I say it’s a coin-flip, but either way the mass retailer and uber rabbit farmer has pulled all of its Tender Tootsie slippers from store shelves in Canada after the Animal Defence League of Canada discovered the products were incorrectly labelled and contained real fur.

Marley Daviduk, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver branch of the national organization, found the slippers while shopping last week and the Ottawa and Vancouver branches of the Animal Defence League immediately contacted both Wal-Mart Canada and the product’s London, Ont.-based importer. “I knew right away it was real rabbit fur, but it said on the tag that there were no man-made materials,” she said.

The slippers, manufactured in China, apparently slipped past Wal-Mart’s quality control despite the fact that the company states it has a strict no-fur policy. Maybe next we should start checking the fur coats, to see if, ohhh, perhaps a real mink got slipped in there every so often?

Wal-Mart pulls slippers after animal-rights group complains [CanWest News Service]

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Introducción
La división de Adquisiciones Globales de Wal-Mart fue creada en el 2002 para administrar los negocios de importación directa de Wal-Mart y las adquisiciones directas al fabricante. Adquisiciones Globales es responsable de supervisar la compra de mercancía a miles de fabricas proveedoras en el mundo.

Esa división también es responsable de identificar nuevos proveedores, de formar sociedades comerciales con proveedores existentes, y de administrar la cadena global de suministro de las importaciones directas de Wal-Mart. El objetivo de Adquisiciones Globales es trabajar en asuntos relativos a garantía de calidad, realizar inspecciones a fábricas proveedoras, y suministrar capacitación de estándares de lugar de trabajo para proveedores y fábricas. El equipo de la división es de 1700 personas, localizadas en su mayor parte en Shenzhen con oficinas adicionales en 50 países.

Establecido en 1992 para mejorar las condiciones laborales de los trabajadores de las fábricas proveedoras de Wal-Mart, el Programa de Valores Éticos es una subdivisión de Adquisiciones Globales. El equipo de Programa de Valores Éticos es responsable de verificar el cumplimiento de los Estándares de Wal-Mart para Proveedores, así como de las leyes locales aplicables. El programa coordina la administración y ejecución de auditorías a las fábricas proveedoras de las que Wal-Mart compra directamente y es el importador nominal.

Esta introducción examina los sistemas de procuración y adquisición de Wal-Mart, así como algunos de los problemas con fábricas en China, Bangladesh, y otros países donde su modelo de suministro ha fallado al proteger los derechos de los trabajadores y cumplir con los propios estándares de Wal-Mart.

Como la compañía más grande del mundo, y como miembro de proyectos de estándares laborales tales como la Iniciativa de Comercio Ético (Ethical Trading Initiative) y el Programa Global de Cumplimiento Social (Global Social Compliance Programme), es responsabilidad de Wal-Mart dar un paso al frente y ser un líder e innovador en cuestiones de suministro, como lo ha hecho en cuestiones de menudeo. Al estudiar los diversos casos sobre abusos en fábricas de explotación y Wal-Mart, tres patrones notables salen a la luz:

1.) La incapacidad de Wal-Mart para aplicar sus propios Estándares de Proveedores
2.) La incapacidad de Wal-Mart para implementar un sistema de responsabilidad con los dueños y gerentes de fábricas
3.) La perpetua insistencia de Wal-Mart en conseguir el precio más bajo posible de sus proveedores

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