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Conditions are also horrific for around two million farm workers - exploited, living in sub-poverty misery, without benefits, a living wage, overtime pay, or other job protections, even for children. Because state and federal oversight are lax, Florida workers have been chained to poles, locked in trucks, physically beaten, and cheated out of pay, yet are intimidated to stay silent.
They also perform dangerous jobs, experience workplace accidents, and are exposed daily to toxic chemicals. As a result, about 300,000 suffer pesticide poisoning annually, and many others experience accidents, musculoskeletal, and other type injuries, some serious.
Workers in Florida, Texas, California, Washington, and North Carolina are most vulnerable, with nowhere to go for redress except those benefitting from a few organizing victories. Impressive as they are, however, they're no match against agribusiness giants or companies like Wal-Mart, a ruthless exploiter of worker rights.
Domestic servitude is another problem affecting many thousands, usually foreign women taking jobs as live-in workers, mostly for the wealthy, foreign diplomats, or other domestic or foreign officials. They seek a better life, send money home to families, yet are exploited - often by unscrupulous traffickers who hold them in forced servitude, work them up to 19 hours a day, pay them $100 or less a month, and subject them to sexual abuse.
They're are excluded from labor law protections. As a result, they're underpaid, work long hours, have little rest, are abused, given limited freedom, denied medical care, proper food and nutrition, and are subjected to unsafe working conditions.
So are many restaurant and hotel workers - underpaid with few benefits, worked long hours without overtime pay, fired if they complain, and these practices exist for lack of regulation and a growing demand for cheap labor, letting unscrupulous employers exploit powerless workers for profit. If it's common in America, what chance have workers in developing countries with lax labor laws offering few protections, even for children, to attract business.
Abuse happens often in dangerous, unhealthy environments for sub-poverty wages, with no overtime pay, breaks or bathroom visits, even when sick. Employees suffer numerous accidents (at times severe), can't organize, and are harassed, intimidated, and fired if they try.
In today's globalized economy, capital is highly mobile, free to go anywhere for the highest return by fleeing locales with high taxes, strict labor laws, or rigorous environmental protections yielding lower profits by raising costs, the main one being labor that's easy to get cheap in developing states eager to grow and needing to new businesses do it. The result is a race to the bottom, a phenomenon Karl Polanyi described in "The Great Transformation - namely, that:
"To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings....would result in the demolition of society....Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed." And labor, of course, exploited for the lowest cost.
NLC on Wal-Mart
With over $400 billion in sales and about 2.1 million employees, Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and private employer, and number three globally in the 2009 Fortune 500 rankings behind Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon.
On December 16, 2009, NLC reported that "Wal-Mart's Punitive Policies Drive Employees to Work Sick - Everyone comes to work sick."
(1) A deli section worker in a Pennsylvania company supercenter said:
"Everyone comes to work sick," including employees handling food. In the deli section, "plenty of girls come coughing their brains out, but can't go home because of points (unless they're) coughing too loudly (in which case they) switch you to another department. Since you can't take days off," she kept working. Her cough worsened, and she ended up hospitalized with pneumonia.
"You can't stay home, and God forbid if you have to leave early." For being hospitalized, she got a demerit, lost eight hours pay, and was required to take a leave of absence. Being sick, deli section work was hard because it's a "hot area," requiring in and out visits to a freezer to get meat.
"Everyone is sweating and your hair is all wet, but we can't use fans because of the dust." Under Wal-Mart's "Open Availability" policy, management demands all associates be available 24 - 7. "A flood of people would leave the company if they could find other work. Fear and need" keep them there.
