Wal-Mart’s Smoking Gun
Rare internal memos smuggled out of a factory in China confirm abuses and expose Wal-Mart’s monitoring as a whitewash.

• Wal-Mart is the world’s largest importer of goods made in China.
• In fact, Wal-Mart uses 4,400 factories in a single province alone—in Guangdong.

These very rare internal memos were smuggled out of the Shuihe Electronics factory by workers in China in May and June 2001. The Shuihe workers were routinely forced to work 14 ½ to 18 ½ hours a day, seven days a week, handling toxic chemicals with their bare hands—while being paid just 13 cents an hour to assemble toys for Wal-Mart. (See the NLC’s report “Toys of Misery,” February 2002, www.nlcnet.org)

The first attached document confirms the mandatory all-night shifts from 7:30 a.m. straight through to 12:30, 3:30 or even 6:00 a.m. the following morning. For working such 17 to 22 ½-hour shifts, the workers would be rewarded with a “night snack” bonus worth a whopping three to five rmb, or 36 to 60 U.S. cents.

The second document—“Internal Notice (Instructions on Inspections from Wal-Mart)” –clearly exposes Wal-Mart’s so-called monitoring program as an orchestrated farce and whitewash. This also confirms what workers from across the developing world have repeatedly described to us as the hasty and temporary preparations carried out in their factories in response to Wal-Mart’s announced “inspections.”

In preparation for Wal-Mart’s visit, Shuihe factory management ordered the appropriate staff to:

• Unlock emergency fire exits;
• Unlock the first aid or medical boxes;
• Prepare “qualified”—ie. doctored and cleaned-up—time cards and payroll lists;
• Clean the factory dorms;
• Clean the kitchen, especially posting a “health certificate” and, temporarily, cleaning and cooking all food according to requirements;
• Workers were to wear their uniforms;
• Workers in the glue, spray painting and stamping departments, especially those close to “crude materials” were to be provided with and wear gauze masks and earplugs.

It is impossible that Wal-Mart is still so totally ignorant of the common practice in China for factories to keep two sets of time cards and payroll sheets, and to clean the factory, unlock emergency exits, provide safety gear and take whatever other steps are necessary in preparation for Wal-Mart’s announced visit. No company could be that shallow and gullible—unless of course it were consciously acting out a role with the full intent of achieving the desired result—a whitewash.