As you have probably read or heard or talked about, a Long Island based Wal-Mart employee was killed this past weekend, on Black Friday, by a mob of frantic holiday shoppers.  While this incident probably has as much to do with the desperation of an economically depressed crowd, who stampeded 34 year old Jdimytai Damour to death, it is also a pretty good illustration of why and how Wal-Mart is the worst place in the entire world: people are literally willing to kill each other for discount prices.

So here’s my top ten countdown of reasons why I would rather live without a single material item than promote the evil that is Wal-Mart (most, by the way, can be found in the awesome documentary, Wal-Mart: High Cost of Low Prices):

1. Wal-Mart = most dangerous place to shop

If you think this is the first time someone has been killed in a Wal-Mart, think again.  In fact, Wal-Mart is notorious for the high rate of crime that occurs in its parking lots all across America.

For years, public reports have chronicled the terrible problem of crimes at Wal-Mart stores. Horrific reports of rape, murder, kidnappings, robbery and assault at Wal-Mart stores. For many police officials, the issue of crimes at Wal-Mart stores has been “overwhelming”

In the first seven months of 2005, nearly 100 violent crimes were reported, many of which could have been avoided by the addition of a security guard, extra lighting, or better surveillance systems.  Here are two more great facts:

• National estimates indicate that almost 1 million criminal/police incidents occurred at Wal-Mart stores in 2004 – or 2 criminal/police incidents per minute in 2004;
• Wal-Mart could implement roving security patrols at all stores nation-wide at an estimated cost of 4 cents a customer visit.

What makes these crazy pills even harder to swallow is the fact that while Wal-Mart is basically absent when it comes to security outside of their stores, inside, there is not a single area that is not under carefully monitored watch.  This has prevented any type of organizing by employees from taking place,  which brings me to point 2…

2. Working Conditions for Wal-Mart “Associates” are HORRENDOUS

In 2006, Wal-Mart was paying their nearly 2 million full-time hourly Associates an average of $10.11/hour.  At 34 hours per week, with overtime strongly discouraged by the company, the typical Wal-Mart employee was bringing in around $18,000/year.  In addition, with a 75% turnover rate within the first year, they have very few veteran employees who have acquired pay raises over their time with the company.

Wal-Mart employees earn 20% less than what the average retail worker earns, and over $10,000 less than what the average two-person family needs to make its most basic needs

Meanwhile, in 2008 Wal-Mart stood as the world’s largest retailer and brought in $378 billion in sales.  The Walton’s, worth about $23 billion each, have a combined wealth of around $100 billion, or $100,000,000,000.00 and topped the 400 richest Americans list at numbers 4-7.  These figures make them by far the wealthiest family in the US and second in the world.

Yet for some reason, they insist on underpaying their employees, creating unnecessary and expensive legal troubles.  There are so many law-suits against Wal-Mart, listing them all here would take hours, but here are a few examples from the great site, Wal-Mart Watch:

Wal-Mart Violated Worker Rights More than 2 Million Times, Minnesota Judge Rules Wal-Mart violated the law more than 2 million times over a six-year period by denying workers time for breaks and forcing them to work “off the clock” for no pay, a Minnesota judge has ruled. Dakota County District Judge Robert King ordered the company to pay $6.5 million in back pay. In addition, Wal-Mart faces fines as high as $2 billion for the wage-and-hour violations.

Family Leave Laws. Wal-Mart has received numerous fines for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act in locations all over the country — firing workers while on federally protected medical leave. In 2005, Wal-Mart was fined $188,000 by the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission for violating California state law by failing to reinstate a woman after she completed her maternity leave.

Off-the-Clock Work. In 2000, Wal-Mart paid $50 million to settle a lawsuit that involved 69,000 workers in Colorado who had allegedly been forced to work off the clock. In 2002, a federal grand jury in Oregon found Wal-Mart employees were forced to work off the clock and awarded back pay to 83 workers. In December 2005, Wal-Mart was ordered to pay $172 million to 116,000 current and former California workers for violating a 2001 state law that requires employers to give 30-minute, unpaid lunch breaks to employees who work at least six hours. In the United States, Wal-Mart has 53 class action lawsuits over wage and hour violations

Despite - or more likely because of - the numerous legal infractions commited by Wal-Mart, they have completely prevented their Associates from forming any type of union, and have closed entire stores instead of allowing their employees to organize.

3. More employees of Wal-Mart are under federal assistance programs than any other company

Because of the ridiculously low wages and the suprisingly (well, really?) high cost of Wal-Mart’s health care package, they actually encourage their workers to seek public assistance as opposed to covering their children, for instance:

A memo written by Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart Executive Vice President for Benefits, for the Wal-Mart Board of Directors, said: “We also have a significant number of Associates and their children who receive health insurance through public-assistance programs. Five percent of our Associates are on Medicaid compared to an average for national employers of 4 percent. Twenty-seven percent of Associates’ children are on such programs, compared to a national average of 22 percent. In total, 46 percent of Associates’ children are either on Medicaid or are uninsured. Wal-Mart’s critics an easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance.” [Susan Chambers Memo to the Wal-Mart Board of Directors; New York Times, 10/26/05]

Costco, in comparison, insures over 80% of their employees and pays nearly $17.00/hour, yet is able to provide the kind of low prices for which Wal-Mart is famous.  The difference?  Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO brought in $5.3 million last year not including stock options, incentives, bonuses, etc.; Costco’s CEO Jim Sinegal received $350,000.

Wal-Mart, therefore, costs American tax-payers nearly $1,557,000,000,00 annually.  In California alone, the public assistance used by Wal-Mart employees cost $86 million in 2004.

4. Wal-Mart consistently discriminates against minority groups

Wage disputes are not the only law suits Wal-Mart is currently facing.  On top of the fact that they underpay, under-insure, and under-protect their workers, they also openly discriminate when it comes to climbing the proverbial ladder: Edith Arana, an African American woman Associate, was famously told by a manager, “There’s no place for people like you in management.” The best known of these cases is Dukes vs. Wal-Mart, which seeks damages of $11 billion dollars and represents over 1.6 million women who have at some point since 1998 worked for the corporate giant.

Additionally, Wal-Mart is one of a few national retailers that does not provide health care benefits to same-sex domestic partners.  They were recently given a low score of 40 by the Human Rights Campaign, who discouraged their readers from shopping at Wal-Mart until fairer standards were reached.

And who can forget when Wal-Mart attempted to sue their former employee, Debbie Shank, for the $420,000.00 her family collected after she suffered severe brain damage from a traffic collision.

Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank’s long-term care.

Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank’s medical expenses and later sued for the same amount. However, the court ruled it can only recoup what is left in the family’s trust.

The Shanks didn’t notice in the fine print of Wal-Mart’s health plan policy that the company has the right to recoup medical expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit.

5. Wal-Mart destroys local businesses, and in turn, entire communites

Because of their “daily low prices,” which we now know come at the cost of the workers, shoppers, tax-payers, as well as the companies which manufacture the goods and inventors who sell their patents, Wal-Mart has a tradition of destroying the local economies of small-town America.  The low priced goods force competitors to either drop their own prices or try to compete based on other criteria, such as customer service and quality products.  Here are some stats:

• A study of small and rural towns in Iowa showed lost sales for local businesses ranging from -17.2% in small towns to -61.4% in rural areas, amounting to a total dollar loss of $2.46 BILLION over a 13-year period.
• In Iowa, retail businesses in several categories experienced a decline of up to 59% over a 13-year period.
• In Mississippi, local food stores in counties hosting a Wal-Mart supercenter lost sales of up to 17 percent over 5 years
• For every gain in sales by a Supercenter, there are corresponding losses in sales for local and/or family businesses
• In Maine, Wal-Mart captured an average $7.8 million from local/family businesses in their host towns during the first year of operation.

6. Imports Products/Exports Jobs:

In 2004, Wal-Mart imported $18 billion worth of goods, making it the countries 8th largest trading partner, ranking it ahead of Russia and Canada.  By constantly requiring manufacturers to drop their wholesale prices, Wal-Mart is actually encouraging the out-sourcing of jobs…

China is a godsend for companies like Wal-Mart because low Chinese production costs let it widen profit margins. Wal-Mart can’t really widen profit margins by raising its own prices very much, but it can widen profit margins by lowering costs, and going to China is a great solution for lowering the costs…

7. Uses Sweat Shops, Prison Labor, and Child Workers

…which means the people making the goods in Wal-Mart are for the most part working in sweatshop conditions.

“There have also been reports of teenagers in Bangladesh working in sweatshops 80 hours per week at $0.14 per hour, for Wal-Mart supplier Beximco. In 1994, Guatemalan, Wendy Diaz reported that she had been working for Wal-Mart at $0.30 per hour at age 13.”

It does not take outsourcing, however, for Wal-Mart to violate child labor laws:

• An internal Wal-Mart audit found “extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals.

• One week of time records from 25,000 employees in July 2000 found 1,371 instances of minors working too late, during school hours, or for too many hours in a day. There were 60,767 missed breaks and 15,705 lost meal times.

• Wal-Mart agreed to pay $135,540 to settle child labor violation charges in January 2005 for allegedly breaking child labor laws in 24 incidents.

• Wal-Mart has also been fined $205,650 for 1,436 violations of child labor laws in Maine for the period 1995 to 1998. The settlement represents the largest number of citations as well as the largest fine ever issued by the Maine Department of Labor for child labor violations.

8. Loves destroying the Earth:

• 1999: All new WAL-MART construction halted in state of PENNSYLVANIA due to Environmental Violations
• 2001: EPA orders WAL-MART to pay $1.0 MILLION fine for Clean Water Violations in: TEXAS, OKLAHOMA AND MASSACHUSETTS
• 2004: WAL-MART fined $3.1 MILLION by EPA, the largest ever for a retailer, for Clean Water Act violations in TEXAS, COLORADO, CALIFORNIA, DELAWARE, MICHIGAN, SOUTH DAKOTA, NEW JERSEY, TENNESSEE and UTAH
• 2005: Connecticut EPA orders WAL-MART to pay $1.15 MILLION for Clean Water Act violations in 22 stores

9. Censors its products

Under what they call Product Selection, Wal-Mart dictates what its customers can and cannot buy, and it usually conforms to the standards of, say, the Christian Right.

For example, in 2003, Wal-Mart removed certain men’s magazines from their shelves, such as Maxim, FHM, and Stuff, citing customer complaints regarding their racy content. Later that year, they decided to partly obscure the covers of Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire on store shelves due to “customer concerns” and refused to stock an issue of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit special because it took exception to one photograph.

Since 1991, Wal-Mart also has not carried music albums marked with the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA’s) Parental Advisory Label (contradictory to the allowance of R-rated movies and video games rated Mature), although they carry edited versions of such albums, with obscenities removed or overdubbed with less offensive lyrics…

In 1999, Wal-Mart announced that it would not stock emergency contraception pills in its pharmacies, not citing any particular reasons except for a “business decision” that was made earlier.The move was criticized by family planning advocates, citing that women in small towns where Wal-Mart pharmacies had little competition would have greater difficulties in obtaining the drug.

Yet despite their obvious attention to detail, Wal-Mart decided to continue selling the notoriously anti-Semetic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, until 2004.

10. Gives practically nothing back to the community, yet donates millions to conservative politicians

And finally, according to Business Week, the Waltons have given less than 1% of their wealth to charity; Bill Gates has given 58%.  In 2005, Wal-Mart employees gave over $5 million to The Critical Need Fund for Associates, set up to help fellow workers in times of crisis, like a hurricane.  The Walton Family gave $6,000.

Meanwhile, in 2004, “led by Sam Walton’s only daughter, Alice, the family spent $3.2 million on lobbying, conservative causes and candidates for last year’s federal elections.”

So next time you go to Wal-Mart to save, just remember what its actually costing….