Oregon Daily Emerald
Monday, November 28, 2005
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■ In my opinion
Cost cutting’s hidden price
Thanksgiving weekend, Wal-Mart
gleefully became one of the only big
box retailers to surpass expected
holiday sales.
Apparently, the receot documentary
“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low
Price” didn’t achieve its intended out
come. Wal-Mart sales are rapidly rising,
and company executives are working
hard to promote a friendly image. With
Wal-Mart now poised to become more
successful than ever, it seems that the
nation is slowly forgetting the Wal-Mart
hullabaloo of days gone by.
Luckily for everyone, some people
haven’t forsaken their fight against
Wal-Mart. The document “Everyday
Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All
Pay for Wal-Mart” was created in Feb
ruary 2004, by Democratic staff from
the U.S. House of Representatives.
What it says ought to make every con
sumer wary of Wal-Mart.
The report explained that Wal-Mart
has been repeatedly charged with vio
lating workers’ rights through such ac
tions as firing workers who attempted
to unionize. At one point, Wal-Mart
even created “A Manager’s Toolbox to
Remaining Union Free.”
If workers are threatened to abstain
from unionizing, they lose out on the
benefits and comfortable workplace ex
perience they are due. When employees
cannot band together in a union and de
mand fair treatment and wages, man
agers and executives hold all the power.
Not only do Wal-Mart workers re
ceive an exceedingly low salary thanks
to anti-unionizing efforts, some work
ers have been forced into labor off-the
clock. In one class-action lawsuit, it
was revealed that employees were
asked to work through their breaks and
even after their shift had ended and
their time card punched out. Overtime
is not always paid as such, and some
Wal-Mart managers have been accused
of erasing hours from employees’ time
AILEE SLATER
FURTHER FROM PERFECTION
cards. Wal-Mart stores often encourage
a high turnover rate, so that long-time
employees are replaced before they can
receive much-deserved raises.
Although these instances of unfair
labor practices occurred at individual
Wal-Mart stores, the company still
needs to be held accountable. Local
store managers only cut corners with
employee pay because of Wal-Mart’s
insistence that labor expenses are kept
as low as possible.
Besides bottom-level wages and off
the-clock work, Wal-Mart stores keep
labor costs down by failing to provide
some of their poorest employees with
health insurance. Employees who do
receive health insurance often have to
grapple with the cost of higher-than-av
erage co-pays and deductibles, often
forcing these workers to forgo the op
tion of purchasing health insurance
from the workplace altogether.
And who picks up the tab on work
ers who, by general standards, should
be insured by their employer? Local
taxpayers who give money to support
public health care programs, which
then benefit the workers who should
have been covered by their employer in
the first place. The money saved at
Wal-Mart is hardly money earned, be
cause the consumer is paying for
Wal-Mart employees’ health insurance.
When a Wal-Mart comes to town,
smaller businesses are forced to close be
cause they cannot compete with
Wal-Mart’s prices. One reason small busi
nesses can’t compete is that those busi
nesses do not engage in unethical price
cutting practices. When businesses that
treat their employees well are forced to
close, those employees can end up seek
ing jobs at Wal-Mart and experiencing all
of the problems that go along with work
ing for a cost-cutting corporation.
Wal-Mart’s problems even span to
the national level, when the company
uses its business clout to demand ex
tremely low prices on goods produced
overseas. If companies in China, from
whom Wal-Mart imports a large amount
of products, are unable to turn a profit,
those overseas businesses are forced to
cut labor expenses. In its demand for the
lowest prices possible, Wal-Mart is liter
ally creating sweatshops.
As if looking out for the common
good of humankind is not reason
enough to avoid shopping at Wal
Mart, consider this: Many Wal-Mart
products are actually priced higher
than at other comparable retailers.
The goal of Wal-Mart is to pull in cus
tomers with a few bargain deals, then
hope that those shoppers pick up oth
er items on their list that are not
priced so low. If a consumer at Wal
Mart is not wise to the average price
of, say, light bulbs, the customer ends
up paying more than they should.
As the holiday shopping season gets
bustling, remember that the low prices
offered by Wal-Mart are not as low as
they seem. By supporting the Wal-Mart
company, you are causing financial
losses to community taxpayers, sup
porting illegal labor practices, condon
ing sweatshops and, thanks to Wal
Mart pricing schemes, possibly paying
above average retail for some products.
Money is power, and Wal-Mart has
shown time and time again that it is un
deserving of such power.
aslater@ dailyemerald. com
■ Guest commentary
Military recruits should know
the consequences of enlisting
Despite my Ph.D. and 20 years of
practice in clinical psychology, I con
tinue to be astonished by the self
blinding capacity of the right-wing
mind. Gabe Bradley’s recent commen
tary on our ROTC building demonstra
tion last week (“You call this a
protest?” ODE Nov. 22) was a sad ex
ample, reflecting an apparent appetite
for theatrics over substance.
First, the protester with the “big,
stupid-looking grin on his face” is an
emeritus University psychology pro
fessor and Korean War veteran. “This
fellow” — Hank Dizney, who smiles
easily — is an imperturbably good
natured man of proven intellect and
passionate care for his country and his
fellow citizen-soldiers who are dying
and suffering needlessly in a falsely
justified, illegal, recklessly destructive,
counter-productive war.
We demonstrators, derided as
“lame" for our modest numbers,
were not the intended story. Our de
liberately small and disciplined group
was not staging a theater project. Our
purpose was to attract media atten
tion to facts and foreign press photo
graphs of the Iraq War not provided
to the American public by the Ameri
can press. Ordinary Iraqis and
uniformed Americans dying daily
without justification are the story, not
seven people politely arrested for
misdemeanor trespassing. If the U.S.
media were doing their job, our ef
forts would be unnecessary.
Our purpose is precisely compara
ble to the civil rights movement, with
a high-stakes moral issue of equal or
greater gravity. Bradley needs to learn
more about post-World War II Ameri
can foreign policy, our half-century
history of economic manipulation,
covert terrorism (the School of the
Americas), thinly rationalized mili
tary aggression (in Vietnam and Pana
ma), and support of dictators who
collude with our multinational corpo
rations. These policies have planted
and nourished the seeds of anti
American terrorism. Shrinking our
economic dependency on the mili
tary-industrial complex and its need
for a continuous state of hot or cold
war should become an epic and his
toric struggle of at least equal impor
tance to the civil rights movement (in
which I participated during graduate
school at Louisiana State University).
Bradley also derided the Vietnam
demonstrations as “disgraceful dis
plays." These displays accelerated the
ending of this disastrous war, also
falsely justified. In addition to the
58,000 American dead in that debacle,
3.4 million Vietnamese were killed in
a war we created and eventually lost
with none of the dire domino conse
quences predicted by its instigators.
We only asked that potential mili
tary recruits be told the truth as we
know it — a 90 percent likelihood of
attack or ambush when serving in
Iraq; a peer-reviewed, medical jour
nal-published public health study in
dicating some 100,000 mostly civilian,
mostly coalition-caused Iraqi deaths
by August 2004; facts about combat
induced, often lifelong post-traumatic
stress disorders; tripled worldwide ter
rorist incidents following our Iraq in
vasion; massive war profiteering and
corruption ballooning our national
debt; and 80 percent of Iraqis who
want us out of their country.
We seek not to derogate our uni
formed citizens but to spare them
from unnecessary trauma, disability
and death.
A former Vietnam-era Army
psychologist, Jack Dresser is currently
a behavioral scientist and regular
columnist for the Springfield News.
■ Editorial
Facebook
could invite
more than
yourfriends
Writing about alcohol-fueled endeavors on
your blog or posting a photo of yourself peeing
on public buildings on Facebook may seem like
a private act. You might assume that only your
friends have the time or initiative to look. We
sense that many students often believe that in
formation shared online through social net
working will never get back to anyone who
matters. Like a parent, a teacher or a future em
ployer. Or the police.
But recent news stories in college papers,
including one in today’s Emerald, detail the
dangers of putting incriminating information
about yourself on Facebook or other personal
sites. When posting information on sites, it’s
vital to remember that the Internet is open
and available to all. Even when sites such as
Facebook require registration to access your
profile, there are always avenues for savvy in
vestigators to discover information that you
don’t want advertised.
potential employers are aosoiuieiy ame to
access Facebook profiles by obtaining a user
name and password from employees or
prospective employees, especially when those
employers are located on campus or visiting
campus looking for student workers. If profes
sionals in any job market view inappropriate
profiles, some Facebookers may be destined
to remain cluelessly unemployed.
Parents have likewise been known to dis
cover similar facts about their underage stu
dents through various online blogging and
networking tools.
And for anyone who doesn’t like getting ar
rested, it’s probably time to post less informa
tion about how often you break the law. Stu
dents nationwide have gotten into varying
amounts of trouble over photos or groups in
volving alcohol consumption.
This month, students at an Emory residence
center were told that they may face punishment
from an Alcohol Conduct Council because of
their group “Woodruff = Wasted. ”
Even more concerning is the use of Facebook
by Pennsylvania State University Police to iden
tify individuals who rushed the field after an
Oct. 8 football game. Similarly, it’s possible for
the police to check Facebook for addresses
where parties may occur. A public safety direc
tor at Georgia College & State University said
early this month that Facebook has become a
valuable, oft-used tool for determining parties
that may become unruly. When students make
a party public Facebook knowledge, law offi
cials can easily get word of any wild, possibly
underage get-together; this fact is especially im
portant to remember when dorm parties are ad
vertised on Facebook, as campus departments
of safety are likely to be Facebook savvy.
Although Eugene police and the University’s
Student Judicial Affairs said they don’t regular
ly use Facebook, it may only be a matter of
time before they catch on to perusing this re
source. Thus we suggest unjoining the “I was
trashed in my Facebook pic” group, as well as
“the cannabis club.”
And don’t forget: A picture is worth a thou
sand words. Drug paraphernalia or question
able surroundings in Facebook pictures offer
police and parents ample opportunity to regu
late illegal actions.
Unfortunately, the question is not whether
students deserve a right to privacy in their on
line communications. The fact is that informa
tion posted on the Internet will almost certainly
travel into the hands of someone unexpected.
We suggest thinking twice before posting this
weekend’s party pictures on Facebook.