Even after bringing in $10 billion in profit last year, Wal-Mart refuses to pay better than poverty-level wages, fails to provide affordable health insurance to more than 600,000 employees, has discriminated against 2 million women workers and keeps violating our child labor laws.

Here are some good reasons not to shop at Wal-Mart this year for back-to-school supplies: 

• Wal-Mart has racked up huge fines for child labor law violations. The rich company reportedly makes children younger than 18 work through their meal breaks, work very late and even work during school hours. Several states have found Wal-Mart workers younger than 18 are operating dangerous equipment, like chainsaws, and working in such dangerous areas as around trash compactors. (The New York Times, 1/13/04; The Associated Press, 2/18/05; The Hartford Courant, 6/18/05)
  
• Wal-Mart pays poverty-level wages and fails to provide affordable company health insurance to more than 600,000 employees. That means Wal-Mart workers and their families have a hard time paying the bills and getting the health care they need—and Wal-Mart is at or close to the top of state lists of employers whose workers are forced to rely on taxpayer-funded health insurance programs like Medicaid. (Wal-Mart annual reports; Business Week, 10/2/03; state reports)
  
• By demanding impossibly low prices, Wal-Mart forces its suppliers to produce goods in low-wage countries that don't protect workers. A worker in a Honduran clothing factory whose main customer is Wal-Mart, for example, sews sleeves onto 1,200 shirts a day for only $35 a week. (Los Angeles Times, 11/24/03)
  
• Wal-Mart has a shameful record of paying women less than men. Wal-Mart pays women workers nearly $5,000 less yearly than men. Some 1.6 million women are eligible to join a class-action lawsuit charging Wal-Mart with discrimination. (Richard Drogin, Ph.D., 2/03; Los Angeles Times, 12/30/04)

Get more information on Wal-Mart at: www.walmartcostsyou.org.