Save money, live better…don’t work at Walmart?

Last week Walmart closed five stores in four states and only gave employees five hours notice. That’s right—five hours. Why the sudden closure? The retailer cited plumbing issues that could take up to six months to complete.

Courtesy of Giphy.

That’s right, Blanche Devereaux—something doesn’t add up here. Plumbing work, even extensive plumbing work, does not take six months to complete. Additionally, what are the odds that the plumbing systems of five geographically unrelated stores would all need repairs at the same time? The situation was ridiculous enough to warrant a proper lampooning from Larry Wilmore on Tuesday night’s episode of The Nightly Show. [Note: despite claiming problems with plumbing, none of the Walmart stores that were abruptly closed have filed for plumbing permits yet].

Walmart workers say that the company probably closed at least one store in retaliation against workers protesting for better pay and working conditions. [So that’s why they can justify shutting down stores and losing revenue from five stores for half a year]. Walmart does not want its workers to unionize. In fact, it never has.

Back in 2000 a group of Walmart butchers voted to unionize. After the butchers formed their union, Walmart stopped cutting meat in stores and only sold pre-packaged meat. This year, it appears Walmart has evolved its bullying tactics by closing entire stores rather than just closing down smaller sections.

A rather wacky theory has emerged online as to why Walmart has closed some of its stores, and it has nothing to do with plumbing or unions. Some Internet users believe that the military will be using the closed stores as shelters once Martial Law is declared.

Courtesy of Giphy.

All theories and conjectures aside, the reality is that more than 2,200 Walmart workers were laid off and given two months of severance pay. Will they be forgotten like the Walmart butchers, or will they find ways to stand up to their bully?

Corinne Fitamant

Corinne Fitamant is a graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center where she received a Bachelors degree in Communications and a minor in Theatre Arts. When she isn’t pondering issues of social justice and/or celebrity culture, she can be found playing the guitar and eating chocolate. Contact Corinne at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Five Walmart Stores Shut Down After Giving Workers Only Five Hours Notice appeared first on Law Street.

On August 21, 2014, Pulitzer Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, who designed the stadium for the 2022 World Cup, sued the New York Review of Books and its critic, Martin Filler, for defamation. Hadid claimed that Filler defamed her in his June 5, 2014 article, “The Insolence of Architecture,” in which he reviewed non-party Rowan Moore’s book Why We Build: Desire and Power in Architecture. Hadid asserted that Filler’s following passage defamed her:

“However, despite the numerous horror stories about this coercive exploitation, some big-name practitioners don’t seem moved by the plight of the Emirates’ imported serfs. Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and a member of Gulf Labor, an advocacy group that is seeking to redress this region-wide injustice, earlier this year wrote a chilling New York Times Op-Ed piece. In it he quotes the Iraqi-born, London-based architect Zaha Hadid, who designed the Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar, now being built for the 2022 World Cup. She has unashamedly disavowed any responsibility, let alone concern, for the estimated one thousand laborers who have perished while constructing her project thus far. ‘I have nothing to do with the workers,’ Hadid has claimed. ‘It is not my duty as an architect to look at it.‘”

Hadid contends that Filler defamed her because workers have not begun constructing the stadium, and no workers have died. Moreover, the passage implies that she is indifferent to the workers’ deaths. Architectmagazine.com reports that Hadid’s complaint seeks “a withdrawal of the article from publication, a retraction, unspecified damages from the defendants, full payment of legal fees, and ‘any further relief as justice may require.’”

On August 25, 2014, Filler retracted his statement in a letter to the editor entitled, An Apology to Zaha Hadid, which is also added to the end of the review online. The Los Angeles Times reports that Hadid’s legal team received Filler’s retraction but has yet to respond.

Although Hadid obtained Filler’s retraction, it may be difficult for the architect to receive any other relief that she seeks in her complaint if her lawsuit reaches the trial stage. Since Hadid is a Pulitzer Prize-winning architect, she will likely be deemed a public figure, and consequently, she has to prove that Filler acted with “actual malice” when he wrote his article, which is a difficult standard to prove, as explained in this post about celebrity defamation suits.

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Joseph Perry (@jperry325) is a 3L at St. John’s University whose goal is to become a publishing media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Phil Gyford via Flickr]

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New York Review of Books Retracts Defamation Error appeared first on Law Street.

The U.S. military isn’t doing enough to protect the health and safety of the people who make their clothing, according to The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF). In the ILRF’s recent report, Dangerous Silence, the organization asserts that the U.S. Military has not properly looked into the sources of the clothing sold in their over 1,100 base stores, much of which comes from outsourced factories in Bangladesh.

According to the ILRF, the military doesn’t gather  sufficient information about the safety conditions and treatment of workers in these factories, and in many cases, relies on audits by companies such as Walmart and Sears that have failed to properly protect workers in their own factories. In some cases the military exchanges were aware of safety violations but did not alert Bangladeshi authorities; for instance, the Army and Air Force Exchange failed to act when they learned that Green Fair Textiles workers were being submitted to 80-hour work weeks.

Considering the fact that it is legal for the military to use overseas suppliers, some believe that they do not need to protect the factory workers. Army and Air Force Exchange Service spokesman Judd Anstey stated that the agency abides by guidelines issued by the Department of Defense which necessitates that all local laws are followed and merchandise is not made by forced labor or children. But what about overworking those in factories that is illegal by American standards, if not locally?

The military exchanges’ failure to report and solve the problems with their clothing suppliers is all the more surprising in the wake of last years’ tragedies in Bangladesh. The Tazreen Fashions factory, which manufactured Marine Corps logo clothing, experienced a fire in which 112 workers died. In April 2013 at Rana Plaza an eight-story clothing factory collapsed, killing more than 1,134 people and leaving 200 people missing as of last December.

The U.S. military fights for freedom across the world and defends liberty at home, yet the message strikes some as hypocritical when their uniforms are made in places that condone human rights violations. Although the U.S. has no legal responsibility for the conditions in factories in other countries, government entities should not turn a blind eye to the safety and labor violations in the factories they patronize.

An interesting comparison is the nearly nonexistent criticism directed toward military exchanges with the public’s reaction to the 2012 U.S. Olympic uniform controversy; the difference is striking. Ralph Lauren received a significant amount of negative press during the London Olympics because the U.S. delegation’s uniforms were made in China rather than domestically. Perhaps the backlash to this outsourcing was due to the fact that the Olympics is a spectacle that attracts international attention, while the military exchanges lack public prominence. Nevertheless, the Ralph Lauren controversy shows how public outcry can stimulate change: in reaction to the negative press over their uniforms, Ralph Lauren made a point to use American sources and labor for the 2014 Sochi uniforms. If the military exchanges garnered the same level of attention, perhaps they would be compelled to act, too.

United States officials should take a stance against this abuse of workers and safety in outsourced factories in order to set an example for other retailers to follow when it comes to factory conditions. The ILRF’s report provides several suggestions as to how the United States military can help protect Bangladeshi workers, including requiring suppliers to comply with international labor standards, issuing mandatory repairs and inspections to ensure safety, organizing worker unions and committees, and publicly disclosing audit results. The Marine Corps appears to be taking the lead. The branch’s Trademark and Licensing Office issued a new policy mandating its retail suppliers be signatories to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety.
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Sarah Helden

Sarah Helden is a graduate of The George Washington University and a student at the London School of Economics. She was formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Sarah at staff@LawStreetmedia.com.

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