We all like to be able to buy things at the lowest price possible, but we often put out of our minds how it is possible for us to be able to buy things at dirt-cheap prices.
This story out of Cambodia serves to remind that much of what we buy not only comes from overseas, but is produced in appalling working conditions.
Women who had fainted in a poorly ventilated garment factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh on Wednesday morning were making winter coats to be sold at Walmart stores in Canada, it was revealed yesterday.
Executives with Taiwanese-owned Heart Enterprise (Cambodia) Ltd also confirmed reports that employees had been working as many as four hours of overtime a day, six days a week, at the factory, in the capital’s Dangkor district.
...
“It is not illegal for employees to work overtime if they volunteer to do it,” the
company’s human resources manager, Van Channa, said.
Volunteers, eh?
He also said the factory was under pressure to fill its orders by the end of September and that mass fainting was a problem because it might result in orders not being filled.
Yeah, it sucks when mass faintings mean you won't fill your orders. After all, that's the most important thing, right?
I mean. nobody expects them to actually improve the ventilation at this factory, do they?
Does anyone else remember way back when -- when Wal-Mart used to advertise how their merchandise was made in the USA?