Fast Company senior writer Charles Fishman blogs: “Is Wal-Mart’s Factory Inspections Program a Fraud?”
Here’s an interesting snippet:
“But if you look closely at Wal-Mart’s own 44-page report of its performance (issued last June), Wal-Mart’s factory inspection program begins to look like an energetic PR effort, more than a serious effort to protect factory workers.
“Of the 12,500 inspections in 2004, only 8 percent were surprise inspections. That means 92 percent of Wal-Mart’s inspections of factories in Bangladesh and Nicaragua and China were announced in advance — the Wal-Mart inspectors made an appointment to come see how the factory was run.”
Oh, man.