Taking Heat for Sweatshops

Taking Heat for Sweatshops

Despite its efforts to silence whistleblowers, Wal-Mart remains under fire for abusing its workers.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Last week, we noted that Wal-Mart was fighting hard to get away with firing whistleblowers. This weekend, the Associated Press reported that James W. Lynn, of Searcy, Arkansas, is suing the company for just that, charging that he was fired for reporting poor working conditions at Wal-Mart’s offices in Honduras and Guatemala. Lynn, who was Wal-Mart’s global services manager until his 2002 firing, charges that Moon Chung, the retailer’s general manager in Honduras, pressured employees to sanitize internal reports on supplier factory conditions. Lynn also saw serious abuses in Honduran factories making Wal-Mart goods: violations of local wage and hour laws, lack of bathrooms and drinking water and padlocked fire exits. When he told his superiors in Arkansas about these problems, Lynn says, he was fired. Guess Wal-Mart’s keeping Baby Scalia busy!

Lynn’s lawsuit comes at a time when Wal-Mart is feeling some well-deserved heat for its gross exploitation of the workers–mostly young women–making its cheap products. Last week, Dateline ran an excellent hidden-camera report on the conditions endured by workers in Bangladesh who sew the stripes onto $13 pants sold at Wal-Mart, finding they worked eighteen-hour days and were physically and verbally abused by factory bosses and cheated out of overtime pay. The National Labor Committee, which helped with Dateline‘s investigation, is demanding that Wal-Mart pay garment workers 20 cents more per garment–the amount these women say would allow them to live decently and provide for their families. Click here to find out what you can do.

No matter where they fall in the supply chain, workers are angry at Wal-Mart. On June 24, employees in some Asda distribution centers in Britain–which are owned by Wal-Mart–will go on strike over pay and work conditions and over threatened layoffs affecting roughly 300 workers.

Time is running out to have your gift matched 

In this time of unrelenting, often unprecedented cruelty and lawlessness, I’m grateful for Nation readers like you. 

So many of you have taken to the streets, organized in your neighborhood and with your union, and showed up at the ballot box to vote for progressive candidates. You’re proving that it is possible—to paraphrase the legendary Patti Smith—to redeem the work of the fools running our government.

And as we head into 2026, I promise that The Nation will fight like never before for justice, humanity, and dignity in these United States. 

At a time when most news organizations are either cutting budgets or cozying up to Trump by bringing in right-wing propagandists, The Nation’s writers, editors, copy editors, fact-checkers, and illustrators confront head-on the administration’s deadly abuses of power, blatant corruption, and deconstruction of both government and civil society. 

We couldn’t do this crucial work without you.

Through the end of the year, a generous donor is matching all donations to The Nation’s independent journalism up to $75,000. But the end of the year is now only days away. 

Time is running out to have your gift doubled. Don’t wait—donate now to ensure that our newsroom has the full $150,000 to start the new year. 

Another world really is possible. Together, we can and will win it!

Love and Solidarity,

John Nichols 

Executive Editor, The Nation

Ad Policy
x