Thread: Wal Mart invades Mexico

Teens at Work
Thousands of adolescents work as unpaid baggers in Wal-Mart’s Mexican stores.
The retail giant isn’t breaking any laws—but that doesn’t mean the government is happy with the practice.

Marco Ugarte / AP
Booming Business: Wal-Mart de Mexico plans to add 125 new stores and restaurants to its existing network of 893 retail establishments during the course of 2007 View related photos


Web Exclusive
By Joseph Contreras
Newsweek
Updated: 3:33 p.m. ET July 31, 2007
July 31, 2007 - Wal-Mart prides itself on cutting costs at home and abroad, and its Mexican operations are no exception. That approach has helped the Arkansas-based retail giant set a track record of spectacular success in the 16 years since it entered Mexico as a partner of the country’s then-leading retail-store chain. But some of the company’s practices have aroused concern among some officials and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that Wal-Mart is taking advantage of local customs to pinch pennies at a time when its Mexican operations have never been more profitable.

Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be “volunteeringâ€

Reprehensible!

What's holding back Mexico's Economy:

- "Slim"
- Wal-Mart's cheapness
- Drug cartels
- Illegal Aliens

This is very unfortunate. As a ex-employee of Wal-Mart from the late 80's and early 90's... I'm sure the exploitation of these teens is done with little or any care in the world as to the well being of that child. Preposterous!


Manny~

Welcome to ALIPAC, mannybz.

Can Americans stand in the parking lot looking for work in Mexico??? Or is Mexican policy for immigration hard????


LOL!!! YEA! we'd be thrown under the jail and never let out!!!

So just exactly why isn't the government of mejico doing anything to protect their citizens???

Some years ago, when Wal Mart and Costco first went into Mexico, there was a lot of opposition to them from the people. They said these stores would destroy the small businesses and I am sure they did.

Could this account for so much of our illegal immigration? Could it account for the way an illegal can come to America and magically set up a business? Somehow Americans tend to think of illegals as poor, uneducated, capable of only manual labor, but that is obviously not the case. Actually, it never has been - but it is the media line.

Poor, uneducated, illiterate people do not come to a foreign country illegally and manage to open tire shops, restaurants, clothing shops, car lots, party rental stores, grocery stores and meat markets, and loan businesses. These are just the type businesses I noticed in one small town this week - and it wasn't a border town, either.

So is Wal Mart and Costco running them out of Mexico?