Political Pressure Lands the Enemy of the People a "Sweetheart Deal"

 

Jordan Barab, writing at LaborBlog, explains the latest favors our proud government has handed WalMart, Enemy of the People:

True to form, the Bush administration is making sure that its corporate friends are not too inconvenienced on those rare occasions when they are found to be breaking federal laws, especially if it only involves child labor issues.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. As part of the agreement, revealed yesterday after it was secretly signed in January, the Labor Department agreed "to give Wal-Mart 15 days' notice before the Labor Department investigates any other 'wage and hour' accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime."

I was going to put this as an update to the previous post but I decided to have it stand alone because the government of the United States facillitating labor law violations, especially child labor law violations, is worth more than an update.

  The story quotes Rep. George Miller (D-CA)

"I don't know if the Department of Labor threw in the towel or whether Wal-Mart put enough political pressure on them that they ended up with a sweetheart deal," Miller said, adding that he will ask the department's inspector general this week to review the agreement.

I'm not sure why Miller put an "or" between those two options since it seems there's a causal relationship between them.  Setting that aside, I'm glad to finally hear a member of government acknowledge that the Enemy of the People is able to bring political pressure to bear and that it yields results.

I tell any person I meet who is ambivalent toward or opposed to unions that without them we would be back in the era of unlimited work weeks, deadly workplaces and child labor in no time.  Jordan's regular site, Confined Spaces, documents deadly workplaces.  The war on overtime is one of BushCo's favorite causes.   Employee health benefits are under attack. Now, in an absolutely unbelievable move, which should have us pouring into the streets in protest, BushCo has fixed it so that the Enemy of the People is able to escape detection when it decides to turn back human rights advancements in the United States again.  It looks like we don't have to wait to return to the glory days of American corpofascism.