Wal-Mart is facing new pressure to monitor and disclose how its international suppliers treat their workers.
At its annual shareholder meeting on Friday, the New York City pension funds, which own a small percentage of shares in Wal-Mart, plan to ask the company to require vendors to publish annual reports detailing working conditions in their factories.
Michael Garland, who oversees shareholder activism efforts as executive director for corporate governance at the city comptroller?s office, said the proposal was meant to improve workplace safety and worker rights at companies making goods for Wal-Mart, the world?s largest retailer.
?No matter how much Wal-Mart and other companies are doing, or claim they are doing, to monitor their suppliers, they just don?t have the capacity to do it in a comprehensive way,? Garland said. ?They put tremendous pressure on their suppliers to cut money out of the system,? which can lead to long hours, low pay or other problems.
Wal-Mart opposes the request, citing the difficulty of persuading suppliers to issue reports. The company contends that even if it could enforce such a plan, to do so might threaten the availability of certain products from those who did not comply.
While Garland acknowledged the proposal was unlikely to succeed, he said casting a spotlight on the problem could prompt Wal-Mart to begin considering how to address its association with suppliers who did not treat workers fairly.
Kalpona Akter, a Bangladeshi labour organiser who will present the proposal at the meeting in Fayetteville, complained that many of the Bangladesh factories that produced goods for Wal-Mart mistreated their workers.
At Wal-Mart suppliers, ?very often, first of all, the factory does not enforce the law? regarding minimum wages, she said.
?Though the minimum salary has been cleared by the government, and many factories implemented that,? she said, ?we haven?t seen any Wal-Mart suppliers giving a living wage to workers.?
Though Wal-Mart sometimes sends auditors to check on working conditions, ?when the auditor goes to the factory, the worker is coached by the management to tell lies in front of the auditors ? that they are being paid living wages, that they are not being harassed,? she said. The proposal states that there is a ?significant gap between general policies against labour and human rights abuse and more detailed standards and enforcement mechanisms required to carry them out.?
It asks vendors to publish yearly reports that ?include the supplier?s objective assessments and measurements of performance on workplace safety, and human and worker rights, using internationally recognised standards, indicators and measurement protocols.?
?These problems, particularly with regard to labor and human-rights practices, are in the supply chain,? Garland said.