Target - - The next Walmart

For years, Target has been the store where I have done almost all my clothes shopping. Their low prices and decent clothes has drawn me to their store again and again. I can buy twice the clothing for the same amount of money as I could buy at a higher end store. Especially with the limited money for clothing I receive, Target seemed the perfect place to shop. I could not have been more wrong.

I always feel good after shopping at Target. At our local store, there is a huge poster advertising the large amounts of money they donate to local causes, schools and other community organizations we care about. These signs sell their business as the anti-Walmart. The "good" store. The store that treats their employees well and gives major donations. They might donate money to our communities, but their employees get paid roughly the same amount as the employees at Walmart, and they have a harder time qualifying for health care coverage. Wow! Not quite what their advertising leads us to believe. Both Walmart and Target oppose unions and have prevented their workers from banding together.

But that is not all; we have not even gone into their factories overseas. Yes, you might have been hearing more and more about the evil factories that produce the clothing that big department stores sell. There have been more and more stories of the severely underpaid workers, extremely long hours, and dreadful conditions. Walmart is the first store that comes to my mind when thinking about these factories, not the anti-Walmart, the "good store", the department store sweeping our country, Target.

Target has several major factories in Jordan. The Topaz Factory, Al Safa, AL Nahat, Ivory, and Atateks Garment Factory were reported to have had gross violations of workers rights on the 2006 National Labor Committee report. These violations included: human trafficking, involuntary servitude, confiscation of workers passports, routine shifts of 14.5-16.5 hours, no sick days, paid vacation, or government holidays, below the countries' minimum wage, irregular pay, working in conditions of up to 100 degree summer weather, and threats of violence if quotas were not met. People were forcibly deported if they spoke out against these horrible working conditions.

Although the Al Nahat factory closed in 2006, things have not changed in Atateks Garment Factory. In fact, after the Al Nahat factory closed, there were 10 workers who were fired, imprisoned, beaten, then after all that, were forcibly deported.

That is not the Target I knew and loved. I have decided to stop this mess, and let Target face the truth of their crimes. Target can no longer say they are the anti-Walmart. They are really just as bad.

What to do? I figure that the first thing is spread the word, get people notified that this kind of thing is going on, and try to find alternative places to shop that have good labor practices. Recently I watched a documentary about how a group of workers from the Forever 21 factories of Los Angeles worked to change their own labor practices by boycotting the store and holding protests. I am hopping to help change things the way they did and help spread the word.

With out the people that shop at Target, Target is nothing but an empty shell, a store gone out of business. If we band together to make Target change, it will have to.

So... Where did I get all this information?

Well, Buy it Like You Mean it provided all the information about Target's factories, and ReclaimDemocracy.org provided the information about Target's labor practices -- so go check out those websites to learn more!!!

Thanks for reading! :) :) :)

Chloe