They are the labels that have always conjured up everything Italy stands for... style, elegance and expensive good taste.
For generations Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada have been the essence of haute couture and "Made in Italy" meant just that - the chicest handbags from Milan, heels from Rome and gowns from Florence, handcrafted by Italian craftsmen.
Bangladeshis making cheap clothes for Asda, Tesco and Primark are paid as little as 3p an hour, according to a report that claims to reveal the grim truth about Asia's sweatshops.
Basic pay in factories that cut and sew fabric for budget chains could be just £8 a month for an 80-hour week, investigation for the charity War on Want found.
Talk about big. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., headquartered in rural Bentonville, Arkansas (population 29,000), is the world’s largest corporation, with annual revenues approaching the $350 billion range. Wal-Mart’s revenues are larger than the combined GDPs of Hong Kong and Malaysia. Wal-Mart imported about $27 billion in merchandise from China last year—about the same as did Singapore. What began 45 years ago when hillbilly entrepreneur Sam Walton launched a no-frills mom-and-pop discount store in a remote corner of the American South, now is a corporate empire that spans the globe.
NEW DELHI — Eight thousand miles from Manhattan, barefoot, shirtless, whip-thin men rippled with muscle were forging prosaic pieces of the urban jigsaw puzzle: manhole covers.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in a report it released Thursday, outlined dozens of ways it says it has changed over the past two years to become a more environmentally, economically and socially responsible corporate citizen.
Critics immediately challenged Wal-Mart’s assertions, pointing to their own report released in September that criticized the company’s environmental moves as insignificant or misleading, its employee pay and benefits as paltry, and its global supply chain as rife with humanrights violations...
Wal-Mart's support for the anti-free market agenda of the environmental movement is not silencing its liberal critics and may be undermining the company's financial future.
Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott began pushing a so-called sustainability campaign in October 2005 as part of an ill-conceived attempt to deflect union criticism of its business practices. The campaign includes spending $500 million a year to cut greenhouse gas emissions to combat the unproven global warming threat, selling more sustainable products, using more renewable energy, and generating less waste...
(11-11) 04:00 PST Fangolo, Ivory Coast -- In this village of dirt-poor cocoa farmers, Issa Wattara is a lucky man: He has tasted chocolate. "It's sweet, very sweet," recalled Wattara, 67, as he surveyed the leafy cocoa plants growing at the edge of his village, the pods hanging down like fat cucumbers. "But it's very expensive. People here don't have the means to buy chocolate."