By Billy Bruce

Wal-Mart officials said allegations that the company condones the inhumane treatment of workers and turns a blind eye to abusive actions by factory operators in foreign nations are not true.

Three workers from China, Colombia and Swaziland made the allegations Friday when they spoke to a small group of FSU students at the Williams Building on campus in a program sponsored, in part, by the FSU Center for Participant Education FSU and the Florida AFL-CIO.

Kate Chen, 21, said in an interview with the Democrat that she works in the Wenbo factory in Guang Zhou City, China, making the equivalent of $2 per day for assembling colored-pencil cases for Wal-Mart. She said she makes 25 cents per hour, and in a good month with some overtime, she may earn $100.

Chen also said she believed factory workers are in cahoots with Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart warns the factory managers a month in advance of inspections of working conditions. Chen said the factory managers pick out certain workers to coach on answers to inspectors, and pay them extra cash if they answer the inspectors questions “correctly.”

“Wal-Mart knows about these conditions and (does) nothing,” Chen said.

Not so, a Wal-Mart spokesman said in an e-mail response to the workers’ allegations. In fact, Wal-Mart has one of the most active ethical standards programs in the retail industry, and in 2005, audited more factories than any other company in the world, performing more than 13,600 audits of 7,200 factories, said Amy Wyatt of Wal-Mart International Corporate Affairs. Wyatt strongly disagreed with Chen’s allegations.

“While we acknowledge that coaching workers is a challenge for auditors, we have partnered with NGOs and other organizations to establish a credible worker interview program,” Wyatt said.

During factory visits, auditors randomly choose workers off the shop floor to interview. Management is required to supply a private location and cannot be present during the interviews. A minimum of 15 workers are interviewed in same-sex groups. The auditors make sure during the interviews that workers understand their rights, Wyatt said.

“We take these allegations very seriously and we continuously work to improve our ethical standard program,” she said.