Tough Day At Wal-Mart

[prole]

Man Dies After Confrontation With Walmart Workers

 

The Black Friday shopping weekend took a tragic turn early Sunday morning when a suspectedshoplifter died while being apprehended by employees and a contract security officer outside a Lithonia Walmart.

 

Two store employees who helped catch and subdue the suspect before police arrived have been placed on leave. The security officer, who police say may have placed the suspected thief in a choke hold, is no longer working for Walmart, the company said.

 

The cause of death had not been determined Sunday evening, and police investigators were awaiting results from the medical examiner.

 

“No amount of merchandise is worth someone’s life,” Walmart spokesperson Dianna Gee said Sunday in a statement that emphasized that it was early in the investigation. “Associates are trained to disengage from situations that would put themselves or others at risk.”

 

DeKalb police say the man, whose identity hadn’t been released, took two DVD players from the Walmart at 5401 Fairington Road around 1:30 a.m.

 

The man, who appeared to be middle aged, exited through the front door but was caught by the two workers and the security officer in the parking lot, where a “physical altercation” took place, according to the police report.

 

When police arrived, they found the trio on top of the man. An officer who handcuffed the suspected shoplifter detected no resistance from him and ordered the employees off.

 

Police found the man to be unresponsive and bleeding from his nose and mouth. Emergency units took him to DMC-Hillandale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

 

“This is truly a sad situation,” Gee said. “We don’t know all of the facts right now. We’re in the process of working with law enforcement to deterimine all of the facts and cooperating and providing any information we have to assist in the investigation.

 

The preliminary police investigation indicates the victim was placed in a choke hold by the security officer. The cause and manner of death is to be determined by the DeKalb Medical Examiner’s office. A spokesman said no information on the victim would be released until Monday.

 

The two Walmart associates involved in the incident have been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation, Gee said, adding that, “The security officer involved will no longer be providing services to us.”

 

Fatal Fire in Bangladesh Highlights the Dangers Facing Garment Workers

 

MUMBAI, India — More than 100 people died Saturday and Sunday in a fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, in one of the worst industrial tragedies in that country.

 

It took firefighters all night to put out the blaze at the factory, Tazreen Fashions, after it started about 7 p.m. on Saturday, a retired fire official said by telephone from Dhaka, the capital. At least 111 people were killed, and scores of workers were taken to hospitals for treatment of burns and smoke inhalation.

 

“The main difficulty was to put out the fire; the sufficient approach road was not there,” said the retired official, Salim Nawaj Bhuiyan, who now runs a fire safety company in Dhaka. “The fire service had to take great trouble to approach the factory.”

 

Bangladesh’s garment industry, the second-largest exporter of clothing after China, has a notoriously poor fire safety record. Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in factory fires, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group in Amsterdam. Experts say many of the fires could have easily been avoided if the factories had taken the right precautions. Many factories are in cramped neighborhoods and have too few fire escapes, and they widely flout safety measures. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, most of them women.

 

Activists say that global clothing brands like Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap and those sold by Walmart need to take responsibility for the working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce their clothes.

 

“These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps,” Ineke Zeldenrust, the international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, said in a statement. “Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence.”

 

In a statement from the United States, Wal-Mart said, “While we are trying to determine if the factory has a current relationship with Walmart or one of our suppliers, fire safety is a critically important area of Walmart’s factory audit program and we have been working across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh.”

 

The fire at the Tazreen factory in Savar, northwest of Dhaka, started in a warehouse on the ground floor that was used to store yarn, and quickly spread to the upper floors. The building was nine stories high, with the top three floors under construction, according to a garment industry official at the scene who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Though most workers had left for the day when the fire started, the industry official said, as many as 600 workers were still inside working overtime.

 

The factory, which opened in May 2010, employed about 1,500 workers and had sales of $35 million a year, according to a document on the company’s Web site. It made T-shirts, polo shirts and fleece jackets.

 

Most of the workers who died were on the first and second floors, fire officials said, and were killed because there were not enough exits. “So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building,” said Maj. Mohammad Mahbub, the operations director for the Fire Department, according to The Associated Press.

 

In a telephone interview later on Sunday, Major Mahbub said the fire could have been caused by an electrical fault or by a spark from a cigarette.

 

In a brief phone call, Delowar Hossain, the managing director of the Tuba Group, the parent company of Tazreen Fashions, said he was too busy to comment. “Pray for me,” he said and then hung up.

 

Television news reports showed badly burned bodies lined up on the floor in what appeared to be a government building. The injured were being treated in hallways of local hospitals, according to the reports.

 

The industry official said that many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition and that it would take some time to identify them.

 

One survivor, Mohammad Raju, 22, who worked on the fifth floor, said he escaped by climbing out of a third-floor window onto the bamboo scaffolding that was being used by construction workers. He said he lost his mother, who also worked on the fifth floor, when they were making their way down.

 

“It was crowded on the stairs as all the workers were trying to come out from the factory,” Mr. Raju said. “There was no power supply; it was dark, and I lost my mother in dark. I tried to search for her for 10 to 15 minutes but did not find her.”

 

A document posted on Tazreen Fashions’ Web site indicated that an “ethical sourcing” official for Walmart had flagged “violations and/or conditions which were deemed to be high risk” at the factory in May 2011, though it did not specify the nature of the infractions. The notice said that the factory had been given an “orange” grade and that any factories given three such assessments in two years from their last audit would not receive any Walmart orders for a year.

 

A spokesman for Walmart, Kevin Gardner, said the company was “so far unable to confirm that Tazreen is a supplier to Walmart nor if the document referenced in the article is in fact from Walmart.”

 

But the International Labor Rights Forum, which tracks fires in the Bangladesh garment industry, said documents and logos found in the debris indicated that the factory produced clothes for Walmart’s Faded Glory line as well as for other American and foreign companies.

 

Bangladesh exports about $18 billion worth of garments a year. Employees in the country’s factories are among the world’s lowest-paid, with entry-level workers making the government-mandated minimum wage of about $37 a month or slightly above.

 

Tensions have been running high between workers, who have been demanding an increase in minimum wages, and the factory owners and government. A union organizer, Aminul Islam, who campaigned for better working conditions and higher wages, was found tortured and killed outside Dhaka this year.

 

 

[matt_warfield]

Apparently it is safer to do cyber Monday. Unless you have a heart attack or have carpal tunnel syndrome.

 

What amazes me is what people will go through to save a few bucks when these stores are open 365 days a year.

 

Of course shoplifting on the biggest shopping day of the year may be a good strategy, except that employees are stressed and you can reap what you sow.

Edited November 26, 2012 by matt_warfield

[prole]

Being beaten or choked to death by some mongoloids over a couple of DVD players is "reaping what you sow"?

 

 

[rob]

by some mongoloids

 

You're racist.

[Choada_Boy]

What do you have against Mongols?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

by some mongoloids

 

You're racist.

 

j_b says Mongoloids are very hard-working

[prole]

What do you have against Mongols?

 

The third one from the right looks shifty.

[ivan]

shit, if you're at walmart in the first place, your day's already looking pretty fucked...

[ivan]

by some mongoloids

 

You're racist.

can't we just agree to hate ALL people equally?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

by some mongoloids

 

You're racist.

can't we just agree to hate ALL people equally?

 

we'll leave that to you and trash

[Crux]

Walmart has a strict policy to fire associates who kill people in Walmart stores. Employees are advised to limit their homicidal activities to equal opportunity factories located overseas.

 

At Walmart, you reap what we sew.

[matt_warfield]

Just remember that they are "greeters" or make 10 bucks an hour to make their mark in a world where CSI actors do the same thing and make a bunch.

 

Face it kids: life is not fair.

[Crux]

Walmart greeters, they pretend to be happy to see you.

They smile and wave you into the store.

Just remember...

[img:center]http://www.kyledaly.50megs.com/images/smiley_dude.gif[/img]

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

What do you have against Mongols?

 

Why won't you meet with us, Anne Coulter?