{"id":5703,"date":"2005-11-01T10:30:26","date_gmt":"2005-11-01T15:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5703"},"modified":"2005-11-01T10:30:26","modified_gmt":"2005-11-01T15:30:26","slug":"wal-marts-curious-sweetheart-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wal-marts-curious-sweetheart-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Wal-Mart’s curious sweetheart deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in February, we learned about Wal-Mart agreeing to pay a fine as part of a federal investigation into a series of child-labor law violations. It was a ridiculously good deal<\/a> for the corporate behemoth — Wal-Mart had allegedly run afoul of 24 violations in several states, including having minors operating dangerous heavy machinery<\/p>\n

The agreement between the Labor Department and the company, however, went well beyond the norm. Not only was the agreement kept secret for weeks, but it also included a provision that promised to give Wal-Mart 15 days’ notice before the Labor Department investigates any other “wage and hour” accusations. In other words, Bush’s Labor Department found a company violating child-labor laws, then promised to give the company lots of warning before they check again in the future. A Labor Department investigator asked at the time, “With child labor cases involving the use of hazardous machinery, why give 15 days’ notice before we can do an investigation? What’s the rationale?”<\/p>\n

After pressure from congressional Dems, the Labor Department looked into the sweetheart deal. It turns out the “arrangement” was even worse<\/a> than originally thought.<\/p>\n

The Labor Department’s inspector general strongly criticized department officials yesterday for “serious breakdowns” in procedures involving an agreement promising Wal-Mart Stores 15 days’ notice before labor investigators would inspect its stores for child labor violations.<\/p>\n

The report by the inspector general faulted department officials for making “significant concessions” to Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, without obtaining anything in return. The report also criticized department officials for letting Wal-Mart lawyers write substantial parts of the settlement and for leaving the department’s own legal division out of the settlement process.<\/p>\n

The report said that in granting Wal-Mart the 15-day notice, the Wage and Hour Division violated its own handbook. It added that agreeing to let Wal-Mart jointly develop news releases about the settlement with the department violated Labor Department policies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush’s Labor Department was doing special favors for a company that contributed heavily to Republicans, even after it’s caught repeatedly violating child-labor laws? Who would have guessed?<\/p>\n

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who requested the inspector general’s investigation in the first place, said, “The sweetheart deal put Wal-Mart employees at risk, undermined government effectiveness, and further undermined public confidence that the government is acting on its behalf.” Sounds right to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in February, we learned about Wal-Mart agreeing to pay a fine as part of a federal investigation into a series of child-labor law violations. It was a ridiculously good deal for the corporate behemoth — Wal-Mart had allegedly run afoul of 24 violations in several states, including having minors operating dangerous heavy machinery The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}