Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses ofmodern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account.Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate powerhave created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers,which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand andshow genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

Though it isn't easy, we can check the power of corporations?andcitizens around the world are stepping up to do it. Global Exchangedeveloped this list of some of the world's worst corporate abusers toillustrate that on issues as diverse as assassination, torture,kidnapping, environmental degradation, abusing public funds, violentlyrepressing political rights, releasing toxins into pristineenvironments, destroying homes, discrimination, and causing widespreadhealth problems, familiar companies like Dow Chemical, Coca Cola,Caterpillar, Lockheed, Philip Morris, and Wal-Mart play a big role. Nowwe need you to take action!

Several of the companies below are being sued under the AlienTort Claims Act, a law that allows citizens of any nationality to suein US federal courts for violations of international rights ortreaties. When corporations act like criminals, we have the right andthe power to stop them, holding leaders and multinational corporationsalike to the accords they have signed. Around the world?in Venezuela,Argentina, India, and right here in the United States?citizens arestepping up to create democracy and hold corporations accountable tointernational law.

This list of "MOST WANTED" corporate criminals gives youinformation about the abusive behavior of this year's top fourteenworst corporations, tells you who is responsible, and how to connectwith and support people who are doing something about it. The more youknow, the less these corporations can continue their abuses out ofpublic eyesight: so share this information with your friends, get onthe phone with the CEOs themselves, and exercise your rights as acitizen and consumer today.

Israel seeks to portray the destruction of homes as necessary to itsself-defense, but nothing could be further from the truth. As theIsraeli Committee Against Home Demolitions has rigorously documented,house destruction is part of Israel's intention to turn the annexationof East Jerusalem and other occupied areas into a concrete fact (http://www.icahd.org/eng/ ).

In a letter to Caterpillar CEO James Owens The Office of the UN HighCommissioner on Human Rights said: "allowing the delivery of your. . .bulldozers to the Israeli army. . . in the certain knowledge that theyare being used for such action, might involve complicity or acceptanceon the part of your company to actual and potential violations of humanrights..."

Peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a Caterpillar, D-9,military bulldozer in 2003. She was run over while attempting to blockthe destruction a family's home in Gaza. Her family filed suit againstCaterpillar in March 2005 charging that Caterpillar knowingly soldmachines used to violate human rights. Since Rachel's death at leastthree more Palestinians have been killed in their homes by Israelibulldozer demolitions.

The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worstenvironmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992,Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought outin 2001) unleashed a toxic "Rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador by leavingmore than 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforestand dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into riversused for bathing water. The toxic crude oil and formation water seepedinto the subsoil, contaminating surrounding freshwater and farmland. Asa result, local communities have suffered severe health effects,including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneousabortions. Indigenous communities have been dispossessed of theirlands, and millions of hectares of rainforest have been destroyed tomake way for the company's pipelines and oil wells.

Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of nonviolentopposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has collaborated withthe Nigerian police and military who have opened fire on peacefulprotestors who oppose oil extraction in the Niger Delta. In 1998, twoindigenous Ilaje activists were killed by Nigerian military officersflown in by the company while protesting at an oil platform in Ondostate. In 1999, two people from Opia village were killed by militarypersonnel paid by Chevron, after soliciting a meeting to complain aboutthe company's harmful effects on local fishing. And in 2005, Nigeriansoldiers fired upon protestors at Escravos oil terminal, leaving oneprotestor dead.

Additionally Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems inRichmond, California, where one of Chevron's largest refineries islocated. Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refineryproduces oil flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result,local residents suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumaticfever, liver problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eyeproblems.

In December 2004, the Unocal Corporation, which recently becamea subsidiary of Chevron, settled a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmesevillagers, in which the villagers alleged Unocal's complicity in arange of human rights violations in Burma, including rape, summaryexecution, torture, forced labor and forced migration. Despite thesettlement, human rights abuses continue along the oil pipeline inBurma, which is still "secured" by the Burmese military. Chevron isresponsible for the risks associated with this pipeline.

Coca-Cola Company is perhaps the most widely recognizedcorporate symbol on the planet. The company also leads in the abuse ofworkers' rights, assassinations, water privatization, and workerdiscrimination. Between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders fromCoca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia were killed after protesting thecompany's labor practices. Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers who havejoined or considered joining the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL have beenkidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who intimidateworkers to prevent them from unionizing. In Turkey, 14 Coca-Cola truckdrivers and their families were beaten severely by Turkish police hiredby the company, while protesting a layoff of 1,000 workers from a localbottling plant in 2005.

In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by privatizing thecountry's water resources. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and soldunder the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severelydepleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages anddestroying agricultural activity. As a result, the remaining waterbecame contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading toscabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population. Watershortages have occurred in Varanasi, Thane, and Tamil Nadu as well. Thecompany is also guilty of reselling its plants' industrial waste tofarmers as fertilizers, despite its containing hazardous lead andcadmium.

Coca-Cola is one of the most discriminatory employers in theworld. In the year 2000, 2,000 African-American employees in the U.S.sued the company for race-based disparities in pay and promotions. InM?xico, Coca-Cola FEMSA, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in LatinAmerica, fired a senior bottling manager for being gay. Finally, byregularly denying health insurance to employees and their families,Coca Cola has failed to help stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. Thecompany is one of the continent's largest private employers, yet onlypartially covers expensive medicines, while not covering genericmedicines at all.

Dow Chemical has been destroying lives and poisoning the planetfor decades. The company is best known for the ravages and healthdisaster for millions of Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans caused by itslethal Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange. Dow's "invent first, askquestions later" standard of business led the multinational company todevelop and perfect Napalm, a brutal chemical weapon that burned manyinnocents to death in Vietnam and other wars. In 1988, Dow providedpesticides to Saddam Hussein despite warnings that they could be usedto produce chemical weapons.

In 2001, Dow inherited the toxic legacy of the worst peacetime chemicaldisaster in history when it acquired Union Carbide Corporation (UCC)and its outstanding liabilities in Bhopal, India. As the Students forBhopal website recounts, "On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people inBhopal, India were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leakat a UCC pesticide plant. More than 150,000 people were left severelydisabled-of whom 22,000 have since died of their injuries-in a disasternow widely acknowledged as the world's worst ever."

Dow refusesto address its liabilities in Bhopal or even admit its existence,continuing in Union Carbide's tradition of profiting from extremecorporate irresponsibility. In India, Dow's subsidiary facesmanslaughter charges and is considered a fugitive from justice for apending criminal case related to the 1984 xhemical explosion. Dow andUCC's lack of accountability in the disaster continue to affect thelives in Bhopal to this day.

World wide, Dow is involved inhuman rights abuses: environmental destruction, water and groundcontamination, health violations, chemical poisoning, and chemicalwarfare. Dow Chemical's impact is felt globally from their Midland,Michigan headquarters to New Plymouth, New Zealand. In Midland, Dow hasbeen producing chlorinated chemicals and burning and burying its wasteincluding chemicals that make up Agent Orange. In New Plymouth, NewZealand, 500,000 gallons of Agent Orange were produced and thousands oftons of dioxin-laced waste was dumped in agricultural fields. Dow'stoxic legacies of human rights abuses traverse to agricultural fieldsin Central America where Dow exported EPA-banned pesticide DBCP for useon banana and pineapple crops. As a result, thousands of banana workerswere exposed to DBCP and became sterile. In retail markets across theworld Dow's dangerous chemicals are present as common householdsolvents, plastics, paints and pharmaceuticals.

Private security contractors have become the fastest-growingsector of the global economy during the last decade?a$100-billion-a-year, nearly unregulated industry. DynCorp, one of theproviders of these mercenary services, demonstrates the industry'spower and potential to abuse human rights. While guarding Afghanistatesmen and African oil fields, training Iraqi police forces,eradicating Colombian coca plants, and protecting business interests inhurricane-devastated New Orleans, these hired guns bolster the securityof governments and organizations at the expense of many people's humanrights.

DynCorp's fumigation of coca crops along the Colombian-Ecuadorianborder led Ecuadorian peasants to sue DynCorp in 2001. Plaintiffsargued that DynCorp knew?or should have known?that the herbicides werehighly toxic, and should therefore be held accountable for healthproblems and death among local people and widespread environmentaldamage to their subsistence agriculture. A Colombian newsweekly calledDynCorp?which also sprays herbicides in Peru and Bolivia?"lawlessRambos."

DynCorp's questionable actions in Haiti include its training ofthe national police force after the first coup against PresidentAristide, paving the way for (Tonton Macaoutes) to return to power.

In 2001, a mechanic with DynCorp blew the whistle on DynCorp employeesin Bosnia for rape and trading girls as young as 12 into sex slavery.According to a lawsuit filed by the mechanic, "employees andsupervisors were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior[and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, [and] forged passports."The mechanic observed DynCorp employees buying and selling women andbragging about the ages and talents of their female slaves. DynCorpfired the whistleblower, who later claimed that "DynCorp is just asimmoral and elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do."The company transferred the employees accused of sex trading out of thecountry, eventually firing some. None were prosecuted.

? International Labor Rights Fund and the Law Offices of Cristobal Bonifaz are handling the Ecuadorians'suit, with help from EarthRights International, Amazon Alliance, andFriends of the Earth.

The US automobile industry is fueling America's addiction tooil. Automobiles are the single largest consumer of oil in the US, acountry that constitutes less than five percent of the world'spopulation but consumes 25 percent of its oil. The US addiction to oilis linked with a host of human rights and environmental problems,including human rights abuses in countries such as Nigeria, Ecuador,Sudan, South Africa and Indonesia. The US oil addiction has promptedthe US government to cozy up to human rights violating governments suchas that of Saudi Arabia. It has pushed indigenous people off their landand destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforests, which arehome to half the planet and animal species on the planet. It has fueledwars for oil, such as the war in Iraq, which has so far caused thedeaths of more than 2,100 US troops and an estimated 27,000 to 100,000Iraqis. It has polluted cities, endangering the health of millions ofpeople who live in high-ozone communities and leading to hundreds ofthousands of cases of childhood asthma. And, by being a majorcontributor to global warming, has increased the likelihood of extremeweather events like Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,289people.

Among automakers, Ford Motor Company is the worst. Every yearsince 1999, the US Environmental Protection Agency has ranked Fordcars, trucks and SUVs as having the worst overall fuel economy of anyAmerican automaker. Ford's current car and truck fleet has a loweraverage fuel efficiency than the original Ford Model-T.

Ford is also in last place when it comes to vehicle greenhousegas emissions. According to a recent report by the Union of ConcernedScientists, Ford has "the absolute worst heat-trapping gas emissionsperformance of all the Big Six automakers." In fact, if Ford were acountry, it would be the 10th largest global warming polluterworldwide, behind Italy.

Amazingly, despite the company's recent greenwashing PRcampaign, its record has actually worsened. According to Ford's ownsustainability report, between 2003 and 2004, the company's USfleet-wide fuel economy decreased and its CO2 emissions went up. Fordis also lobbying to prevent the U.S. and state governments fromimproving the situation: the company has lobbied against lawmakers'efforts to increase fuel economy standards at the national level and isalso involved in a lawsuit against California's fuel economy standards.

KBR is a private company that provides military supportservices. Notorious for its questionable bookkeeping, dishonest billingpractices, and no-bid contracts, KBR has violated human rights on theU.S. dollar.

KBR provides key logistical support for war, occupation andunlawful detention. The company provides the critical support servicesUS troops need to be able to continue their occupation of Iraq. KBRalso constructed the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, wherehundreds of detainees have languished for more than three years, manyof whom have suffered abuse and torture.

KBR's dubious accounting in Iraq came to light in December 2003when Pentagon auditors questioned possible overcharges for importedgasoline. Former employees have testified about KBR's billing for $100laundry bags and $45 cases of soda, failing to provide simplemechanical parts such as oil filters, feeding soldiers outdatedrations, and charging for meals never served. In June 2005, apreviously secret Pentagon audit criticized $1.4 billion in"questioned" and "unsupported" expenditures.

However, given KBR's history, this is no surprise. In 2002 the companypaid $2 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit that accused KBRof inflating contract prices at Fort Ord, California. In 2000, the GAOscrutinized KBR for overcharging and providing unnecessary services inthe Balkans. Bribes to local officials (such as in Nigeria) orsubcontractors also appear to be part of KBR's modus operandi.

Many third-country national (TCN) laborers have been hired byKBR to "rebuild" Iraq. Generally hailing from impoverished Asiancountries, they have unexpectedly become part of the largest civilianworkforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war.

Lockheed Martin is the world's largest military contractor. In 2003,the year of the Iraq invasion, the company held $21.9 billion inPentagon contracts. Providing satellites, planes, missiles, and otherlethal high tech items to the Pentagon keeps the profits rolling in.Since 2000, the year Bush was elected, the company's stock value hastripled.

A large company like Lockheed Martin has the ability to shapeit's the business environment, and marketing war is very beneficial tothe bottom line. As the Center for Corporate Policy(www.corporatepolicy.org) notes, it is no coincidence that Lockheed VPBruce Jackson?who helped draft the Republican foreign policy platformin 2000?is a key player at the Project for a New American Century, theintellectual incubator of the Iraq war.

Lockheed Martin is not the only defense contractor that goes behind thescenes to influence public policy, but it is one of the worst. StephenJ. Hadley, who now has Condoleeza Rice's old job as Assistant to thePresident for National Security Affairs, was formerly a partner in abig DC law firm representing Lockheed Martin. He is only one of thebeneficiaries of the so-called revolving door between the militaryindustries and the "civilian" national security apparatus. These warprofiteers?the makers of the Trident missile; aircraft like the F-16Fighting Falcon and the F/A-22 and the C-130 Hercules, as well as hightech space based military components like the DSCS-3 satellite?have aprofound and illegitimate influence our country's international policydecisions.

Monsanto is, by far, the largest producer of geneticallyengineered seeds in the world, dominating 70% to 100% of the market forcrops such as soy, cotton, wheat, and corn. The company is also one ofthe most egregious abusers of the human rights of food sovereignty,access to land, and health.

Monsanto promotes mono-culture?the practice of covering large swaths ofland with a single crop. This practice pushes out subsistence farms anddestroys arable land by drastically decreasing soil and water qualityfor years, draining soil of key nutrients. The company also undercutsfood prices by flooding countries like Mexico, India, and Brazil withcheap, genetically modified foods, resulting in the displacement ofmillions of farm workers, who are forced to migrate to cities or workas landless peasants or share croppers.

Roundup Ultra, a version of the pesticide that is unavailable on thecommercial market, is regularly employed in fumigation of areas ofillicit crop production. However, as it destroys fields of drug plants,it also destroys subsistence crops like banana, palm heart, and coffee.Exposure to the pesticide is documented to cause cancers, skindisorders, spontaneous abortions, premature births, and damage to thegastrointestinal and nervous systems.

According to the India Committee of the Netherlands and theInternational Labor Rights Fund, Monsanto also employs child labor. InIndia, an estimated 12,375 children work in cottonseed production forfarmers paid by Indian and multinational seed companies, includingMonsanto. A number of children have died or became seriously ill due toexposure to pesticides.

There's a secret in the chocolate industry, and once peoplefind out about it, their chocolate doesn't taste as sweet any more:Much of the chocolate eaten all over the world is made of cocoa beansthat have been harvested by illegal child labor, including child slavelabor.

The problem of illegal and forced child labor is rampant in thechocolate industry, because more than forty percent of the world'scocoa supply comes from the Ivory Coast, a country that the US StateDepartment estimates had approximately 109,000 child laborers workingin hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in what's been described as theworst form of child labor. In 2001, Save the Children Canada reportedthat 15,000 children between 9 and 12 years old, many from impoverishedMali, had been tricked or sold into slavery on West African cocoafarms, many for just $30 each. Just this summer, the InternationalLabor Rights Fund and a Birmingham law firm filed a class-actionlawsuit against Nestl? and several of its suppliers on behalf of formerchild slaves.

Nestl? is the target of this lawsuit and is singled out bycorporate campaigners, because it is the third largest buyer of cocoafrom the Ivory Coast, has processing, storage and export facilitiesthere, and is well aware of the tragically unjust labor practicestaking place on the farms with which it continues to do business.Nestl? and other chocolate manufacturers agreed to end the use ofabusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by July 1, 2005, but theyfailed to do so.

Nestl? is also notorious for its aggressive marketing of infantformula in poor countries the 1980s, which may have led to the deathsof countless children who did not receive the nutrients that would havebeen present in breast milk. Because of this practice, Nestl? is stillone of the most boycotted corporations in the world, and its infantformula is still controversial. In Italy in 2005, police seized morethan two million liters of Nestl? infant formula that was contaminatedwith the chemical isopropylthioxanthone (ITX), a component in thepackaging's ink. It turned out the company knew about the contaminationfor months, but did not recall the formula.

Additionally, violations of labor rights are reported fromNestl? factories in numerous countries. In Colombia, Nestl? replacedthe entire factory staff with lower-wage workers and did not renew thecollective employment contract. In Cabuyao Laguna, Philippines, a3-year strike against Nestl? was partially precipitated by Nestl?'srefusal to include the retirement benefits of the workers in thecollective bargaining agreement, despite the Supreme Court's ruling infavor of the workers. The company has brutally attempted to break thestrike; this year, two unionists, including prominent labor leaderDiosdado Fortuna, have been murdered.

According to the World Health Organization, tobacco is thesecond major cause of preventable death in the world. Nearly fivemillion lives per year are claimed by the tobacco industry, whoseproducts results in premature death for half the people who use them.Among tobacco companies, Philip Morris is notorious. Now called Altria,it is the world's largest and most profitable cigarette corporation andmaker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament, Basic and many otherbrands of cigarettes. Philip Morris is also a leader in pushing smokingwith young people around the world.

Philip Morris has consistently misled consumers about thedangers of its products. Documents uncovered in a lawsuit filed againstthe tobacco industry by the state of Minnesota showed that PhilipMorris and other leading tobacco corporations knew very well of thedangers of tobacco products and the addictiveness of nicotine, yet theycontinued to deny these realities in public until the internal companydocuments were brought to light. To this day, Philip Morris deceivesconsumers about the harm of its products by offering light, mild andlow-tar cigarettes that give consumers the illusion that these brandsare "healthier" than traditional cigarettes.

Philip Morris has actively targeted the world's youth byresearching smoking patterns and attitudes and targeting youth aspotential customers. Marlboro cigarettes are the top brand for youth inthe United States. Although the company says it doesn't want kids tosmoke, it spends millions of dollars every day marketing and promotingcigarettes to youth. Overseas, it has even hired underage Marlborogirls to distribute free cigarettes to other children and sponsoredconcerts where cigarettes were handed out to minors.

As anti-tobacco campaigns and government regulations areslowing tobacco use in Western countries, Philip Morris hasaggressively moved into developing country markets, where smoking andsmoking-related deaths are on the rise. According to a study by theHarvard School of Public Health, tobacco's killing fields are shiftingto the developing world and Eastern Europe, where most of the world'ssmokers now live. Preliminary numbers released by the World HealthOrganization predict global deaths due to smoking-related illnesseswill nearly double by 2020, with more than three-quarters of thosedeaths in the developing world.

Meanwhile, Philip Morris' profits continue to grow. In thethird quarter of 2005 alone, Altria's net revenue was $25 billion, upfrom 2004 in large part due to the high performance of Philip MorrisUSA and Philip Morris International.

Pfizer is one of the largest and most profitable pharmaceuticalcompanies in the world with revenues of $52.5 billion in 2004. Inaddition to Viagra, Zoloft, Zithromax, and Norvasc, Pfizer produces theHIV/AIDS-related drugs Rescriptor, Viracept and Diflucan (fluconazole).Like other drug companies, they sell these drugs at prices poor peoplecannot afford and aggressively fight efforts to make it easier forgeneric drugs to enter the market. They have even cut off drugshipments to Canadian pharmacies that sold Pfizer drugs to patients inthe United States for costs more affordable than those offered in USpharmacies.

To ensure its profits, Pfizer invests heavily in US campaigncontributions. Though it can't seem to afford to offer life-savingdrugs at affordable prices, it was able to scrounge up $544,900 formostly Republican candidates in election cycle 2006 (still in progress)and $1,630,556 in the 2004 election cycle.

Drug companies'refusal to put human beings' health ahead of their own greed andprofits is especially deadly for people with HIV/AIDS. AIDS killed 3.1million people in 2004, a shocking death rate that could be greatlyreduced if treatment was made available to people who right now cannotafford it. Pfizer and other drug companies have refused to grantgeneric licenses for HIV/AIDS drugs to countries like Brazil, SouthAfrica, and the Dominican Republic, where patients are forced to pay$20 per weekly pill for drugs like fluconazole, though the averagenational wage is only $120 per month.

Instead of helpingeradicate the world's worst pandemic in history, the World TradeOrganization has made matters worse. Beginning in 1995, the agreementon Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)protected companies by stopping WTO member countries from makinggeneric versions of their drugs. Because of public pressure, the WTOannounced a new agreement in 2003 to allow poor countries to accesscheap generic antiretroviral drugs, but in practice, the drugs are justas inaccessible to poor countries as they were before.

The privatization of water has had a disastrous impact on the humanright to clean water, and the French company Suez is the worstperpetrator of this abuse. The company's billions of dollars in profitcome at the expense of poor people living in countries where thousandslack access to potable water, and, because of private water contracts,are also facing skyrocketing water prices.

Suez goes by many names around the world?Ondeo, SITA, and others?tomask its worldwide net of controversial activities. But no sleight ofhand can hide the fact that Suez, which is one of the largest watercompanies in the world, has been a leader in turning the human right towater into an unaffordable luxury. According to Public Citizen, Suezhas raised water rates, cut off the water of people unable to pay,refused to extend services to poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and thenthreatened legal action when contracts are terminated.

For example, in Manila, Philippines, after seven years of waterprivatization under a Suez company (Maynilad Water) contract, studiesshowed that water rates increased in some neighborhoods by 400 to 700percent. These studies also showed that the negligence of the companyresulted in cholera and gastroenteritis outbreaks that killed sixpeople and severely sickened 725 in Manila's Tondo district.

In Argentina, Suez mixed companies have refused to makepromised investments in the water infrastructure, which has resulted inserious water pollution problems. They also charge high consumer ratesand cut off water access for citizens unable to pay, leaving those mostin need without access to a life-sustaining natural resource.

In Bolivia, a Suez company (Aguas de Illimani) left 200,000people without access to water and caused a revolt when it tried tocharge between $335 and $445 to connect a private home to the watersupply. Countless people were unable to afford this charge in a countrywhose yearly per capita GDP is $915.

Unfortunately, the IMF and World Bank are playing a key role inpushing water privatization all over the world. Many countries havebeen required to open up their water supply to private companies as acondition for receiving IMF loans, and the World Bank has approvedmillions of dollars in loans for the privatization of water systems.

Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world. It owns 5,100stores worldwide and employs 1.3 million workers in the United Statesand 400,000 abroad, as well as a millions more in the factories of itssuppliers. Because of the company's enormity, its business model has ahuge influence on workers and businesses around the world; so farWal-Mart has used that influence to ruthlessly drive down costs as ameans of making profit, violating a vast array of human rights andlabor rights along the way.

Many people have heard of the way that Wal-Mart steamrolls itsway into every possible town, destroying local supermarkets andcountless small businesses. We have also heard about Wal-Mart's longtrack record of worker abuse, from forced overtime to sexdiscrimination to illegal child labor to relentless union busting.Wal-Mart also notoriously fails to provide health insurance to overhalf of its employees, who are then left to rely on themselves ortaxpayers, who provide for a portion of their healthcare needs throughgovernment Medicaid.

Less well known is the fact that Wal-Mart maintains its lowprice level by allowing substandard labor conditions at the overseasfactories producing most of its goods. The company continually demandslower prices from its suppliers, who, in turn, make more outrageous andabusive demands on their workers in order to meet Wal-Mart'srequirements. In September 2005, the International Labor Rights Fundfiled a lawsuit on behalf of Wal-Mart supplier sweatshop workers inChina, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland. The workers weredenied minimum wages, forced to work overtime without compensation, andwere denied legally mandated health care. Other worker rightsviolations that have been found in foreign factories that produce goodsfor Wal-Mart include locked bathrooms, starvation wages, pregnancytests, denial of access to health care, and workers being fired andblacklisted if they try to defend their rights.

Additionally, nearly 70% of Wal-Mart's goods are made infactories in China, a country where garment workers are often keptunder 24-hour-a-day surveillance and can be fired for even discussingfactory conditions. The Chinese government does not allow independenthuman rights groups to exist, and all attempts to form independentunions have been crushed. Wal-Mart refuses to reveal its Chinesecontractors and will not allow independent, unannounced inspections ofits contractors' facilities.

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