HOW 'CIVILIZED' ARE WE?

My first reaction to the trampling death of a Wal-mart employee on "Black Friday" was one of disgust. Not just disgust with the people who mindlessly trampled someone to death, but with Wal-mart and their policies of low pay, small benefits. As Peter S. Goodman wrote in the New York Times describing the victim: "the unfortunate man who found himself working at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart at 5:00 A.M. Friday, a temp at the company emblematic of low wages and weak benefit earning his dollars by trying to police an unruly crowd worried about missing out."

Wal-Mart must pay for this death. I hope that an inquest will be far-reaching enough to examine Wal-Mart hiring practices. Of course, while you can't blame Wal-Mart, or any other retailer, for the voracious, shark-like predatory mobs for whom a bargain is worth killing - literally. But the inquest will have to determine among other things, how prepared Wal-Mart was for such a disaster. Did they hire eno0ugh employees for the occasion? Did they put extra security measures in place? Or are they in a way like the Third World construction companies that build shoddy schools that collapse and kill children? Do they skimp wherever they can? Do they "sweat" employees to keep labour costs down? And perhaps more than anything, do they market based on the reality that the consumer will let nothing stand in the way of his/her bottom feeding for the lowest prices, even if those prices are lowered on the backs of overworked, underpaid employees.

As I read the Goodman story I was struck by one notion: things like trampling people do death don't happen in America or Canada. We are just too civilized. People get trampled to death when a bridge gets overloaded in India, or when tens of thousands of people try to rush through a small opening in Mecca during Hadj. The idea that less developed countries are where things like that happen, where overloaded buses driven by incompetents fall off a cliff in Peru.

In our own special smugness we believe that we are "better."

Turns out we are not. Turns out that nothing appeals more than a bargain. We have everyday honest factory workers (many of whom are no longer employed) who have bargained for higher wages and benefits, flocking to a chain that lowers prices using lower benefits and lower wages and when there is a threat of unionizing, will close the store citing "poor performance" as an excuse.

We have a lot of choices. The poor guy who didn't know he going to die didn't have.