A Wal-Mart supplier was shut down last week for locking workers in their facility and forcing 24 hour shift.

CJ’s Seafood forced 40 Mexican guest workers to work without a break or overtime pay. Turns out that 12 of the 18 suppliers for Wal-Mart have been breaking labor laws of some type. The claim that has been made by Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s “On Point” is that Wal-Mart keeps prices down, thus forcing the suppliers to keep their prices incredibly low, making it impossible to run a business legally and humanely to their workers. Consequently consumers are just encouraging Wal Mart.

So what, am I supposed to feel guilty for buying household items at low prices? Do we not as rulers of our own personal finances have a responsibility to make the most of our money?

We heard it over and over again when the economy crashed in 2008 that we each need to live within our means and budget ourselves. Working people only have so many means. There are times when it doesn’t matter if it’s generic brand cereal if there is money to get coffee on the weekends. To many other consumers eating the generic brand cereal is even more of a necessity than that. Buying generic brand cereal may not lead to a mere luxury but a bottle of cold medicine for an unexpectedly sick child.

Buying local goods is a way to avoid supporting Walmart. Instead you are supporting the local artist, fashion designer, farmer, or furniture designer. However there are some things that are simply not locally produced. Most cleaning products, bathroom items, and small things around the house, e.g. Command Hooks. My life would be so much more complicated without those little things.

I have lived in Ames for two years, either on campus or in Campustown. There is not a simple general store or place to buy groceries anywhere within walking distance. Ames is a driving community, CyRide makes it possible to be without a car but it still isn’t easy. I was without a car for last spring semester and the better part of this summer. CyRide makes it really to navigate around Ames, but even I was found walking for miles to get home.

Ames is also a college community, which means constant new people in town. Most newbies are college students whom have more than enough to worry about with school. They don’t unfortunately have time to discover Ames’s small stores. Students need necessities just like anyone else does. Wal-Mart is well known and relatively easy to find.

I read an article this week about ‘having it all,’ and the american mentality that we think we can have it all and not have to pay the price. Well Wal-Mart makes it seem like we can in fact have it all. We can downgrade our cereal to upgrade our coffee addiction, however the price is the poor treatment of labor workers.

This issue was solved back in 1866 with the birth of the first labor union. Unions were created so that workers will have a dedicated advocate lobbying for them in Washington. In the 1960s, 50 percent of labor workers were a part of a union; today it’s only about 7 percent, according to Ross Eisenbrey vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. Workers don’t want to spend the money that it cost to support a union. However workers are suffering in Washington D.C.

Without that name of a union to back up lobbyists, they are no longer lobbyists, but just merely individuals. The idea that each individual can do their own political leg work is great; it shows initiative. But it takes knowledge, skill, and time to organize. The knowledge of Washington and the skill to persuade other politicians may be there, but to labor workers time is money–far more money than a union costs to run.

If the workers at CJ’s Seafood were union workers the chance of this situation happening would have been slight to none. Any issue leading up to this situation would have been reported preventing CJ’s to push the envelope any further. Even if they did continue to push, the union, armed with lawyers and lobbyists, would be willing and able to take this to court or to congress. This would not have been a blow-over story.

Most people, unless you are paying attention to the news, missed this story. If these workers had the support of a union there would have been action taken to protect the workers from any further inhumane treatment.