Price range for a pair of jeans: $8 to $19.94

The process: This American superstore buys its garments from supplier factories around the world. In one Nicaragua factory, a garment inspector for Wal-Mart jeans inspected 20,000 jeans each week, earning less than 40 cents an hour. Another worker in a garment factory in the Philippines was forced to work 24 hours straight, creating clothing for Wal-Mart brands such as No Boundaries. In Bangladesh, children between the ages of nine and 12 have been found working in Wal-Mart sweatshops. In Honduras, children worked up to 13 hours a day for 25 cents an hour, sewing jeans to be later sold in the U.S. for 20 dollars apiece.

The spin: “Wal-Mart strives to do business only with factories run legally and ethically.” —Wal-Mart's official statement on sweatshops

The record: In order to keep their prices low, Wal-Mart employs workers abroad in 48 different countries. Millions of workers in Wal-Mart’s many sweatshop factories regularly experience health and labor violations, including routine overtime without pay and a minimum wage up to 30 percent below their country’s minimum. In 2005, 15 workers from six different countries filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart for not controlling sweatshop labor conditions. The company agreed to toughen standards for overseas suppliers, but did not outline any concrete measures to take. In fact, Wal-Mart will not terminate its contract with a factory even if that factory was found to have violated the corporation’s code of conduct—only after a factory fails inspections three times in a row will Wal-Mart not renew its contract.

Did you know? More than 80 percent of Wal-Mart’s merchandise suppliers are in China. If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China’s fifth largest export market. In 2004, Wal-Mart earned more than 250 billion dollars, making it the world’s largest corporation. Its earnings accounted for two percent of the U.S. annual gross domestic product. That same year, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. made more than17 million dollars.

Learn about China and its labor practices >>