A labor rights group filed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against Wal-Mart Stores in which apparel workers in Bangladesh, China and other countries assert that Wal-Mart violated its contractual obligations by not enforcing its code of conduct for overseas contractors. The lawsuit argues that Wal-Mart's code of conduct created contractual obligations between it and thousands of workers employed by contractors who were supposed to comply with the code.
See "Suit Says Wal-Mart Is Lax on Labor Abuses Overseas", Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, September 13, 2005