David Perdue's stint as CEO of Dollar General was probably the line on his resume that made him a viable candidate for Senate in Georgia, where the discount chain has dozens of stores. Being CEO of Dollar General is also what Perdue hangs his job creation claims on—at least, his American job creation claims—after a career mostly spent outsourcing production and jobs overseas. But in addition to creating terrible jobs and discriminating against women under Perdue's leadership, Dollar General was forced to recall numerous Chinese-made products, including several toys that posed dangers to children.
At a recent debate, Perdue defended himself on outsourcing by saying that, at Dollar General, "we created almost 20,000 jobs in about four years and yet we outsourced almost every product we sold in our stores," but stuck with his new definition of outsourcing by insisting that many of those products were "outsourced" from the United States. Dollar General did sell many American-made products. But "Perdue expanded the company’s reach into low-cost Asian markets, including opening up a Hong Kong sourcing office in 2004," and it was with Chinese-made goods that the chain repeatedly ran into trouble:
... more than 1.2 million products imported from China were yanked from shelves during his tenure. The recalls were mostly because of lead contamination but also problems such as fire hazards. Only one injury was reported from the products, a 2-year-old who suffered mouth and throat irritation from a chemical after chewing on a watch band. [...]
In all, Dollar General went through seven recalls during Perdue’s tenure as CEO from 2003 to 2007.
Not what you want to see in a candidate's one semi-legitimate claim to having created American jobs. Dollar General paid Perdue tens of millions of dollars—even more than it subsequently paid to settle
gender discrimination complaints by more than 2,000 women. So it made him an even richer man, and bolstered his CEO-politician image ... but Dollar General still doesn't make Perdue look like a candidate who cares about working people.
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