Paying decent wages would actually cost Wal-Mart and its shoppers next to nothing. So why don’t they do it?

Wal-Mart is facing some of the most aggressive labor action’s in the company’s history, as it has been hit with a wave of walk-outs and many workers are threatening to walk offthe job on the busiest day of the year, Black Friday.

Wal-Mart claims that it pays its workers well, despite the fact that its CEO earns 1,167 times as much as an average worker at the company and its workers earn “12.4% less than retail workers as a whole and 13% less than large retail workers in general.”

Over at The Guardian, Paul Harris reports on the sad state of workers at a Wal-Mart warehouse in Elwood, Illinois, the site of some of the first strikes. Harris interviews one worker who says some employees have resorted to sleeping in tents to get by, while others slept in abandoned homes:

Phillip Bailey knows there are people worse off than him working inside the gigantic WalmartAi??warehouse that dominates the small town of Elwood in rural Illinois.

He sleeps at a Catholic hostel in nearby Joliet and so has a solid roof over his head after a day of helping the endless flow of consumer goods supplying Walmart stores across America. Not all his colleagues can say that. One squatted in abandoned houses. Another lived rough in the woods in between work shifts. “He just set up a tent in there for a few weeks,” Bailey said.

This is not the sign of a company that treats its workers well.

We’ll continue to keep you updated on the historic labor actions that are holding Wal-Mart accountable.