Handshake With Sam
While Wal-Mart’s founder, Sam Walton, steered his company’s growth over its first thirty years, he never let anyone forget that with such tremendous success come certain moral responsibilities. He led by example, and he did business with a handshake.
Today’s Wal-Mart has lost Sam’s way. That’s why we’ve proposed a new contract with Wal-Mart’s current leadership—to help Wal-Mart take its place as a responsible business leader for the new century.
Judge Honors Georgia O’Keeffe, Snubs Alice Walton
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
When painter Georgia O’Keeffe donated her late husband, famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s collection of work to Fisk University, she didn’t mean for the University to turn around and sell it. A Tennessee judge ruled that sharing the historic collection with Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton would violate the terms of O’Keeffe’s will. The ruling ensures that Stieglitz’s work will remain in Tennessee.
Fisk is the latest in a long series of financially unstable institutions Alice Walton has been preying on for dirt cheap fine art. To those in the art world, Alice Walton has become a modern day robber baron, taking advantage of smaller organizations and using whatever means necessary to strong-arm a low price. Wonder where she learned that from.
Judge Nixes University Plan to Share Art [Associated Press]
A judge on Friday threw out Fisk University’s $30 million proposal to share an art collection with a museum founded by a Wal-Mart heiress in Arkansas.
Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle said the deal was not in keeping with the wishes of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who donated the 101-piece collection to the historically black university in 1949.
Read the rest of this story ...
Is the Bank of Wal-Mart Back?
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
For years, Wal-Mart has been trying to take over the banking industry by establishing the “Bank of Wal-Mart.” With an industrial loan charter from the FDIC, Wal-Mart could make huge profits from credit cards, mortgages and loans.
Thanks to concerned citizens, that hasn’t happened. After thousands of people contacted the FDIC in 2006, it placed an 18-month moratorium on all new ILC applications—including Wal-Mart’s.
Unfortunately, that moratorium ended February 1st.
The expiration of the FDIC moratorium opened the gate for Wal-Mart and other commercial retailers to apply for and obtain an ILC charter. In fact, within five days of the moratorium expiring on January 31st, Ford Motor Company applied for a charter.
The Senate Banking Committee is currently considering legislation to permanently block commercial retailers like Wal-Mart from having ILCs. Please use our simple tool to write a letter to the committee, and ask them to close the Bank of Wal-Mart loophole and pass this important bill. Click on:
http://action.walmartwatch.com/bankofwalmart
Read the rest of this story ...
Wal-Mart Continues to Try To Increase Sprawl in the U.K.
Posted by Research Team
Wal-Mart has long had a monolithic development strategy in the U.S.: build supercenters with massive parking lots outside town centers where natural areas or agricultural land once was. Using this strategy in the United Kingdom has proved a difficult task. Not only is the U.K. geographically much smaller than the U.S., the country also has comprehensive national zoning regulations aimed at combating sprawl. As it tries to expand in the U.K., ASDA (Wal-Mart’s British division) is proving that sprawl and environmental destruction are still very much a part of its business plan, despite the company’s recent environmental efforts. Wal-Mart is continuing to lobby for changes which would destroy what little green space is left in the U.K.
Instead of adapting to a U.K. market, which requires downtown development, ASDA is instead seeking to impose the poor planning strategies of the U.S. Wal-Mart has been lobbying U.K. officials to make England’s strict development restrictions optional. An article in today’s Telegraph examines the latest in a long line of lobbying efforts by the retailer.
Most of this has been in an effort to better compete with British retailer Tesco, ASDA’s main rival. Tesco’s influence over the British market is significant, but ASDA offers an alternative that relies on unsustainable land use policies and the destruction of the local environment. Tesco has focused heavily on downtown re-development and flexible design in the UK, but this method does not fit in to Wal-Mart’s cookie cutter business model. Tesco has excelled largely by its ability to tailor stores to downtown areas and move away from sprawling big-box developments. Wal-Mart’s inability to follow suit is a huge weakness for the company, here and in England. The Supercenter mentality has lead to a significant amount sprawl development in the U.S. and has, in turn, created problems in many downtown areas in the States. The United Kingdom created a progressive land use policy to ensure vital downtown areas. Tesco created a business strategy focused on these areas, but ASDA, unaccustomed to downtown development, has only proposed making things worse.
Read the rest of this story ...
Workers Strike at Wal-Mart’s Mexico Stores
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Wal-Mart employees at the company’s stores in Mexico went on strike yesterday, demanding better treatment from managers and better pay. Wal-Mart came under fire recently for refusing to pay teenagers working in its Mexico stores. The current labor dispute is not related.
Wal-Mart’s Mexico employees are not the only ones to strike in recent weeks. Wal-Mart employees in China held a sit-in at a distribution center, demanding back pay from the multinational retailer. Wal-Mart employees in China are increasingly unionized, but employees in Mexico are not. Wal-Mart employees in the U.S. could just as easily demand better conditions and pay.
Workers strike at three units of Mexico’s Walmex [Reuters]
Wal-Mart de Mexico, the country’s biggest retailer, suffered its first-ever strike this week when 300 workers from two stores and a restaurant walked out for a day in a dispute over pay and conditions.
Jaime Camacho, a top official from a grass-roots workers movement that backed the strike action, told Reuters that black and red strike flags were hung at the entrance of the stores and restaurant in the beach resort of Los Cabos at midday on Wednesday, closing down the establishments.
Read the rest of this story ...
Wal-Mart Says “Judge Us By Our Actions”
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
In an op-ed today in the Capital Times of Madison, WI, Wal-Mart executive Lisa B. Nelson explains why everyone should stop hating Wal-Mart. Before we get into specifics, let’s set the scene. Wisconsin residents are currently fighting Wal-Mart in several cities. In fact, just a few months ago the very same newspaper ran an editorial criticizing the retailer. Now it seems that Wal-Mart’s PR department is trying to make up lost ground.
Lisa Nelson is quick to brush off past criticisms, and draws attention to Wal-Mart’s sale of CFL lightbulbs and cheap generic drugs. At the end of the editorial, Lisa Nelson asks readers to “Judge Wal-Mart by our actions.” Well, Lisa, we’d be happy to.
- World’s Largest Company Facing Nation’s Largest Workplace-Bias Lawsuit. Wal-Mart stands accused of systematically discriminating against 1.3 million female employees over the course of more than a decade. The current and former Wal-Mart associates charge the company pays women less and offers them fewer opportunities for promotion. More...
- Wal-Mart’s Health Coverage Rates Lags Far Behind National Average. Nationally, 63 percent of workers in large firms (200 employees or more) receive their health benefits from their employer. More than 80 percent of Costco workers are covered by their company plan. At Wal-Mart, that figure is just barely 50%. More...
- Multiple Labor Law Violations. State and federal regulators have hit Wal-Mart for violating rules on work hours and leave: family leave laws, refusing to provide breaks for employees, hiring undocumented workers and forcing associates to work off the clock are just some of the violations Wal-Mart has faced. More...
- Wal-Mart Costs Taxpayers Money. Wal-Mart drains public funds in a number of ways: by forcing workers to use state-sponsored medical programs, by using public dollars for its private development and using up local resources. More...
Lisa B. Nelson might want these issues to disappear, but they don’t. While Wal-Mart’s PR department tries desperately to focus on new issues, these larger problems remain unresolved. We’ll gladly judge Wal-Mart by its actions, Lisa. In fact, we already are.
Wal-Mart Rebranding its Walk-In Clinics
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
After two dozen of its in-store clinics unexpectedly closed last week, Wal-Mart announced today that it will open several new clinics under the Wal-Mart brand name. Last week, contract company CheckUps, which operated 23 clinics in Wal-Mart stores, closed without explanation. Details later emerged that the CheckUps company closed all operations.
Medical concerns continue to dog retail clinics, and the American Academy of Pediatrics continues to oppose them. In addition, the clinics are largely unprofitable, making it a curious avenue for Wal-Mart to pursue. But as Wal-Mart’s sales sag in the U.S. and the company has an increasingly difficult time building new stores, the retailer needs to find new sources of revenue. Retail clinics is an attempt at this. While Wal-Mart might be good at selling merchandise, the retailer has never excelled at services: customer service in the company’s stores is notoriously bad, the company’s own health care plan is paltry and continuing labor disputes show that the company values profit over quality-of-life. Will the company’s walk-in clinics be any different?
Wal-Mart Will Expand In-Store Medical Clinics [New York Times]
Moving to upgrade its walk-in medical clinic business, Wal-Mart is set to announce on Thursday plans for several hundred new clinics at its stores, using a standardized format and jointly branded with hospitals and medical groups.
The first of the new Clinic at Wal-Mart walk-in centers, as they will be called, is to open in Little Rock, Ark., in April and be run by nurse practitioners employed by the St. Vincent Health System, a three-hospital group in central Arkansas.
Wal-Mart also says it plans to brand 200 of the new clinics with RediClinics, one of the Revolution Health companies of Steven Case, the AOL co-founder. Those are to be operated in partnership with various local health care providers. RediClinic, which already operates 13 clinics in Wal-Mart stores, plans to open one of the new units in Atlanta in April and another in Dallas next summer.
Read the rest of this story ...
India on Wal-Mart’s Sourcing Practices
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
As Wal-Mart ramps up to enter the Indian market, academics and analysts in India are taking a fresh look at Wal-Mart’s expansion practices. This piece from India’s Financial Express explores Wal-Mart’s sourcing practices and dependence on China for production. Wal-Mart has met harsh resistance in India, and as the discussion around Wal-Mart expands, more debate is sure to follow.
Wal-Mart increases its hold on China [Financial Express (India)]
China is the largest exporter to the US in virtually all consumer goods category and Wal-Mart is the leading retailer of consumer goods in the US. So uncanny and strong is the mutual dependency between China and Wal-Mart that they have been called as the “ultimate joint venture” by some. Wal-Mart’s dramatic rise in overseas production and sourcing was a result of landmark changes in public and global trade policies supported by bipartisan consensus for the last 25 years.
Wal-Mart has reached such levels of sophistication in its international sourcing that it is always one step ahead of its competitor in either new product development or sourcing the same product for a nickel less and thereby doing justice to its motto of “everyday low prices”. The impact of the rise of Wal-Mart on other US-based retailers and manufacturers bears striking resemblance to the impact of the rise of China as a manufacturing force on other Asian manufacturing-exporting countries.
Read the rest of this story ...
Wal-Mart Attempts To Keep Corporate Tax Loophole In Massachusetts
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Sprawl-Busters founder Al Norman broke this story on the Huffington Post over the weekend. Now, the Boston Herald examines Wal-Mart’s attempts to prevent Massachusetts from closing the tax loopholes the company is currently disputing in North Carolina. The company’s lobbying efforts show that Wal-Mart isn’t satisfied to just abide by the law: it takes an active role in shaping it. This is a big part of why some consider Wal-Mart to have an unfair advantage. If small businesses had even a fraction of the lobbying power Wal-Mart commands, the American economy would be much, much different.
Wal-Mart ups lobbying [Boston Herald]
Wal-Mart, while pushing to open more stores in Massachusetts, is also pumping more money into Beacon Hill lobbying.
The nation’s largest retailer has increased its spending on lobbyists in the state nearly five-fold since 2006, when it spent $43,220.
Wal-Mart forked over $208,678 to a pair of firms last year, state records show.
The retailer’s State House drive comes as Gov. Deval Patrick pushes plans to plug corporate “tax loopholes” that allow companies to avoid some local taxes by shipping income out of state.
Wal-Mart finds itself at the center of that debate. The chain has stores across the country paying rent to a separate real estate investment trust controlled by company executives, The Wall Street Journal has reported.