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.
Wal-Mart Prepares for Layoffs in Apparel Department
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
As we mentioned last week, Wal-Mart is preparing to lay off several dozen positions in its apparel department, and move several people more to New York. Not only does this indicate a significant shift in the company’s apparel strategy, it’s also the first time in many years that the retailer has laid off a significant number of employees at its Bentonville headquarters.
Wal-Mart has had recurring problems with its apparel division, and though the company claimed it would return to its “low price, low fashion” business model last year, the recent announcements would seem to indicate otherwise.
Wal-Mart Will Shake Up Apparel Unit; Layoffs Set [New York Times]
In a major revamping of its sluggish clothing business, Wal-Mart Stores will shut two divisions at its headquarters in Arkansas, eliminate dozens of positions and move dozens more to New York City.
This will be the first time in years that Wal-Mart, a company renowned for growth, has laid off a significant number of workers at its headquarters.
Read the rest of this story ...
Pay the Kids
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Wal-Mart exploits thousands of teenage grocery baggers in Mexico, relying on their work but forcing them to work only for tips. Learn more by watching this video, and then visit our action page to send a letter to Wal-Mart officials and the Mexican Labor Department telling them to end the unethical practice.
Wal-Mart Settles on Banks in Mexico
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
After failing in its efforts to open banks in the U.S., Wal-Mart has done just that at its stores in Mexico. The banks are targeting low-income shoppers, enticing them with a low minimum balance of just five dollars. Those promises are two-faced, though: interest rates on savings are lower than almost every other bank (at just 1%) and loans are at a staggering 75% APR. In doing this, Wal-Mart perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, a cycle which the retailer has come to depend on for its customers.
Wal-Mart gets its bank - in Mexico [Fortune]
For years, Wal-Mart tried to enter the U.S. banking business, but it gave up in 2007, pulling its application after endless outcries from domestic retail banks. Now it’s found a more receptive audience south of the border. In November, Wal-Mart de México opened its first consumer bank, Banco Wal-Mart, in Toluca; the company plans to launch 80 more by the end of the year.
Toluca, a sprawling industrial town near Mexico City, seems like an unlikely place for Wal-Mart’s maiden push into banking. But there, in a strip mall, beside a bakery and a beauty parlor, Norma Pacheco is mulling a Wal-Mart account. “I’d use it to pay for my Wal-Mart purchases,” says Pacheco, a 42-year-old engineer. “The brand gives me confidence.”
Pacheco isn’t the client Wal-Mart de México is ultimately after. Mexico’s biggest retailer, with 668 stores, wants to crack the low-income market in a country where just 24 percent of households have savings accounts, compared with 55 percent in Chile. Wal-Mart plans to boost sales via debit cards, later ease users into more profitable services like insurance, and make money on interest-rate spreads. Early signs are promising. Héctor Aguila, the bank’s manager, says that about 40 percent of the new clients who have signed up at dedicated desks in the store since the bank’s November launch have never had an account of any kind.
Read the rest of this story ...
The Problem with Wal-Mart’s Price Cuts
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Wal-Mart’s cutting prices in hopes of boosting sales. This video from CNN explains that sourcing products from companies based in the United States would help even more. Click here for the video on CNN’s site.
Wal-Mart’s Price Cuts Are More Marketing, Less Action
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Just what the American economy needs: more nacho flavored cheez dip. Apparently Wal-Mart has grown tired of the U.S. government’s attempts to boost the economy: the retailer announced its own “stimulus” plan today. In a brilliant stroke of innovative marketing, the company will be cutting prices. Again. This might not be the most inventive approach to getting shoppers through Wal-Mart’s doors - indeed, it seems to be the retailer’s only approch - but it does show that Wal-Mart needs more customers badly. As this video from CNN explains, however, consumers aren’t going to spend their way out of a recession: holistic economic repair is needed. Wal-Mart’s practice of exporting U.S. jobs and draining community wealth are part of what has created the current economic problems. Wal-Mart’s “stimulus” then is little more than a marketing ploy. CNN’s Morning Buzz has more:
The problem with ‘Wal-Mart stimulus’ [CNN Money]
In what has to qualify as one of the more absurd headlines for a press release in recent memory, Wal-Mart announced what it called its “Economic Stimulus Plan for U.S. Shoppers.” The company said it was cutting prices on thousands of health care and household products and other items between 10 percent and 30 percent ahead of this Sunday’s Super Bowl.
I can only hope that this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek but Wal-Mart actually said in its press release that “against a backdrop of continued talk of a credit squeeze, Wal-Mart is concentrating on savings on the items customers need to buy at this time of year - unbeatable prices for the big game.”
So rest assured, consumers. You don’t need to wait for your tax rebate check. Go splurge today on Pepsi 12-packs, Tostitos Scoops and Hillshire Farms Cocktail Smokies.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Getting people to spend more is only one way to fix the economy’s woes. To really get the economy back on track, what’s needed is an overhaul of the mortgage lending process in order to protect borrowers from overzealous banks pushing exotic loans that the borrowers really cannot afford.
23 Wal-Mart Clinics Unexpectedly Close
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Twenty three - almost a third - of Wal-Mart’s walk-in clinics unexpectedly closed last week. The operator of the clinics, CheckUps, appears to have shut them without explanation. The problem appears to be with the CheckUps company itself, which fell behind on payroll payments and other expenses. As we’ve discussed previously on this site, Wal-Mart’s walk-in clinics are often run by independent entrepreneurs with little or no experience in health care. To cite just one example: the director of Wal-Mart contractor MinuteClinic, Michael Howe, is a former CEO of Arby’s. Howe was quoted as saying “clinics are to health care institutions, what ATMS are to the banking institution.” Making health care more accessible is important, but the quality of that health care is critical. As Wal-Mart expands its health care offerings and does more to keep employee health care expenses in-house, will doing things on-the-cheap really cut it?
Operator of Walk-In Clinics Shuts 23 Located in Wal-Mart Stores [New York Times]
CheckUps, a start-up operator of walk-in medical clinics, has shut down 23 of the clinics operating in Wal-Mart stores in Florida and three other Southern states.
CheckUps, based in New York, fell behind in paying its nurses and other vendors late last year, apparently running short of cash to meet its bills, according to a lawyer for one of its creditors.
Nurses arriving for work at the clinics on Jan. 18 found them to be closed.
CheckUps stopped paying some of its nurse practitioners in December, and it owes about $108,000 to Medtracker Personnel, said Stephanie Granda, a lawyer for Medtracker Personnel, a Louisiana employment agency that provided nurses to CheckUps clinics.
Read the rest of this story ...
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to Wal-Mart: No More Triclosan
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is asking Wal-Mart to stop buying products containing triclosan, an ingredient in antibacterial soaps that causes serious health problems. The FDA has yet to ban the substance, but the CSC is asking Wal-Mart to embargo products containing the chemical. From the CSC’s website:
Ask a mega-retailer to help stem the demand for products that contain triclosan. Even if the U.S. FDA has no real power at the moment, Wal-Mart and its huge buying power do. E-mail the company and ask the retailer to add triclosan to the list of hazardous chemicals addressed under its new Business Sustainability plan.
Take it another step: Add your own comments and contact info to the letter, if you feel comfortable doing so, and deliver it to a Wal-Mart near you. Ask to meet with the store manager to hand-deliver the letter, and request that he or she pass the letter on to regional managers.
Visit the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website to urge Wal-Mart to ban triclosan from its shelves.
Asda Looks into Selling Energy
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Last week, we briefly mentioned Wal-Mart’s rumored efforts to start selling electricity here in the U.S., but now those same rumors are arising about Wal-Mart’s U.K. arm Asda.
While Wal-Mart’s U.S. division consumes the most energy in the country (those 24/hour supercenters don’t light themselves...), Asda is far from consuming enough power to warrant an in-house plant. Wal-Mart-brand electricity might not be the best thing for consumers, either. If the company’s current services are any indication, coverage would be paltry, lines would be long and customer service would be non-existent. What’s the upside here?
Asda hopes to sell power to customers [Financial Times]
Asda, the supermarket group owned by Wal-Mart, is to explore selling electricity to its customers through its power services company, Power4All, in a move that reflects its US parent’s growing interest in energy.
Andy Bond, chief executive, told the Financial Times that in the “medium term” the retailer hoped to extend to Asda’s customers a programme initially set up last year to provide its stores with “low-cost energy and energy from totally sustainable sources”.
“I’m very confident that in the future we’ll be able to do it for our customers as well,” he said.