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 Watch Year in Review
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
A look back at the year that was. 2007 was a tough year for Wal-Mart: sales were at their lowest in more than a quarter century, multiple public relations blunders left the company reeling and financial analysts began wondering if Wal-Mart’s era is over. A round-up of the Wal-Mart news from 2007.
JANUARY
Wal-Mart employees seek more damages [Associated Press via Washington Post]
Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania who won a $78.5 million judgment for working off the clock and through rest breaks returned to court Wednesday to seek another $62 million in damages.
The unending woes of Lee Scott [Fortune]
The world’s biggest retailer had a lousy 2006. There were personnel problems, like the resignation of Sam’s Club marketing head Mark Goodman and the embarrassing ouster of Julie Roehm, the young advertising whiz Wal-Mart had hired away from DaimlerChrysler.
Many Workers At Wal-Mart Don’t Use Its Health Plans [Washington Post]
About 90 percent of Wal-Mart employees have health-care coverage, but 43 percent do not get it from the mammoth retailer, relying instead on benefits from a spouse, federal programs or even their parents, according to an internal survey the company made public yesterday.
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Wal-Mart Watch Launches Wal-Mart Product Recall Site
Posted by Jason Korta
This year, Wal-Mart pulled millions of recalled products off its shelves—from toys to food to children’s car seats and cribs.
So what is Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO, doing to inform his customers about these recalls? He put a tiny link at the very bottom of the Wal-Mart homepage. That’s it.
Surely the biggest company in the world can do better than that—especially during the holiday season, when Wal-Mart sells even more toys than Toys ‘R’ Us.
But since Mr. Scott won’t be open about Wal-Mart’s product recalls, we are doing it for him.
Wal-Mart Watch has launched a new site, Recall Wal-Mart, which is full of information about the recalled products sold at Wal-Mart. It also has a tool that lets you send a letter to Lee Scott about Wal-Mart’s role in its customers’ health.
Check out the site, and tell Mr. Scott that when Wal-Mart has a recall, it should be the first thing on their website, not the last:
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R.I.P. Working Families
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Working Families for Wal-Mart joins the long line of “grassroots” PR efforts that are now defunct. A brief look back at Working Families, and how we’ll miss them:
Wal-Mart originally claimed Working Families was completely independent.
- “Though Wal-Mart provides the advocacy group with significant financial help, the five-month-old Working Families for Wal-Mart describes itself as autonomous, boasting 100,000 members around the country and a 16-member national steering committee that includes a musician, a filmmaker and a minister.” [New York Times, 5/12/06]
- For some reason, though, we had our doubts.
Andrew Young Steps Up...and then Steps Down
After making some “racially insensitive” remarks, civil rights leader Andrew Young steps down as committee chair of Working Families.
- “Civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired to help Wal-Mart Stores Inc. improve its public image, said early Friday he was stepping down from his position as head of an outside support group amid criticism for remarks seen as racially offensive.” (Associated Press, 8/18/06)
WFWM Creates Other Awesome, Well-Recieved Groups
Wal-Marting Across America
- “It all started last month, when a folksy blog called Wal-Marting Across America was set up. The site featured the musings of a couple known only as Jim and Laura as they drove cross country in an RV, and included regular interviews with Wal-Mart workers, who were dependably happy about the company and their working conditions. BusinessWeek.com wrote the first exposé about the blog. The story shot down speculation that Jim and Laura weren’t real people, identifying the woman as Laura St. Claire, a freelance writer and an employee at the U.S. Treasury department. But it also disclosed that Wal-Mart was paying plenty for the couple’s support, including money for renting the RV, gas, and fees for writing the blog.” [BusinessWeek, 10/17/06]
A Word to the Wise: Register Your Fake Organization’s Domain Name
WorkingFamiliesforWal-Mart.com launched in late 2006. Unlike the Wal-Mart funded front group, this site told the REAL ways that Wal-Mart impacts America’s working families: by lowering wages, decreasing health benefits and razing local economies.
Wal-Mart/Edelman Make 2006’s “Worst PR Disasters” List
What started as a PR move totally backfires. Social media blogger, PR industry publications and even the mainstrem news recognize the Wal-Mart/Edelman flogging debaucle as one of the worst public relations moves in recent history. It comes on the heels of Wal-Mart trying to go “upscale” with its merchandise, as well as the company’s refusal to acknowledge problems with its business practices.
Dec. 2007: Wal-Mart Dismantles WFWM
And thus another public relations effort comes to an end. At some point, Wal-Mart might realize that the millions it spends on Edelman’s services could be put to better use: by paying employees more, paying its fair share in local communities, and even selling products produced safely and humanely.
Wal-Mart’s Damage to Communities Far Outweighs Charitable Donations
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Yesterday’s post on food banks raised the issue of Wal-Mart’s charitable donations and whether they actually benefit the community, but the question goes far beyond donations of food. Wal-Mart loves to be seen donating money to local charities, especially around the holidays. These donations, while perhaps beneficial in their own small way, don’t even begin to make up for the amount of resources and taxpayer dollars Wal-Mart drains out of local economies. For Wal-Mart, these donations are nothing but some cheap PR.
Wal-Mart lowers median wages, exports jobs, shifts company costs to taxpayers, and leans on public subsidies to make its billions. These costs far outweigh any local donation Wal-Mart has ever made.
Wal-Mart’s charitable donations continue to lag behind its close competitors, and the Walton Family itself is ranks only 37th on the list of generous donors. But perhaps more tellingly, is that Wal-Mart donates most to charities in its own best interest. From the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy:
“Behind the Wal-Mart facade, the goals of the company and the family have nothing to do with promoting the community’s or the public’s or even their customers’ interest. Instead, there is one goal, and that is to make one of the wealthiest families in the country even richer.
Wal-Mart’s donations to little league teams and nursing homes also pales in comparison to the company’s donations to non-profits, think tanks and individuals willing to lobby on its behalf or grant favors in return. In doing so, Wal-Mart buys the power necessary to continue harming communities and getting away with it. Think Wal-Mart’s generous? Maybe so, but only to itself.
Wal-Mart Says “No” to Food Banks
Posted by Research Team
Wal-Mart and supplier partner ConAgra donated approximately 85 trucks worth of food to food banks this week. This may sound substantial, but Wal-Mart is a major part of why food banks are short of food in the first place. In 2006, Wal-Mart stopped donating excess food to food banks, creating a nation-wide shortage. As a practice, the company continues to refuse to donate at all. To quote Wal-Mart spokes person Robert Mosby earlier this month:
But when it comes to excess or soon-to-expire perishables in its stores, Wal-Mart doesn’t allow food banks to make pickups. “Our current policy for food is to discard it, primarily for the safety of our customers,” Mosby said.
The company cites “customer safety” as its reason for destroying food, but liability avoidance and profit protection also come into play.
Wal-Mart’s policy change has been a huge blow to food banks. In addition to losing Wal-Mart’s donations, food banks also lost the donations of many local grocers who had strong ties to the community. When Wal-Mart enters a local market many small grocers with stronger ties to the community close their doors, and food banks loose these donations as well.
While a new Wal-Mart often means lost jobs and fewer small local businesses, those who are left behind struggle even more because community resources such as food banks also struggle in Wal-Mart’s wake. Food banks are dependent on grocers, and Wal-Mart’s one-time donations fall far short of redressing the harm its corporate practices inflict. Though Wal-Mart claims to care about its communities, the company’s practices make clear that it cares more about liability and profits and less about poverty and hunger.
Refusing to donate nearly-expired perishables to food banks creates unnecessary waste, increases the problems surrounding poverty, is unsustainable, and despite the company’s slogan it does not help people live better. When addressing the shortages of food banks and addressing the needs of such places, Wal-Mart needs to critically examine how its practices and policies contributed to these shortages.
The Wal-Mart Effect: When Wal-Mart Leaves Town
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Many communities are eager to see a new Wal-Mart come to town, but few think of the effect the retailer will have if and when it leaves. This article from Minnesota’s St. Cloud Times gives a local perspective to the retailer’s global prospects. Visit Battle-Mart for more information about fighting Wal-Mart in your local community.
Wal-Mart’s exit is boon, bane for communities [St. Cloud Times (Minn.)]
An empty Wal-Mart building sits along a stretch of road in Little Falls and shoppers have been rerouted to a newer, bigger Wal-Mart down the street.
Its owners have taken care of the old building after the Wal-Mart Supercenter was built in August. It’s been repainted a shade of light green, masking signs of what once thrived there.
At any given time, about 300 to 400 former Wal-Mart stores sit empty around the nation, in some cases for as long as five to seven years, said Ken Stone, a retired professor from Iowa State University who has studied Wal-Mart for about 20 years. Those empty buildings can be a blight to a community and area businesses if they sit untouched for too long.
“It’s a real problem, there’s no question about it,” Stone said.
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Nationwide Protests Against Wal-Mart
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Across the country this week, citizens and activists are taking a stand against Wal-Mart. It’s the busiest selling season for the reatiler, and local communities are standing up to its unfair practices, unsafe products and unacceptable behavior. From Wake Up Wal-Mart:
Through its relentless pressure on suppliers to reduce costs, Wal-Mart fosters a corporate culture that encourages cheap manufactures to cut costs and cut corners. The result is that American children are literally placed in harms way when they play with cheaply-made toys from retailers like Wal-Mart.
Local papers have covered allied protests in Minnesota, several in California, and, below, Michigan.
Candlelight vigil against a Wal-Mart in Lincoln Park [Detroit News]
A candlelight vigil is slated for 6-7 p.m. tonight at the Lincoln Park Shopping Center on the northwest corner of Southfield and Dix-Toledo by a group that hopes to keep mega-retailer Wal-Mart from moving into center.
The group, called Wake up Wal-Mart Downriver, claims the discount chain destroys local businesses by undercutting prices, and sells unsafe products imported from China.
Nick Infante, Michigan spokesman for Wal-Mart, said the company now has no plans for a store at the site, which straddles the Allen Park/Lincoln Park border, with about 75 percent of the property in Lincoln Park.
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Friday Blog Round-Up: Holidazzle Edition
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt
Wal-Mart encourages girls to pursue their dreams of being prostitutes, lies about organics, sells ornaments made by child slaves and despite it all manages to sell a Jesus doll with a straight face.
TURNS OUT WE’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES WHO DON’T LIKE READING THE WORD “PANTIES” IN A HEADLINE
We’re not sure what kind of nerve this story hit with Wal-Mart’s PR department, but when Feministing posted objections to a pair of girls’ underwear on sale at Wal-Mart, the company apologized and took the items off the shelves within mere hours. As other advocacy groups will tell you, this is a minor miracle. Environmental groups, consumer safety groups, animal rights groups and more have ALL tried to get Wal-Mart to change the products it sells with little success. So why did Wal-Mart respond so quickly on this one? What’s the company worried about here?
Reason 4,321 To Hate Wal-Mart [MoJo Blog]
Panties found by a reader of Feministing.com in a North Carolina Wal-Mart - in the section that caters to 12-year-old girls.
After Feministing posted the photo and it made its way through the blogosphere, Fox News reported on Wednesday that outraged parents had prompted Wal-Mart to pull the $2.96 panties off the shelves.
Wal-Mart Yanks Saucy Pink Panties From Shelves [Huffington Post]
Suggestive pink Santa panties targeting young girls are being removed from Wal-Mart stores after parents objected to the offensive undergarments.
The panties, which were sold in the juniors department, seemed to suggest that girls don’t need money, they just need a sugar daddy—in this case Santa Claus.
After the jump, more on this story, fake organics, the season’s hottest toys and the ornaments in Wal-Mart’s Christmas aisle.