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A story in today’s Chicago Reader1 reveals that at least one hundred pro-Walmart “supporters” in Chicago were paid $100 to come and protest on behalf of the retail giant building in their neighborhood in front of Chicago’s City Council on Thursday, June 24.
In the run up to the City Council vote in Chicago over the proposed zoning, Walmart was involved in a lot of footwork in the South Side community. For example, they did push polling2, they pushed a lot of money at charities3, and they created a fake community group4 (along with Walmart-paid comment spammers).
The Wall Street Journal5 said that even Obama could learn something from Walmart about community organizing.
But if Walmart or some other group was paying these South Side residents a C-note each to “protest,” it demonstrates that this visible and media-friendly support for Walmart was manufactured.
Community groups and labor were able to extract some concessions6 from Walmart in the run up to the City Council vote, though Walmart said it was be reneging7 on those agreements.
Walmart continually claims that people want the company in their communities. When the agreement was reached and the City Council was about to vote, how many of those folks with signs8 that read things like “Benefits from Walmart better than AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children]” and “Walmart is better than welfare 4 me” came out because they supported Walmart and how many came because there was a crisp hundred dollar bill in it for them.
Notes:
Posted by Will O'Neill | Permalink
Why is Walmart spending millions to fight a $7,000 fine?
The fine comes from the 2008 trampling death Jdimytai Damour, who had been working at the Walmart in Long Island. On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, of that year a crowd of 2,000 people had been lined up for hours near a hand-written sign that read “Blitz Line Starts Here.” Shoppers busted through the line shortly before the store was scheduled to open, crushing Damour as he tried to protect a pregnant woman from being trampled.
We have called on Walmart have higher safety standards, now it seems that the company doesn’t want to even recognize that it did anything wrong.
According to The New York Times, Walmart is fighting a $7,000 fine from OSHA. But it is difficult to understand why Walmart is doing so. They reached an agreement with the Nassau County NY district attorney to create a $400,000 fund for victims of the stampede, they’ve spread around $1.5 million to charities and community groups in the community around the Walmart store in question, and they have announced “crowd policy” changes, though how effective they are is open to interpretation, based upon five articles from this season.
From the Times:
In May 2009, OSHA accused Wal-Mart of failing to provide a place of employment that was “free from recognized hazards.” Specifically, the agency said the company violated its “general duty” to employees by failing to take adequate steps to protect them from a situation that was “likely to cause death or serious physical harm” because of “crowd surge or crowd trampling.”
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, says that regulators are trying to enforce a vague standard of protection when there was no previous OSHA or retail industry guidance on how to prevent what it views as an “unforeseeable incident.”
Walmart is essentially trying to drown OSHA in paperwork and spend millions of dollars in order to avoid paying a $7,000 fine, taking up almost a fifth of the time of lawyers at OSHA’s New York office. This is like hiring Johnnie Cochran to get out of a speeding ticket.
Walmart admitted no liability when it settled with the Nassau D.A. But if it paid the OSHA fine, it would in a sense be admitting that it had committed some wrongdoing in not preventing the trampling death. If they admitted wrongdoing, they might be held accountable to government.
And Walmart refuses to be held accountable by anyone but themselves.
Posted by Will O'Neill | Permalink
Over at Wake Up Walmart, they are live-blogging the 2010 Walmart Shareholder Meeting. Head on over and check it out.
Posted by Will O'Neill | Permalink
It is clear as day that Walmart had every reason to know that it was practicing gender discrimination at the time the Dukes v. Wal-Mart class action lawsuit was filed, according to an article just released by The New York Times.
In 1995 Walmart hired the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld to do an audit and see if the company was at risk of just such a suit. No surprise to us, the firm found that
men were five and a half times as likely as women to be promoted into salaried, management positions.
In a press statement released this evening, Wake Up Walmart said
Today’s news is a smoking gun that Walmart leadership was aware of the financial risk facing the company for six years before women took legal action against its policies that systematically paid female workers less than their male counterparts and prevented women from winning promotions.
According to The New York Times article, Walmart had criticized the report that they themselves commissioned by saying that the analysis in it was modeled on the kind of analysis that lawyers filing a class action lawsuit would use.
And then the largest class action lawsuit in the history of the United States was filed against them.
That is why we are calling on you to join us in calling for an end to such discrimination. Send a letter to Walmart’s Board of Directors telling them that Walmart executives should not be getting massive bonuses until they prove that gender discrimination is no longer part of how Walmart does business!
Activists will be gathering across the country on Friday carrying just that message. See if there is an event near you and join us in calling for an end to these horrible business practices.
Posted by Will O'Neill | Permalink
Last November, Vanity Fair and 60 Minutes published a telephone poll which surveyed a random sample of 1,097 Americans. When given a choice of 5 companies, and asked to pick which company “best symbolizes America today,” 48% chose Wal-Mart---more than 3 times those who selected Google. (Microsoft, the N.F.L. and Goldman Sachs were the other also-rans.)
The results of that survey could be construed to mean that post-bailout America is truly ‘best symbolized’ by a power-sotted corporation that exploits its workers, drains our manufacturing base, hammers our trade deficit, and floods our markets with cheap sweatshop products from China. Yes, Wal-Mart ‘best symbolizes’ what corporate excess has done to America.
This week we have another survey—this one from Consumer Reports magazine---which surveyed 30,666 of its readers over a year’s time, asking them to rank experiences and products at 11 retailers, including Wal-Mart. Consumer Reports issued this brief disclaimer: “Results might not reflect experiences of the U.S. population.”
Wal-Mart will not be reprinting the Consumer Report survey on its website. The results are not very flattering—and they’re not very different from a similar survey the magazine published eight years ago.
For openers: “Last year shoppers spent $405 billion at Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer. But according to a new study by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, they might be better off if they switch stores.”
Consumers shop at Wal-Mart for one reason only: presumed low prices. But CR readers said prices at the 10 other retailers (which included JCPenney, Sears, and Target) were “at least as good.”
Almost 75% of Wal-Mart shoppers found at least one problem to complain about, and half had two or more complaints. In terms of overall store rating, Wal-Mart finished 10th out of 11 stores, barely nosing out Kmart at dead last.
“Wal-Mart was near the bottom of the Ratings,” CR concludes. “The number of complaints about Wal-Mart’s lines and narrow aisles was above average. About 44% of its shoppers had a problem with the staff if they sought help. Quality of apparel, jewelry, kitchenware, and electronics was rated below average.”
Ouch!
This is not the message Wal-Mart spent $2.4 billion in advertising this past year to cultivate. Wal-Mart boasts that it serves customers more than 200 million times per week The retailer has a bloated store base spread out over 603 billion square feet of selling space in America alone. The mantra at Wal-Mart is “fast, friendly and clean.” Or as Wal-Mart puts it: “Busy moms expect a clean and efficient store layout.”
But the Consumer Report survey suggests a company whose presentation is slow and unfriendly. According to CR readers, Wal-Mart and Kmart had the least knowledgeable staffers, and Wal-Mart’s cavernous supercenters were cited as “stores that were too big to navigate easily.” The 2010 CR survey notes that Wal-Mart shoppers were “particularly peeved” at the cumbersome merchandise return process at the giant retailer. 20% of the returns took more time than expected, readers said. Worst of all, checkout lines were worst at Wal-Mart, cited by 46% of readers who had shopped there.
Wal-Mart is stung by such criticism, because the company is obsessed with its sleek and tidy image. “As I walked through one of our stores,” writes company CEO Mike Duke in Wal-Mart’s current annual report, “the engineer in me loved seeing the efficiency and smoothness of how our operations executed and performed.”
On the one hand, Wal-Mart tells its shareholders that it “achieved record customer experience scores for the year, reflecting increased traffic, and higher ‘fast, friendly, clean,’ scores.” Apparently Wal-Mart didn’t cross tab any customer satisfaction surveys with Consumer Reports readers.
The “engineers” at Wal-Mart may seek comfort in the fact that Consumer Reports is only seen by an estimated 7.3 million readers---while Wal-Mart has 200 million customers every week. But Vanity Fair has only 1.2 million readers, so maybe Wal-Mart needs to do some more focus groups with those “Busy Moms” who drive their bottom line.
Wal-Mart’s self-serving hyperbole about efficiency and seamless shopping has become a mainstay of its culture, and is taken for granted by the media. But this week, Consumer Reports readers kicked some dirt on that shiny exterior.
Posted by Al Norman | Permalink
This is a video of Walmart flack Jane Coleman. Just take a minute and fast-forward to about 1:30.
She says “The Miley Cyrus and Max Azria line is not for children. It is sold in our lady’s apparel section and was designed for and marketed to older audiences. However it is possible that a few younger customers may seek it out in the store.”
This, ladies and gents, is a classic example peeing on your leg and telling you it is raining. Because Hannah Montana is marketed at “older audiences”? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Ms. Cyrus’s show is on the television lineup after Grey’s Anatomy.
Classic example of Walmart telling it like it isn’t.
Posted by Will O'Neill | Permalink
A lot of Wal-Mart opponents in Derry, New Hampshire were disappointed to learn this week that Wal-Mart has decided to try to build a superstore in this community of 34,000 people.
The irony of course is that there already is a Wal-Mart discount store on Manchester Road in Derry---but Wal-Mart wants a bigger store so it can add a full line of groceries. There are, in fact, no less than 12 Wal-Mart stores within 18 miles of Derry, so the residents have plenty of places to get their cheap Chinese imports.
Two years ago, in March of 2008, Wal-Mart dropped plans to build a Derry superstore. But now the company says its plans are back on the drawing board---which means the company will leave behind a ‘dark store’ that could remain empty for years. According to the Lawrence Eagle Tribune newspaper, the site Wal-Mart covets now is the same location on Route 28 that it was developing two years ago.
Wal-Mart’s regional community manager issued the standard company statement about the on-again project. “We are excited to bring even more savings and convenience to the Derry community. Our relationship with the residents of this community has been long-standing and we look forward to continuing to serve the area.”
The new store will measure in at 147,000 s.f. Wal-Mart says the 160 people it employs at its current Derry store will be transferred to the new site, and that 85 new jobs will be created. This, of course, is a gross figure, and does not indicate the net jobs left once you subtract out the similar jobs that will be lost at existing grocery stores in the Derry trade area.
The existing Manchester Road location is 115,000 s.f. which is large enough to be a supercenter, so a second location is totally unnecessary. Wal-Mart could do an “in-box conversion,” in which the existing store footprint is simply reconfigured to make room for groceries. This would require no permits, no hearings, and no major controversy.
In the spring of 2008, Wal-Mart announced a major slow down in new store development. The company told Derry officials that the economy was the main reason the retailer was shutting down negotiations with the town. But Wal-Mart now says times have changed. “Due to changing dynamics in the regional and national economy, we feel this proposal is a good fit at this time,” the Wal-Mart spokesman told The Eagle Tribune.
Two years ago, during negotiations with the town, Wal-Mart was asked to come up with $1 million to help upgrade Route 28 for their new store. It turns out that town officials have been having private meetings with Wal-Mart for months, without the public knowing about it. “We’ve had some discussions with the real estate people over the last couple months,” Derry’s planning director admitted to the newspaper.
According to the town, a proposal may not be submitted until July or August. But the Derry Conservation Commission is looking over any wetlands impact this coming week.
What you can do: Town officials seem to have no clue what this project means for the local economy.
“I think it’s great,” Derry Town Council Chairman Brad Benson told the Eagle-Tribune. “I think any further economic development Derry could get is good.” But is Wal-Mart a form of economic development, or simply a form of economic displacement?
The town council has no economic impact study before them, and “think” this project means jobs---but actually has no evidence that a supercenter means jobs. Another town councilor told the newspaper, “I’m happy they are going to come. But if it’s not them, then it will be someone else. If Wal-Mart comes, it will bring a lot of other people. Hopefully, it will be beneficial to Derry.”
But economic development should not be based on ‘hope.’ The reality is not only will Derry be left with a dead Wal-Mart to fill---and very few retailers want a 115,000 s.f. used building---but there is also an existing Wal-Mart superstore only 7 miles away in Salem, New Hampshire, which could also lose sales.
Wal-Mart admitted in its recently-released 2010 annual report that new stores often steal sales from existing stores, so the addition of new stores cuts into a key indicator called “same store sales growth,” which was very weak at Wal-Mart this year--in part because of the over saturation of stores---as in the Derry trade area.
Readers are urged to contact Derry Town Council Chairman Brad Benson at with the following message: “Dear Chairman Benson, I was surprised to see your assessment of the proposed Wal-Mart superstore as being “great.” Why do you consider this a form of economic development?
I would urge you to check with your existing grocery stores in town to ask them how many people they employ, before you start counting your 85 promised jobs at Wal-Mart.
The town might also do well to put in place a surety bond for demolition of retail stores that sit empty for more than 12 months, because you are going to have a 115,000 s.f. dead store on your hands within a year after you green light Wal-Mart. The fact is a Wal-Mart superstore will make some things increase: crime, traffic, air pollution, noise and light pollution. It will make residential property values near the site go down. But that’s it. Another retailer in town just means one more player in the game of retail musical chairs.
A study several years ago concluded that for every one Wal-Mart supercenter that opens, two area grocery stores will close.
No, Wal-Mart is not “great” for Derry. One Wal-Mart in Derry is one more than enough. Instead of wasting more land and resources on a new store, why don’t you ask Wal-Mart to do an ‘in-box conversion’ at their existing store, by reformatting the interior floor space? That would be more sustainable, consume less energy, generate less pollution, and still give them increase market share.
Before you declare this kind of retail cannibalism “great,” do some research on Wal-Mart’s impact on municipal costs--especially public safety. Then you will understand why so many towns in New Hampshire have fought this suburban sprawl.”
Posted by Al Norman | Permalink
Shareholders are pouring over Wal-Mart’s 2010 Annual Report, which the company has posted online.
Wal-Mart by the numbers raises a number of concerns for investors, and some reason for optimism for community groups fighting the giant retailer:
• Net sales at Wal-Mart this past year grew by only 1%--the worst gain in the company’s history. The company is relying on sales outside America to keep the company growing. International sales, which hit $100 billion this year, now make up roughly 25% of the company’s net sales.
• Comparable store sales, which measures sales growth from existing stores in the current year to the same period the previous year, decreased in America by 0.8%, compared to a 3.5% increase in 2009. This is a key measure of store performance, and the numbers do not look good.
• Wal-Mart admits that “negative impact on comparable store sales as a result of opening new stores was approximately 0.6% in 2010, and 1.1% in 2009.” In other words, when Wal-Mart opens new stores in a saturated market, they cannibalize their existing stores, and cut into their own sales. “As we continue to add new stores in the United States, we do so with an understanding that additional stores may take sales away from existing units.” The good news for Wal-Mart fighters is: “With our planned slower new store growth, we expect the impact of new stores on comparable store sales to stabilize over time.”
• Wal-Mart claims that comparable store sales were lower in fiscal 2010 “due to a decrease in average transaction size per customer driven by price deflation in certain merchandise categories.” Consumers weren’t buying as much each shopping trip.
• In 2010, Wal-Mart added only 52 new stores, or half of the 106 new stores they added in 2009, and only one-third of the 154 new stores added in 2007. Instead of opening new stores, Wal-Mart for the past couple of years has been focusing on “Project Impact”---remodeling existing stores---or expanding their existing discount stores into supercenters, instead of building new stores.
• Wal-Mart’s total worldwide store count is 8,416 stores, and 952.2 million square feet of stores.
• By its 2011 report, Wal-Mart will have more stores outside the U.S. than inside. Counting all Wal-Marts and Sam’s Clubs, the U.S. total is 4,304 stores, while the International store count is now 4,112.
• Wal-Mart claims that it will present something more exciting than the standard windowless big box format in the year ahead. “We have many opportunities to grow by opening new stores,” the Annual Report says, “entering new markets, making acquisitions, integrating online channels, and developing new, innovative formats to allow people to experience the Wal-Mart brands.”
• Look for growth in the U.S. to focus on urban areas: “Growth in the United States will come from additional penetration into more metropolitan markets, as well as from new formats and stronger integration with the online business."Chicago and New York City are the priority targets.
• Wal-Mart spent an average of $65.75 million every day over the past year on advertising. No wonder Americans are so indoctrinated with the Wal-Mart culture. Wal-Mart’s advertising budget was up 14% this year.
• Wal-Mart’s annual report was at the printers when the courts in California ruled that the huge gender discrimination case, Dukes V. Wal-Mart, could proceed as a class action lawsuit. The Annual Report notes, “If the company is not successful in its appeal of class certification, or an appellate court issues a ruling that allows for the certification of a class or classes with a different size or scope, and if there is a subsequent adverse verdict on the merits from which there is no successful appeal, or in the event of a negotiated settlement of the litigation, the resulting liability could be material to the company’s financial condition or results of operations. The plaintiffs also seek punitive damages which, if awarded, could result in the payment of additional amounts material to the company’s financial condition or results of operations.” In other words, they could lose billions on this one case.
• According to the retailer’s Annual Report, the company has potential future lease commitments for land and buildings for approximately 348 future locations. At its current annual rate of growth, that would be enough for the next seven years of new growth.
• If you don’t like Wal-Mart superstores, the states with the least superstores are Hawaii (0), Vermont (0), Rhode Island (2) and Alaska, Connecticut and Delaware (5 each). If you love superstore saturation, move to Texas (298), Florida (168), Georgia (129), Ohio (124) and North Carolina (119). The saturation states also have the highest number of “dead Wal-Marts” that have been left empty.
What you can do: Wal-Mart is so obsessed with being politically correct on the “sustainability” issue, that they tell you more about the printing of their annual report than the number of dead store eyesores they have left empty.
Here is how Wal-Mart describes the print version of its Annual Report:
“It is printed on FSC-certified responsibly forested paper containing recycled PCW fiber that is Elementally Chlorine Free (ECF). It is printed using 100% renewable wind power (RECs), along with environmental manufacturing principles that were utilized in the printing process.” The company claimed it saved “517 fewer trees consumed via recycling”
What Oscar Wilde said about cynics is true for Wal-Mart as well: Their sustainability counters know “the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Readers looking for more paint-by-numbers about Wal-Mart can go to walmartstores.com and click on “investors.”
Posted by Will O'Neill | Permalink
The Huffington Post has a great piece up about Betty Dukes, one of the women behind the gender discrimination suit against Walmart. If you haven’t heard about Dukes v Walmart, it is the largest gender discrimination class action suit in the history of the country. Six women are suing Walmart on behalf of 1.5 million current and former female Walmart employees.
Walmart has been fighting hard against this suit, claiming that any discrimination (in this case the plaintiffs claim men are paid more for the same work and were afforded more opportunities for promotions) was an isolated incident and shouldn’t have to face a class action suit. That argument didn’t hold much water with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, which recently ruled that the case could go forward as a class action suit.
That is good news for the 1.5 million women who have had to sue to ensure they get the same basic rights as their male counterparts. Here is just a small piece of Betty Duke’s story:
As a “greeter,” the cheerful Betty Dukes is one of the first employees customers usually see as they walk through the front doors of the Wal-Mart store here.
As the first “named plaintiff” in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the ordained Baptist minister also is the face of the largest gender bias class action lawsuit in U.S. history - one that could cost the world’s largest private employer billions.
Her dual roles have turned her into a civil rights crusader for the company’s many critics, who have dubbed the legal battle “Betty v. Goliath.” It is a far cry from where Dukes expected to be when she enthusiastically accepted an offer in 1994 to work the cash registers part-time for $5 an hour. She dreamed of turning around a hard life by advancing, through work and determination, into Wal-Mart corporate management.
Read the rest of her story on Huffington Post.
Posted by Media Team | Permalink
It’s been a rough year for Walmart.
The giant retailer just announced its worst net sales increase in history---just a 1% increase over 2009. But its drive to expand markets into urban areas is not slowing down one bit.
Walmart’s net sales grew by only $3.9 billion in 2010, one-seventh of the $27.3 billion in net sales increase the company experienced in 2009. Between 2006 and 2009, Walmart’s net sales growth has averaged 9.3%. By contrast, the 1% sales growth announced in the company’s 2010 Annual Report has got to have investors nervous.
The implosion of sales growth only makes Walmart more determined to push into more lucrative markets abroad---but also into urban markets in America.
Walmart is waging two urban guerilla wars simultaneously---one in Chicago, the other in New York City. Never before has a retailer had to resort to such intense efforts to build a store.
Much of the problem stems from the fact that Walmart stores are loaded with two things: cheap Chinese imports, and cheap American jobs. This profile explains in large measure why urban markets---where organized labor is most concentrated---have been so difficult for a retailer to break into.
Walmart has opened up its corporate checkbook to buy its way into urban centers. The New York Times reported this week that the Arkansas retailer is trying to bulk up its Chicago efforts to site a second store by hiring two former employees of Mayor Richard Daley. A Walmart spokesman said the company’s new lobbyists would be “helping us to tell the Walmart story.”
Mayor Daley like that story, and has been urging the Chicago City Council to hold a vote on a southside Walmart and be done with it. The Mayor doesn’t want to bother with passing the project through the city’s Zoning Committee---where it is likely to encounter stiff Chicago winds. Walmart is therefore buying more political muscle to try and punch a hole in Chicago’s zoning process.
“Vote it up or down, and then go back and tell the people ‘Hey, I got a job as alderman, but you don’t have one, ha ha ha,’ “ Daley was quoted as saying. “Laugh at the people: ‘I got a job, OK, you don’t have a job.’” Daley must count himself among the economic illiterates in this nation who still believe that giant retail corporations “create” jobs---even as national and regional retailers drop by the wayside---taking thousands of jobs down with them. Daley has a jobs calculator: it just has no minus pad on it.
Meanwhile, Walmart has been trying to get a bite out of the Big Apple for years, with nothing so far to show for it. The retailer rolled snakeyes in Queens and Staten Island---but is now hoping for better luck in Brooklyn. On March, 28, 2007, Sprawl-Busters reported that Walmart’s then-Chairman Lee Scott told the New York Times his passion to locate a superstore in Manhattan had cooled off. “I don’t care if we are ever here… I don’t think it’s worth the effort.” The newspaper called Scott’s comments “a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country.” Walmart clarified later that Scott was only referring to Manhattan.
This week Crain’s New York Business reports that Walmart still thinks New York City is worth the effort. Walmart is reportedly the surreptitious tenant in a massive Brooklyn project known as the Gateway II. The landowner, Related Cos., says no leases have been signed---but often in such cases Walmart orders the developer not to disclose the retailer’s interest. Related has already survived the toughest part of the process: Gateway II passed through the city’s land-use process last summer. By hiding off-site, Walmart can now reveal its interest, unbruised by the permitting process.
Walmart allowed its Director of Community Affairs to tell Crain’s, “We know that New Yorkers want to shop and work at Walmart, and as a result, we continue to evaluate potential opportunities here. New Yorkers want quality jobs and affordable groceries, and it remains our goal to be part of the solution.”
But Walmart is part of the problem, because the company cannot deliver on ‘quality jobs.’ It’s own “associates,” assail the company perennially over such issues as wage and hour theft, lack of decent health care benefits, and gender and racial bias in hiring, pay and promotion. The company’s impact on retail jobs has been similar to this week’s tornados in Tennessee and Mississippi: the weak retailers collapse, and those that remain standing look badly beaten up.
“We don’t care if they’re never here,” the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council said last summer. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Walmart.”
But by June of 2008, Lee Scott was talking about New York City again. Speaking at an analysts meeting, Scott said that New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted a Walmart. “I just talked to the Mayor who wants us,” Scott told the analysts. “And Donald Trump called this week. And he’d like to have us. But in general, New York City hasn’t called and said please put a store there. Things get bad enough, they will.”
In Chicago, Walmart is banking on the fact that the recession has worn down some leaders in the low-income community who see a national chain store as their pathway out of poverty. The local self-reliance that used to be the hallmark of these communities has now turned into a pathetic whine for a corporate savior to make them baggers and clerks. But organized labor in Chicago is not about to drop its insistence on decent jobs at livable wages.
According to Crain’s New York Business, Walmart proposals in the past were killed by “labor unions and community members who worried that the store’s low prices and modest wages would eat into the market share of unionized retailers like Pathmark, Key Food and Duane Reade and put mom-and-pop shops out of business.” True enough. But Walmart could also face behind-the-scenes problems from BJ’s and Target, which are both anchors in the Gateway I retail center.
Last summer, when Crain’s first wrote that Walmart was still beating the boroughs for a retail site, Walmart sent an email to Crain’s which said, “Walmart, for sure, is a very different company than we were five years ago.” But Walmart today is the same exploitive company that made it one of America’s most vilified employers-—it’s just $120 billion bigger in net sales today. “The reality remains the same,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union told Crain’s. “Walmart is not welcome in New York City, and it should not try to take advantage of these economic times to slither in.”
What you can do: That sentiment was echoed last summer by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who told the media, “While Walmart claims to have improved corporate practices, these efforts appear to be little more than window dressing. Until they make actual changes, providing a living wage and ending the practice of preying on small businesses, I will block any attempt to locate in the five boroughs.”
City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn also threw down the challenge. “We don’t like how they treat workers as it relates to salaries and benefits, and we’re not going to have them in our community. They will have the fight of their lives.”
Walmart may be counting on Gateway II to be their hidden gateway into New York City, and Mayor Daley may be counting up his former staff who are now on Walmart’s payroll, but two things are certain: Walmart’s 2010 sales were terrible, and its guerilla warfare in urban markets is going to turn into a string of ugly frontpage stories.
The United Food and Commercial Workers is gearing up for a protest in the Gateway II neigborhood soon. “Walmart was never, ever mentioned once through the entire land-use process,” says Pat Purcell, assistant to the president of UFCW Local 1500. “In this area, it’s a job killer. It’s just the wrong use.”
Eight months ago, Purcell gave Walmart shareholders a similar warning: “The day they open their doors in the city, you will see a historic labor battle the likes of which has not been seen since the [1990-91] Daily News strike and the [2005] transit strike.”
Readers are urged to email New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at http://council.nyc.gov/d3/html/members/home.shtml with the following message: “Speaker Quinn, Please don’t let Walmart slip in through the back door at Gateway II. Walmart says it is a different company than it was 5 years ago---but the exploitation has not changed, the impact on smaller merchants has not changed, the low wages and lack of decent health care has not changed. I urge you to stand by your pledge last summer not to let them into the burroughs. Don’t let that change either.”
Posted by Al Norman | Permalink
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