Wal-Mart Hires Balkan Conflict Specialist To Negotiate Enviro and Health Care Partnerships

What does it say about Wal-Mart’s track record when they hire a specialist in Balkan and Iraqi conflict resolution to negotiate their partnerships with environmental and health care groups? From Bloomberg News:

Wal-Mart Hires Hentges for Environmental, Health-Care Policies

By Lauren Coleman-Lochner

July 17 (Bloomberg)—Wal-Mart Stores Inc., under attack for its pay and workplace practices, hired a specialist in conflict resolution with experience in Iraq and the Balkans to serve as a liaison to environmental and other non-profit groups.

The world’s largest retailer appointed Harriet Hentges for the new position of director of stakeholder engagement, spokeswoman Sarah Clark said in an interview today. Her main focus will include developing ways for Wal-Mart to reduce waste, lower energy costs and create corporate policies in conjunction with environmental groups, Clark said.

The position will also include wage and health-care policies, according to a Wal-Mart advertisement on an executive search website.

“It will be a position that evolves,’’ Clark said.

Hentges will serve as the company’s liaison to organizations including Environmental Defense, which this month said it would open an office near the company’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, Clark said. Hentges, who resigned from the U.S. Institute of Peace in January 2005, didn’t immediately return a call to her home office.

Labor, community and religious groups have called on Wal- Mart to improve working conditions for its 1.8 million employees. Wal-Mart faces a sex-discrimination lawsuit involving 1.6 million current and former workers, as well as more than 40 suits charging employees didn’t get paid for some hours worked.

Hentges Career

Hentges has led efforts to reconstruct war-torn areas including Iraq for the United States Institute of Peace, an independent group that receives federal funding, according to the organization’s web site. She began her career as a nun, and has served as chief operating officer of the League of Women Voters before her decade at the Peace institute. She holds a doctorate in international economics from Johns Hopkins University.

“That solid background is certainly going to help as we reach out to others to try to become a better company on sustainability and other corporate responsibility issues,’’ Clark said.

Wal-Mart’s new position calls for her to analyze other corporations’ policies on compensation, health insurance and overseas factories, building alliances with groups “whose work and missions are aligned with Wal-Mart’s priorities,’’ according to an earlier job posting on the web site of executive search firm Martha Montag Brown & Associates.

Shares of Wal-Mart fell 27 cents to $42.78 at 12:10 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They have slumped 11 percent this month.

Posted by Media Team on Monday, July 17, 2006

Click Here for a Printer-Friendly Version