Wal-Mart Workers in the U.K. Stand Up Against Underhanded Tactics

Wal-Mart has built a reputation cold-hearted censorship - whether it’s record albums or movies, the retailer has massive control over the content of the media it sells.

Now it seems like the practice has spread to newspapers: employees at Wal-Mart’s British stores were ordered to remove competitors’ fliers from the daily papers, and cover up certain papers when competitors ran front page ads. Unlike in the U.S., Wal-Mart is only the second largest retailer in the U.K., and has been fiercely battling other retailers for months. The employees eventually pushed back against the practice, refusing to comply with such underhanded tactics. If only everyone along the Wal-Mart supply chain had such gumption.

Asda staff expose mangers’ dirty tricks to sabotage Tesco adverts [Sunday Mail (U.K.)]

ASDA staff were ordered to take Tesco flyers out of newspapers and dump them in bins as supermarket price wars turned nasty.

But staff blew the whistle as they felt too ashamed to carry out the sneaky tactics. Red-faced Asda bosses yesterday admitted thousands of leaflets were binned at an Edinburgh store.

Workers there claimed bosses even turned down their request to put the promos in a recycling bin.

A member of staff at the capital’s Chesser store said: “One of the people in the cigarette kiosk had to take all the inserts out and bin them. He was really hacked off about it.

“The guy asked the manager if they could at least take the leaflets to the recycling bin but were told not to.”

When Tesco took out a full frontpage advert on a local paper, staff were told to cover the issue up.

Yesterday, an Asda spokesman said: “Unfortunately, it seems that this situation did happen.

“I can categorically state that this is not a company policy and not something the senior management were aware of.

“As a priority, the store manager will communicate with store staff to ensure this situation does not occur again.”

Tesco said: “We cannot comment.”

Asda - owned by US store giant Wal-Mart - had previously set a target of 2010 to stop sending all waste from its 307 UK stores to landfill sites.

They pledged to recycle, reuse or compost all of their waste.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, September 08, 2008

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