The Wal-Mart Watch Blog
Corporate Culture

41 comments | Nov 20, 2008

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The Walton family, in their greedy quest to amass unfathomable wealth, has a tendency to go about business in rather shady ways.  Aside from their exploitation of workers at all stages of the supply chain, from sweatshops in China to the retail floor in the U.S., Walton family money is invested all over the world – bringing with it the same crooked, devious business management as Wal-Mart.

There are two key players involved in Walton investments:  Madrone Capital Partners and Greg Penner.

Madrone Capital Partners is the Walton’s private equity firm and was an early investor in Baidu, the largest internet search engine in China.

Greg Penner is not only a partner in Madrone Capital Partners, Penner also sits on the board of Baidu.  And interestingly enough, Penner is also Rob Walton’s son-in-law.  (A little family history:  Penner is married to Carrie (Walton) Penner, the daughter of Samuel Robson Walton (aka Rob Walton). Rob Walton is chairman of Wal-Mart and son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.)

With Walton money and family members on hand, it’s not hard to implicate the Walton family in Baidu’s latest scandal:

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11 comments | Nov 17, 2008

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Over the summer, we heard from many employees that Wal-Mart was in many ways openly opposing the candidacy of Barack Obama for president. When the Wall Street Journal published a front page story on August 1st on the allegations of manager meetings where workers were no-so-subtley urged to vote for John McCain, the issue became a national news sensation.

We’d assumed that the story was mostly over, but the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger today makes a new allegation that we haven’t seen printed before:

Wal-Mart, in response to reports that it had banned employees from speaking Obama’s name while at work, said it is discouraging its employees from engaging in certain political discourse on the job.

“One of the basic beliefs of our company is respect for the individual,” Wal-Mart corporate spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said in an e-mail statement.

“We are a bipartisan company and our associates reflect the wide range of attitudes and political diversity of this country. We prefer to maintain a politically neutral working and shopping environment in our stores,” Hardie said. “As such politically charged discussions are discouraged in order to ensure individual beliefs are respected.”

Any of our employee friends want to comment on this? We’ve heard stories hinting at this sort of thing, but not (to my knowledge) alleging an outright ban on mentioning a presidential candidate’s name in the store. One would assume that the story is true - given that Wal-Mart actually responded to the allegations, and didn’t even try to deny it.

Needless to say, it’s not a policy that jives well with Lee Scott’s recent love letter to our new President-Elect. 

5 comments | Nov 05, 2008

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Starting now, Wal-Mart Watch will be periodically updating you on some of the new comments submitted to our Employee Speak-Out site.  These comments are sent in from visitors to our site who are former or current employees of Wal-Mart and its sister companies, who have been victims of the systematic abuse and discrimination that Wal-Mart is known for inflicting upon its employees.  Remember that if you have a story to tell about working at Wal-Mart, we encourage you to tell us about it - we’ll put it up on the web and let your voice be heard.

As we look forward to the next 4 years, we hope that this website will be among the many tools that Wal-Mart workers use to help change Wal-Mart and their lives for the better.

Workplace stress leads to tragedy for pregnant worker:

“I was a manager in the housewares department. I just got my separation notice from them for not returning to work from my leave of absence. There is a reason I didn’t return; I feel they are responsible for the death of my baby.”

Anonymous on Age-Based Termination:

“Wal Mart is systematically targeting anyone over 40 years of age for firings through systematically assigning the heaviest, most back breaking jobs to that class of people in the facility. Managers are encouraged to pressure senior employees into quitting and firing to ensure that young strong backs are maintained in the facility.”

Anonymous on How Not to Vote

I attended a meeting that was conducted by a market manager. We were not told to not vote for Obama

32 comments | Oct 17, 2008

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Well, my faithful blog readers, after two years of working on Wal-Mart issues and more than a year as the main editor of this blog, our Friday Blog Round-Up today will be my last post. I hope you all continue reading, commenting and working to challenge Wal-Mart’s business practices. Enjoy the writing of my Wal-Mart Watch colleagues and try to keep the infighting to a minimum. As for now - on to the week’s blogs!

BLOGGERS WEIGH IN ON “EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT”

Real Voices, Some More Wild Stuff [Working Life]

Wal-Mart Watch has set up a website where you can actually hear and read about the actual workers who have to put up with the oppressive behavior of The Beast. This is part of the picture: the Great Robbery that we have all endured for a number of decades--wages not going up (even though productivity goes up), no health care, no pensions--plays out, day-to-day, in those aisles at Wal-Mart.

The voice of the workers (Part 1) [Writing on the Wal]

What you get there is a look behind Walmart’s PR curtain to see what employees are really thinking, but too afraid to tell their supervisors since they don’t have a union to protect them. Indeed, let’s start this series there, in the category that Wal-Mart Watch calls corporate culture.

After the jump, union-busting in Canada, bottle water, Nike’s suit against the Bentonville behemoth and Sarah Palin.

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12 comments | Oct 10, 2008

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Wal-Mart Watch has launched a new website - http://www.waltoninfluence.com - which analyzes and tracks the Walton family’s and Wal-Mart’s growing influence on American politics.

Although Sam Walton believed his company should stay out of politics and stick to retailing, Wal-Mart’s strategy changed immensely after his death. From 1999 to 2007, Wal-Mart’s lobbying expenditures for outside firms increased 7425%. Although Wal-Mart attempts to tout its bipartisanship, the Wal-Mart PAC has given the vast majority of its over $7.5 million in the past decade to the Republican Party and other conservative groups.

With more than $12 billion in profits last year, Wal-Mart is the biggest and arguably most powerful corporation in America. Sam Walton’s heirs, the majority owners of the company, are worth over $100 billion - making them the wealthiest and certainly one of the most influential families in America.

During the past year, Wal-Mart Watch conducted an analysis of public lobbying and political contribution records for the Walton family and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., in order to determine how this influence is used to affect politics and policy. The conclusion is clear: Wal-Mart and the Walton family spend millions of dollars every year to fund an extreme right wing corporate agenda that is often directly at odds with the interests of Wal-Mart’s workers and shoppers.

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6 comments | Oct 09, 2008

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Alice and Christy Walton top Forbes’ list of the richest women in America this week. Alice is Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s only daughter; Christy married Alice’s brother John and inherited his share of the Walton family fortune upon his death in 2005.

The Walton family takes up nearly half of Forbes’ list of the top ten wealthiest Americans. Alice and Christy are on that list, as well as their brothers Rob and Jim. As we mentioned in our earlier posts on this issue, each of the Walton siblings are worth more than an hourly Wal-Mart employee could earn in several lifetimes. $23.2 billion (what Alice and Christy are each worth) is more than enough for anyone, but the family has refused to share its earnings with the employees who create their fortune. What would Sam say?

America’s Richest Women [Forbes]

Alice Walton is the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Christy Walton is Sam’s daughter-in-law. Each has a net worth of $23.2 billion, thanks to the ubiquitous discounter, America’s largest employer.

Alice has a taste for objects you can’t find in any Wal-Mart: fine art. She’s led her family in hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the Crystal Bridges Museum. The new art museum will open in 2010 in Bentonville, Ark., the location of Wal-Mart’s headquarters.

Christy is the widow of Wal-Mart heir John Walton, who died in a 2005 plane crash. She also is using some of her considerable fortune for art. She recently donated an award-winning yurt--a domed tent used by Asian nomads--to a San Diego museum.

19 comments | Sep 30, 2008

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Wal-Mart’s senior counsel, Tom Mars, gave a speech this week on diversity in the company’s legal department. Because Wal-Mart has never had any diversity-related legal issues.

Mars used a “luncheon honoring the winners of the second annual survey of best law firms for women” as a time to showcase Wal-Mart’s gender diversity and commitment to flexible schedules. (The survey also examined the best companies for working mothers, and Wal-Mart didn’t make the list.) The fact that Mars was invited at all seems like an unintentional joke: not only is Wal-Mart currently involved in the largest class action gender discrimination lawsuit in history, but the company’s scheduling policies have also been condemned as bad for working mothers and hard on families.

Mars’ speech reveals a dichotomy within Wal-Mart: store employees and corporate employees are separated by a wide gulf, and different rules, benefits and salaries are applied to each. Women may very well make up a significant part of Wal-Mart’s corporate legal department, as Mars insists, but women working in Wal-Mart’s stores still face discriminatory promotion practices and lower wages than their male counterparts. That’s not something ANY working mother should support.

Law Firms Get Rated on Female Friendliness [New York Times Shifting Careers Blog]

Two weeks ago, on the same day that Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection more than 300 corporate lawyers showed up at the Mandarin Hotel in New York City for a luncheon honoring the winners of the second annual survey of best law firms for women sponsored by Working Mother Magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers. The high attendance in the face of such economic turmoil suggested that work/life issues and the promotion of female lawyers has genuinely become a pressing business issue for the legal industry.

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73 comments | Sep 09, 2008

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This video from American Rights at Work tells the story of workers’ attempts to unionize at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and why the Employee Free Choice Act is crucial for workers everywhere. As is often the case with Wal-Mart, Yale-New Haven was the largest employer in the area and employees repeatedly tried to unionize at the hospital without success. And like Wal-Mart, hospital workers in the video describe mandatory meetings held with mangers who used fear mongering to discourage unionization. The video’s case for EFCA is persuasive not only for employees at Yale-New Haven Hospital, but workers across the country.

34 comments | Sep 05, 2008

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Last month, the Wall Street Journal exposed the fact that Wal-Mart was telling its employees to vote against the Democrats in November - fearful that a Democrat in the White House would pass legislation making it easier for workers to unionize. Today, an op-ed by Congressman Rahm Emanuel in the Wall Street Journal suggests that Wal-Mart’s potentially illegal activities may even be misguided. Emanuel suggests that Wal-Mart is ignoring the economic facts in advocating for Republicans, and has actually fared better under a Democratic administration. 

The piece explains that the American middle class - Wal-Mart’s core demographic - has always done better under Democrat administrations. Supporting measures that bolster the working class - such as the Employee Free Choice Act, which the company warned against - would mean better living for Wal-Mart’s employees AND its shareholders. Such support might mean thinking outside the box for this notoriously Republican company, but Wal-Mart stands only to gain from such innovations.

Opinion: Wal-Mart Thrives When Democrats Are in Charge [Wall Street Journal]

Last month, reports surfaced indicating that Wal-Mart managers and department heads were holding meetings with associates and warning of dire consequences if Barack Obama is elected president.

Wal-Mart may have its political reasons to vote Republican, but if economics are the criteria, Wal-Mart should be rooting for a Democratic administration. Instead, the company whose television ads encourage you to save money and live better is ignoring the economic facts and backing Republican economic policies that have resulted in families losing money and living worse.

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24 comments | Sep 05, 2008

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In the past, we’ve compared Wal-Mart to the Harry Potter villain Voldemort, as a way to highlight the retailer’s harsh treatment of employees and devastating impact on small towns. The Mexican Supreme Court has made an even more extreme condemnation: the court recently compared Wal-Mart’s labor practices to those of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, whose rule was known for brutal use of power and widespread corruption.

The comparison arose after a Wal-Mart employee complained to the court that Wal-Mart was essentially paying its workers in store credit, rather than actual money. Vouchers handed out to employees as part of their salary could only be used at Wal-Mart stores, the employee said. President Diaz used similar plans during his regime.

Labor problems have dogged Wal-Mart in Mexico since it began expanding in the country in the early 2000s. A worker strike at several Walmex stores in February ended suspiciously, leading many to wonder if the company hired false negotiators or intimidated employees. Prior to that incident, Wal-Mart workers rallied in Mexico City to demand better conditions and a union. The company has also been criticized for refusing to pay teenagers employed as baggers at its Mexico stores. In light of these problems, the Supreme Court’s comparison seems somewhat fitting.

Mexico’s Supreme Court slams Walmart’s labor practices [AFP]

Mexico’s Supreme Court compared the practices of US retail giant Walmart in Mexico to employer-worker relations during the dictatorship of former president Porfirio Diaz.

Diaz served as president and absolute ruler of Mexico from 1877-80 and from 1884-1911.

Mexico’s top court on Thursday backed a Walmart employee who had complained that vouchers handed out by the company as part of its salary payments could only be spent in the company’s stores.

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