The Wal-Mart Watch Blog
Faith

| Sep 14, 2009

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Walmart has had their trouble with wrongful termination in the past. They’ve fired folks for being disabled, or being in the military, or any number of other reasons, but this is the first I’ve heard of someone being fired simply for being of a particular faith.

It seems Mohammed Zakaria Memon was working as a consultant at Walmart Headquarters. As a practicing Muslim, he would take a few quick breaks throughout the day to pray. As part of his prayer, he would perform a short ritual called the “wazu”, which entails washing before prayer. Apparently, though, the people at Walmart headquarters didn’t like Mr. Memon sprinkling water on himself and complained. That’s when the company he worked for pulled him from the project and then fired him for poor performance, despite only good reviews in previous projects.

The whole situation is pretty sad. There is no reason that someone should lose their job because of their identity, and it seems pretty clear this was about identity. It wasn’t about the time lost during work, because it was only a few five minute breaks a day, and when the complaints started, it was suggested that he go to his hotel (thirty minutes away) to pray. It shows a basic lack of respect at Walmart’s corporate headquarters.

You can read the article here.

| Jul 21, 2009

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Major news from Wal-Mart on the health care front. And its not good. 

Recently, Wal-Mart has been in the news urging for health care reform and even accepting a nation wide employer mandate as part of the package. But today we see another side of Wal-Mart strategy: cutting benefits. In a letter to its employees, Wal-Mart notified its workers that their health benefits no longer covered Preferred Brand Name and Non-Preferred Brand Name drugs. Instead, in attempt to allegedly help Wal-Mart employees save “a yearly savings of over $300,” Wal-Mart’s health care plan will only include a single Generic Drug Plan.

It didn’t take long for Wal-Mart to show its true Health Care colors. From Bnet:

Previously, Walmart’s health benefits covered about 260 brand name drugs — from Abilify to Zyprexa – according to a Walmart “Quick Reference Preferred Brand List” from January 2009. The July 20, 2009, list contains only about 128 preferred brands.

The move has huge consequences for workers’ health — Walmart is the U.S.’s largest employer with about 1.1 million employees (or “associates,” as the company calls them). Roughly 700,000 associates are covered by the health plan, a Walmart spokesperson said.

Wal-Mart notified its employees in a letter, and about the details of the plan and specified which drugs would and would not be covered:

Effective July 20, 2009, the Preferred and Non-Preferred Brand Name Drug programs will be eliminated and will be replaced with a singe [sic] Brand Name Drug Plan. All of the drugs covered under the Non-Preferred Brand Name Drug Program will be eliminated (except Specialty Drugs).

Important changes to your Pharmacy benefits include: … A single Brand Name Drug benefit with a cost to you of $30 or 20 percent, whichever is greater. (Any Brand prescription drug not on the Brand Name Drug List will not be covered.)

We are committed to helping you save money and live a better life.

Download the entire letter here.

| Jul 07, 2009

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Thanks to our good friend Jonathan Rees for submitting this new book review of Bethany Moreton’s To Serve God And Wal-Mart. Dr. Rees is an Associate Professor of History at Colorado State University - Pueblo, and a contributor to one of our favorite blogs, Writing on the Wal.

Wal-Mart watchers are blessed with particularly interesting reading material these days.  Nelson Lichtenstein’s history of the company, Retail Revolution, will be coming out in July.  As it’s coming from a major trade press, that book will be difficult to miss.  On the other hand, Bethany Moreton’s scholarly study of Wal-Mart, religion and politics (already released from Harvard University Press) will probably have to be sought after by readers in parts of the country without an academic bookstore.  That’s a shame, because anybody who is interested in the cultural rather than just the economic significance of Wal-Mart needs to buy this book immediately.

To Serve God and Wal-Mart has more in common with Thomas Frank’s now-classic study of conservatism, What’s the Matter With Kansas?, than it does with any other book about Wal-Mart written to this date.  Like Frank, Moreton’s objective is to explain how it’s possible for evangelical Christians to serve God and Mammon at the same time.  While Frank’s answer was widely construed as condescending to evangelicals, Moreton treats the creation of Christian capitalism with the utmost respect, using the success of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. over the last 50-odd years as a kind of case study in how religion and materialism can live side-by-side in the United States, especially in the American South.  As she writes in her prologue in a direct slap at Frank, “Family values are an indispensable element of the global service economy, not a distraction from it.”

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| May 21, 2009

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Over 50 religious leaders from a variety of faiths and denominations came to Capitol Hill this week to lobby members of Congress and show their support for the Employee Free Choice Act. The group has formed a coalition called Faith Leaders for Workplace Fairness, which made its first public announcement in support of the labor reform bill on a conference call with press last week. The coalition has called the legislation a “moral imperative” and a civil and human right. Check out the video of their visit below.

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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5 comments | Oct 10, 2008

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SweatFree Communities, an anti-sweatshop activist group, went undercover in Bangladesh to examine working conditions in Wal-Mart’s supplier factories. The resulting report (PDF) paints a heart-wrenching portrait of the poverty and abuse that make Wal-Mart’s low prices possible.

BusinessWeek’s article on SweatFree’s findings is equally troubling. The piece highlights problems at Wal-Mart that enable sweatshops: preannounced factory inspections mean managers can hide violations, and fewer corporate reports on the state of its supply chain means Wal-Mart executives are turning a blind eye. Wal-Mart also tried to suppress SweatFree’s report, alone a worrysome fact. SweatFree Communities Executive Director Bjorn Claeson is quoted in the article saying, “Wal-Mart has incredible economic muscle in that country. If it takes the leadership position as a retailer and works with other brands, there is no question that it can really have an impact.”

Wal-Mart Supplier Accused of Sweatshop Conditions [BusinessWeek]

The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), is being accused of buying school uniforms that were made under extreme sweatshop conditions at a factory in Bangladesh.

The JMS Garments Factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, produces school uniforms that are sold in Wal-Mart stores under the Faded Glory brand name. A report from SweatFree Communities, an anti-sweatshop activist group based in Bangor (Me.), found that workers at the factory work up to 19-hour shifts to finish Wal-Mart’s orders under tight deadlines; are made to stand for hours as punishment for arriving late to work; and are frequently subject to verbal abuse and kicking or beatings. Some workers earn as little as $20 each month, the group says—even lower than the country’s legal minimum wage of $24 per month.

The report is based on interviews with more than 90 workers conducted away from the factory in workers’ homes by a Bangladeshi nongovernmental labor research organization on behalf of SweatFree Communities, a five-year-old nonprofit group funded by activist foundations such as the Solidago Foundation, CarEth Foundation, and Presbyterian Hunger Program. The group works to get commitments from schools, cities, and other employers to buy goods with employee rights in mind.

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3 comments | Oct 02, 2008

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Christmas decorations usually start showing up in stores starting in early November. By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, shallow panic sets in and consumers start acting like starving hyenas hungry for merchandise. Retailers only make the savage atmosphere worse by discounting for a-limited-time-only and pitting shopper against shopper for the hottest toy or lowest price. Now, a full three months before Christmas, Wal-Mart says: Let the games begin.

Wal-Mart Cuts Prices on Toys for Holidays [Dow Jones Newswire via Wall Street Journal]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will cut prices on some of the most popular toys and speed up the opening of Christmas shops in its stores nationwide as it tries to lure budget-conscious shoppers and jump start its biggest selling season.

Ten toys, from butterfly-winged Barbie Mariposa to Fur Real Newborn Animals, are priced at $10 apiece, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said Wednesday.

Wal-Mart said its moves to get an early start on the holiday selling season are warranted for several reasons. Shoppers are facing higher energy prices and food costs as well as a sluggish economy and the credit crunch. They are expected to start their Christmas shopping earlier and make other changes to help stretch their holiday budgets.

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6 comments | Jul 29, 2008

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Gawker breaks down a strange story from the Washington Post today. You can read the full story here, but we’ll add a third point to Hamilton’s argument: the story also shows just how powerful Wal-Mart’s political contributions can be, and the depths organizations will go to to stay in Wal-Mart’s good graces. (We won’t even get in to the pros and cons of Wal-Mart’s credit cards, but for those interested, read our blog archives on the matter here.)

The New Civil Rights: Keeping Wal-Mart Happy [Consumerist]

The story we’re about to bring you is sad on so many levels. Well, two levels. First, it illustrates the disappointing and kind of disgusting decline of a legendary civil rights institution, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), former home of Martin Luther King, Jr. Second, it shows what a farce half of the things you see on editorial pages are, if they come from public figures. We’ll give you a condensed version of this ongoing media vs. advocacy group vs. PR firm controversy—as you read it, ask yourself whether MLK would have found himself caught up in this crap.

Charles Steele, Jr., president of the SCLC, wrote an editorial which ran in several southern newspapers. The editorial was against upcoming legislation that would limit credit card fees—a bill favored by retailers (which would save money) but not by credit card companies (which would lose money in fees).

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30 comments | Jun 27, 2008

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Wal-Mart defenders are quick to justify the company’s low wages and poor health care plan as necessary for keeping prices low. This piece from author Liza Featherstone argues otherwise. Featherstone examines the differences between Sam’s Club and Costco, two stores with similar business models but divergent views on employee treatment.

Costco’s comparatively higher wages, better health care plan and unionized workforce prove that employee happiness and high profits can co-exist, despite Wal-Mart’s seeming insistence to the contrary. And while Wal-Mart’s profit margins are twice as high, Costco’s revenue per employee is five times that of its Arkansas-based competitor. So while Wal-Mart may insist on low pay and poor benefits, its forward-thinking competitors might just prove this business model is behind the times.

Wage Against the Machine [Slate]

Nearly everyone who’s looked at Wal-Mart’s practices as an employer—its union busting, sex discrimination, low wages, and minimal benefits—has concluded that it’s America’s retail bad guy. By contrast, many who’ve examined the practices of Wal-Mart’s competitor Costco—including New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse in his recent book The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker—conclude that it’s the good guy. Costco CEO and founder Jim Sinegal repeatedly insists to Greenhouse that treating employees well is “good business.”

That makes a pleasing sound bite, and assume for a moment that Sinegal’s assertion is true. Why, then, wouldn’t Wal-Mart do everything it could to make itself more like Costco? Now assume that Sinegal’s assertion is false. Why, then, does Costco treat employees better if that’s against the company’s financial interests?

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10 comments | Jun 17, 2008

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The debate continues over whether Wal-Mart’s efforts to shape up are actually genuine, or merely the result of a well-crafted PR campaign. I think it’s fair to say: both. Perhaps the biggest problem this debate reveals is Wal-Mart’s lack of transparency. Despite the retailer’s dominant presence in communities across the country, no one really knows how it runs its business. What we do know, however, is that Wal-Mart will do anything to fight the negative publicity it’s received in recent years. As Wal-Mart Watch’s executive director David Nassar says in the article, “Wal-Mart heard the criticism and is trying to do something to address it. All the changes it’s made so far have passed costs onto someone else, whether it’s a health care plan that’s increasing costs for workers or environmental initiatives that pass costs on to suppliers.”

Creating a Better Rep: Wal-Mart Undergoes An Image Turnaround [Women’s Wear Daily]

Talk about a turnaround.

Wal-Mart not too long ago was making headlines almost weekly as critics lambasted the retailer for its pay practices, pollution and rapaciousness. Now it’s being held up as one of the retail world’s better corporate citizens. Along the way, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executives — famously insular and focused principally on what founder Sam Walton would have done — have become more outspoken, open to outsiders’ views and adaptable.

Thanks to a multimillion-dollar public relations and marketing campaign, aggressive environmental initiatives and price rollbacks billed as the retailer’s very own “economic stimulus package,” the company is out to recast itself as a champion of the environment and a benevolent big business.

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