Since becoming Vice-Chairman in 2005, Michael Duke has presided over Wal-Mart’s international division. Unfortunately, the company’s international track record during these three years has been less than stellar. While aggresively expanding into Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and recently India, Wal-Mart has been accused of sourcing from sweatshops, selling dangerous foreign products on its shelves, union-busting, and attempting to monopolize employees’ business by paying them in vouchers.

Here’s a little background on the man who will shortly run the biggest company in the world.

Early Life and Education

Michael Duke, 57, was born in 1950. He has a wife, Susan, and two daughters and a son. He graduated from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering in 1971. He serves on the Board of Directors of the US-China Business Council as well as CIES-The Food Business Forum. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of Morehouse College and on the University of Arkansas Board of Advisors. He is also a Company Director on the Board of Directors of Arvest-Bank of Bentonville and the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

Professional Life

Before joining Wal-Mart, Duke spent 23 years working for Federated Department Stores and May Department Stores.

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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. 

Check out this week’s issue of the Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials – a compilation of Wal-Mart news from across the country and beyond.

This week’s issue begins with a Bloomberg report of Wal-Mart being placed on a list of most controversial companies. Also named - the company responsible for producing melamine-tainted milk in China. The list includes companies criticized for producing negative impacts on communities, health, and the environment, and was based on a study by RepRisk, a consulting firm that analyzes companies’ exposure to controversial issues and news.

You’ll also find stories from BusinessWeek and the Financial Times on how corporate giants like Wal-Mart are gearing up to battle potential pro-labor legislation in 2009. With President-Elect Barack Obama and the Democrats taking over next year, retailers are bracing to fight the Employee Free Choice Act – or EFCA – which could make it easier to organize unions in the workplace.

In addition to EFCA, you’ll find stories on Wal-Mart and the economy. And from the legal front, read about a $19 million discrimination lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart and Pepsi in West Virginia. Plus, in the world of product safety, read more about questions raised by the controversial chemical BPA, as well how Wal-Mart has been selling lead-tainted face paint for kids…a no-no anytime, and especially around Halloween.

And finally, check out our “Stateside” and “Wal-Mart International” sections to find out what’s going on with Wal-Mart around the country and across the globe. Chicago city aldermen have a wish list for an Obama presidency; the fight continues over whether Wal-Mart can build near a Civil War battlefield in Virginia; and towns in California and Nevada deny Wal-Mart the ability to sell alcohol on its store shelves.

Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials [November 12, 2008]

This just in: Lee Scott responds to last week’s election results.

It goes something like this: He says that it’s unfortunate that Obama won, despite strong efforts by his company to get associates to vote for John McCain. He rages further: Wal-Mart is lining up its lobbyists and lawyers, and emptying its pockets to ready for an all-out fight with Unions and the Obama Administration over possible labor reforms, which might give his employees a little more of a voice, and might possibly require the company to (gasp!) spend more on its workers and/or treat them a little more fairly.

Ah, just kidding. It’s actually all pretty generic and obvious. We’re going to work harmoniously with the new president, we need to improve health care and decrease energy use (as long as someone else foots the bill for it), solve all of the world’s ills, etc., etc.

Lee Scott Memo Regarding 2008 Presidential Election

Dear Associates,

Last week America elected Barack Obama as our 44th President. In many ways this was a historic election. Our country elected our first African American President, and more Americans voted than ever before. As I travelled to stores and clubs after the election, I saw the desire of our associates and customers to rally behind our new President and make real progress on the critical issues that confront this nation.

A number of associates asked me how our company viewed the election and what our post-election plans were. I told those associates that this is clearly a time of great opportunity for our country, and also a time of great challenge. I reminded them that last June I said that Wal-Mart looked forward to working with the new President and Congress, regardless of party, to find solutions to our challenges. We are even more committed to that objective today.

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This is right from Wal-Mart’s government affairs guru Leslie Dach’s playbook on “How to Appear Nonpartisan and Back a Winner.”

Jake Wagman pointed out on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Political Fix blog yesterday, Wal-Mart ponied up $10,000 for governor-elect Jay Nixon – two days after he won Tuesday’s election. Repeat: after he won. 

Given that Wal-Mart has avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes in Missouri and no doubt violated every labor law in existence - under the current administration’s oversight - it’s easy to understand why Wal-Mart would want to attempt to curry favor with the state’s new governor. Sure, political contributions often come into campaigns after elections for one reason or another, but Wal-Mart is clearly trying to send a message and buy a little access as it faces the changes that will come with new administrations in Missouri and nationally.  As Wal-Mart girds for a fight over EFCA and undoubtedly a host of other issues, Lee Scott and the Walton family are understandably nervous and willing to drop a few bucks here, there and everywhere to try to keep the status quo. 

Look for more on the Walton family influence here. 

Several stories over the past two days have outlined the oncoming fight between Wal-Mart and the Obama administration over labor reforms, primarily over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - but also health care reform and a slew of other potential legislation.

This is no suprise for anyone. Wal-Mart isn’t stupid, it read the writing on the wall and has been preparing for a democratic win and a push for labor reform for a while. It’s been donating more money to politicians (including democrats) to curry favor, as well as funding major anti-EFCA initiatives (not to mention explicitly telling its employees to vote for John McCain.)

Other big business - retailers especially - will be play major roles in the fight, but no American Business’s model is more threatened by labor reform right now than Wal-Mart - which looks to be ground zero in the upcoming battle with the new administration.

A labor attorney quoted in Reuters sums it well:

“You’ll see an all-out battle at Wal-Mart” by labor, said attorney Richard Hankins, who leads the labor and employment practice at the law firm of Kilpatrick Stockton.

Jonathan Birchall at FT tells about the Obama administration could hit Wal-Mart on health care as well:

On healthcare, Mr Obama’s platform included setting a minimum contribution level for businesses to their employees’ healthcare plans - an approach that has been opposed at state level by big non-unionised retailers, including Wal-Mart...The retailer, with more than 1.3m staff, has said it wants to work on healthcare reform with a new administration.

And if Wal-Mart hadn’t already made it clear enough how much it refuses to change or pay its workers a dime more, check out the gall on Lee Scott - quoted by the Associated Press at the recent analysts’ meeting:

“It’ll be generations in the impact it [EFCA] has on this country. And it won’t be positive. I guarantee you that. It will not be positive. But for Wal-Mart, in the short term, and in the longer term on a relative basis with our peers, we’re going to run this business,” Scott said. He continued, ”We like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.”

Will the next four years see better wages and benefits for Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million employees? Will it loosen Wal-Mart’s grip on the steering wheel? We look forward to finding out - and blogging about it. 

Hey, Wal-Mart?  Do you feel the winds blowing today?  Ah, yes, the winds of change. Indeed, that key demographic of Wal-Mart women across the country surely voted their pocketbooks and their consciences - and helped the electorate hand a decisive victory to Senator Barack Obama.

You can bet the Walton family and CEO Lee Scott weren’t doing a victory dance last night when the election was called for Obama.  Oh, sure the company’s pr and gov relations guy, Leslie Dach has tried really, really, really, really hard recently (especially as things were looking really promising for Obama) to convince everyone that Wal-Mart was “non-partisan” – even going so far as to air infomercials for both candidates in the company’s stores.  But, those “non-partisan” activities, like so many things Wal-Mart does are mere distractions from what the company was really up to.

In August, the Wall Street Journal exposed Wal-Mart’s mandatory meetings to attempt to instruct its employees to vote against Democrats and Senator Obama – oh, sure they nuanced the message in some settings, but the point was clear.  And, the company implemented a plan at the beginning of 2008 to train all of its managers how to fight the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) should Obama be elected.  During the presidential campaign, we saw anti-EFCA ads (and anti-Obama – walking the legal line in various forms) from several different organizations - including (but, not limited to): the Workforce Fairness Institute; Center for Union Facts; The Center for Consumer Freedom and of course, the Employment Policies Institute.  Since these groups don’t disclose all of their contributors, it’s hard to prove that Wal-Mart gave them money, but we have a pretty good idea that Wal-Mart invested a nice chunk of change in their efforts. Maybe someone should ask Wal-Mart.

For the past eight years, Wal-Mart has had a free pass to trample workers’ rights - in part due to the ineffectiveness of the NLRB – and in part due to a system that has favored employers.  The company’s business model of paying appallingly low wages, offering catastrophic, unaffordable health care plans, forcing employees to forgo overtime pay, manipulating employees’ schedules as punishment for standing up to the company, discriminating against employees and a host of other issues – evident from a multitude of lawsuits - and from the mouths of employees themselves - is finally in jeopardy. 

Yep, change is coming.  With an Obama presidency and the Democratic gains in Congress, average Americans – including Wal-Mart workers - will once more have a say and stand a chance of getting a fair shake.  Wal-Mart knows it – and fears it.

Expect to see the company increase its lobbying expenditures in the next few months and ramp up its efforts to mislead its employees about EFCA – which by the way, could finally give its employees the ability to stand up to the company.  And, expect to see even worse treatment of employees to send a clear message to them about who is still in charge (and Wal-Mart just doesn’t ever seem to learn on this front). 

So, apparently there’s an election going on right now?

It seems there’s only a few hours left for Obama and McCain to make a run at the Wal-Mart vote.

Undoubtedly, talk in recent weeks about Wal-Mart Moms has cooled down a little bit - but it’s still there. From Wednesday on (hopefully), we’ll start to know whether this year’s new hot political demographic really made a difference in the results, or maybe even whether it exists at all. We’ll know whether the candidates Wal-Mart supported won or lost. And we can start to discuss on the blog how a new administration might affect the world’s biggest company.

If election mania is leaving you any time to read Wal-Mart news, here’s a rundown of Wal-Mart mentions in recent political coverage:

**And don’t foget to vote tomorrow!

Counting On Wal-Mart Women [Newsweek]:

Just about every poll shows Barack Obama ahead in key battleground states, yet an internal McCain campaign memo, conveniently leaked to the media, calls the race “functionally even.” The memo’s author, highly regarded pollster Bill McInturff, argues that McCain’s salvation will be “Wal-Mart women” without a college degree making below $60,000 a year. These are the voters the politicians overlook and who have found their voice in Sarah Palin and their gender counterpart in Joe the Plumber—or so the theory goes.

William Safire: ’08-isms [New York Times]:

This year, Gov. Sarah Palin modernized the soccer mom with the hockey mom and the Wal-Mart mom. (That chain has a great euphemism for the guy on the way out who makes sure you’re not stealing stuff: the exit greeter.)

McCain to face close fight in Indiana [Financial Times]:

Even then, the main local topic of discussion was not al-Qaeda or the invasion of Iraq, which still lay six months ahead – but the new Super Wal-Mart planned for the edge of town. Nothing has turned out quite as the optimists imagined, including the Wal-Mart. Prices are said to be higher here than at neighbouring branches, because there is no competition.

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