Almost two dozen news sources have covered Wal-Mart’s annual shareholders meeting that took place in Arkansas on Friday. The fact that so many news sources - and they’re mostly even REPUTABLE news sources - have covered the meeting is noteworthy itself. No other company receives so much media coverage just for holding a meeting. No other company’s meeting is hosted by Queen Latifah, either, but that’s another story.

Wal-Mart Meeting Features Musical Star Power [NW Arkansas Morning News]

There was a common topic among attendees of the Wal-Mart shareholders meeting as they filed out of Bud Walton Arena Friday morning - and it sure wasn’t about the purple tie Lee Scott was sporting.

What would Sam say? [Benton County Daily Record (Ark.)]

As Rob Walton, chairman of the Wal-Mart Board and son of the late Sam Walton, looked out at the audience gathered at Bud Walton Arena on Friday morning, he answered that question with confidence.

Wal-Mart employees whoop, holler at annual meeting [Reuters]

This year’s four-hour sound-and-light presentation, held on Friday, featured Wal-Mart’s top brass as well as performers like Master of Ceremonies Queen Latifah and country star Tim McGraw.

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This article appeared originally on The Huffington Post:

Wal-Mart’s Dog and Pony Show

It’s Wal-Mart Week in Bentonville, Arkansas and the retail giant is throwing its annual celebration for 20,000 of its workers and shareholders, complete with concerts by stars like Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, and Journey. All this serves to distract shareholders from Wal-Mart’s failure to address the chronic problems that negatively affect their image and result in obstacles to growth into new geographic and demographic markets A Handshake with Sam [PDF], an agreement of common principles with Wal-Mart first released in 2006, offers a roadmap out of this crisis.

Polling that we conducted last fall shows that 28 percent of all consumers developed a more negative opinion of the company over the previous twelve months. And there are plenty of real examples to demonstrate this. Just in the past 12 months, Wal-Mart has had to back out of 69 communities, including Chicago, where their poor business and labor practices were front and center.

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In considering our coverage of Wal-Mart’s 2008 shareholders meeting, we might as well start off talking about the big thing on everyone’s minds: Miley Cyrus did not appear. While some may say that shareholder meetings are about discussing company business and voting on resolutions that could potentially make a difference in the lives of millions of Wal-Mart employees, we all know that’s not true. Wal-Mart’s shareholder meeting is really just about self-congratulation, and big A-list musical acts.

The company didn’t disappoint. Wal-Mart executives and board members spent almost four hours patting themselves on the back and providing enjoyable, quality entertainment to the 15,000+ guests gathered in Bud Walton Arena. Our colleagues back at the Wal-Mart Watch home office have more coverage and commentary of all the events. And in case you’re wondering, yes, those are flying trapeze artists in picture #2.

Welcome again to this year’s liveblogging of the Annual Shareholders Meeting. The meeting will be starting shortly. Meanwhile, check out our full coverage in the run-up to the meeting here: http://walmartwatch.com/blog/cat/shareholders_meeting

7:55: Our colleagues, B and A, who are at the meeting just messaged us: “They’ve got a rock band warming up the crowd followed by a laser light show with trapeze acrobats!”
8:02: How could such a notoriously cheapskate company be willing to shell out so much money for this extravagant circus performance? More importantly, why is this happening at SEVEN IN THE MORNING???
8:05: NO!!! QUEEN LATIFAH PUT AWAY THE TOXIC FLIP FLOPS!
8:08: Is this the MTV Video Music Awards or the Shareholders Meeting? Is Wal-Mart trying to reach out to a new urban demographic...?
8:11: Does the Queen really think CFLs are going to save all of Wal-Mart’s environmental problems?
8:13: Wal-Mart is giving back to the community yall, especially to their frenemy best friend, China, for disaster relief.

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As is so true in so many parts of the country, Wal-Mart is a mixed blessing for the residents of northwest Arkansas. On the one hand, it brings many jobs to an otherwise sleepy part of the country. On the other hand, it brings...Wal-Mart. Tips for avoiding - or blending in - the Wal-Mart shareholder meeting crowds from the people who know best - Arkansas residents.

The Wal-Martians are coming [Fayetteville Free Weekly]

Every year, like the swallows returning to Capistrano, thousands of Wal-Mart shareholders descend on the world headquarters here in Northwest Arkansas. This week as Fayetteville and all of NWA is bracing for the invasion of Wal-Mart shareholders—popularly know in these parts as Wal-Martians—for the annual Wal-Mart Shareholders meeting, city, regional and yes, company pride is bustin’ out all over. It’s also a heyday for protestors who think that Wal-Mart should be thinking more like Burger King and doing things their way. In other words, everyone is here.

As Wal-Mart associates from all over the world converge on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, where the activities are centered, conversations between associates usually start with a little bragging—“In my state….”

So what do they brag about? Here is a sampling of some of the bragging rights Wal-Mart associates may be sharing.

In Rhode Island, the smallest of the 50 states, there are only two super centers, seven discount stores and a lone Sam’s Club? But those Rhode Island Wal-Mart full time hourly wage associates earn $11.43 an hour. Wal-Mart Stores spent $552 million for merchandise and services in the tiny state during the last fiscal year.

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More photos from northwest Arkansas, courtesy of your on-the-ground bloggers. For commentary and more photos, check out our Flick stream here.

As usual, Wal-Mart will opt this year to make its shareholder’s meeting a celebrity pep rally instead of a honest discussion of how to make the company a better and more successful business.

Last week we asked Wal-Mart Watch members to submit topics they wanted to hear discussed at the 2008 Wal-Mart Shareholder’s Meeting. Hundreds more responses have come in the past few days - check out some of the submissions.

We continue to be impressed with how substantive the responses are, especially the ones from current Wal-Mart employees. Thanks to all for participating - and click here if you haven’t yet and would like to.

Better treatment of their employees. They advertise “save money live better” on their ads but their employees are struggling trying to make ends meet with higher prices and their wages being frozen.  A person could work there for 10 years and not get another raise no matter how much the prices go up on food and gas. Treat their employees as people and not a number on their profit and loss sheets.

Wal-Mart could be instrumental in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by insisting that products are not over-packaged, or that packaging is fully recyclable.

Wal-Mart employees deserve to make a living wage and have benefits so the public is not subsidizing their health care and cost of food for children via free and reduced price lunch programs.

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In recognition of Wal-Mart’s 2008 Annual General Meeting, Wal-Mart Watch today re-released “A Handshake with Sam.” The document was originally announced in 2006 as a proposed agreement of shared principles concerning Wal-Mart’s moral responsibilities based on the highly regarded ideals of its founder Sam Walton.

Each of the seven common sense Handshake principles - such as respecting human dignity, providing employees with quality affordable health care, using market power to improve rather than depress wages and buying local first - are based on business and ethical principles supported by Sam Walton’s writings in his autobiography, “Made in America.”

“Two years later, despite a massive public relations effort to convince people otherwise, Wal-Mart’s current business practices still do not reflect Sam Walton’s principles,” said Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director David Nassar.  “Wal-Mart still fails to pay all of its employees a family-sustaining wage; fails to ensure that all employees and their children have quality, affordable health insurance; fails to use its market power to improve supplier conditions and wages; fails to buy a significant amount of products locally; fails to pay its fair share to communities by continuing to rely on tax-payer funded programs, tax dodges and tax subsidies to inflate its bottom line, and it still faces the nation’s largest workplace gender discrimination lawsuit,” he added.

The 2008 Wal-Mart Shareholders’ Meeting offers an opportunity for the company to address these issues. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart will opt instead for an elaborate display of celebrity performances to entertain and effectively distract its shareholders and employees.  The meeting occurs just weeks after Wal-Mart was essentially shut out of America’s third largest city - Chicago - because it refused to pay a higher wage.

To offset Wal-Mart’s lack of substantive discussion of its business practices at the upcoming meeting, Wal-Mart Watch asked its supporters for input regarding topics they would want Wal-Mart to consider. To date, hundreds of responses have been submitted and posted on the organization’s blog from concerned citizens - the majority of which requested first and foremost an honest discussion on Wal-Mart’s wages, benefits, and increasing trend of overseas sourcing. 

“We still believe Wal-Mart can be a positive market force if the company returns to Sam Walton’s principles,” said Nassar. 

Click here for a full downloadable version of “A Handshake With Sam”

Click here for Wal-Mart Watch’s complete coverage of Wal-Mart’s 2008 Annual General Meeting

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