The Wal-Mart Watch Blog

| Aug 25, 2009

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Wal-Mart stores have desecrated Native American burial sites, ancient ruins and holy sites. 

To that list, we can now add historic civil war battlefields. 

Last night, Wal-Mart won a long-fought battle to build a Wal-Mart in Orange County, VA on ground where Americans died in the Battle of the Wilderness, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.  The Wal-Mart will be adjacent to a National Park that commemorates the Battle and will be impossible to miss going into or coming out of this somber and serene setting. 

There was tremendous opposition to the site from the local community, Governor Tim Kaine, famous historians including Ken Burns and celebrities like Robert Duvall.

Wal-Mart did not care.  Despite the fact that there are six Wal-Mart’s within 20 miles of the current site slated for development, Wal-Mart thought it needed another to dominate the field. 

All but one of the local Orange County Commissioners yielded to Wal-Mart’s “pressure”.  They will have to answer to the voters eventually and should the voters send them packing, maybe they can go get a job at Wal-Mart as greeters.  If so, they might try dressing up like these guys….

| Aug 21, 2009

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They are back!

While Congress is away on August recess, The Washington Business Journal explores Wal-Mart’s progress towards building a store in our nation’s capital.

The company appears to be zeroing in on land along Howard Road SE, next to Poplar Point. Developer Jeff Epperson, president of Urban-City Ventures LLC, says his company is participating in ongoing discussions with Wal-Mart to bring its first store to the city.

Wal-Mart is searching for enough land to accommodate an 80,000 to 100,000-square-foot store, hoping to take advantage of cheaper land during the economic downturn.

According to Epperson, Wal-Mart’s plan for DC is clear:

“I know they’re toying with it. I think they want to get into urban markets, is what they tell me,” said Epperson, who purchased the land along with partner Richard Powell beginning in 2001. “It’s really just a matter of putting a 10 pound bag into a 5 pound box.”

Ha! There is no doubt that Wal-Mart would sand bag local business in Washington D.C. *ba dum tsss*

No but seriously folks, is it just me or does Epperson’s statement come across as a bit odd?

If Wal-Mart is eyeing a new store in Washington, D.C., then they sure aren’t trying to hide it. 

| Aug 21, 2009

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According to Josh Castone, Mashable’s Features Editor, a Wal-Mart Watch video is one of the, ”Top 10 YouTube Videos for Social Good”.

Which WMW video gained such Internet acclaim, you ask?

Harry Potter and the Dark Lord Waldemart, of course!

I know, I know...you’ve watched it a million times (2 million to be exact) since its release in October 2006, but we still really appreciate the kind words after all this time.

Castone goes on to explain his choices and states…

Of course, standing out among the tens of thousands of videos on the web isn’t easy. In general, the most creative videos tend to be the most memorable and leave a more lasting impression. Below are our picks for the top 10 YouTube videos for social good and why they’re awesome.

| Aug 20, 2009

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The following article was originally posted on Huffington Post:

While many American retailers are just one lackluster back-to-school season away from disaster, the malingering recession has been very good to some retail manufacturers—especially in China.

American shoppers at Wal-Mart have made investors in Hong Kong very wealthy. By one estimate, in 2006 every Wal-Mart store in the United States caused the loss of about 77 American jobs due to Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China. Without knowing it, millions of American consumers have been shopping at Fung-Mart.

A Chinese global conglomerate little known in this county has been ‘living better’ off of Wal-Mart’s sales. Li & Fung is not a household word in Kansas or Arizona—but it’s one of the main beneficiaries behind the Wal-Mart sales numbers. Described as the biggest supplier of clothes and toys to companies like Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s, Li & Fung has been one of the fireworks of the Hang Seng Index, and its stock has more than doubled this year.

Li & Fung describes itself as “one of the premier global consumer products export trading companies managing the supply chain for high-volume, time-sensitive consumer goods including garments, fashion accessories, toys, sporting goods, promotional merchandise, handicrafts, shoes, travel goods and household items.” Its products are sourced through a network of offices in nearly 40 countries for customers in the US, Europe, Asia and the Southern Hemisphere.”

Read the rest of this story ...

| Aug 14, 2009

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Congratulations are in order to the residents of Miramar, FL who successfully defeated a Wal-Mart supercenter project. Wal-Mart acquired the property in 2005, but after fierce resistance from local residents, the project lost momentum. Read the story below for more details.

Miami Herald, 8/13/09

In the battle of the megastore and the homeowners, the residents won. Looking to build yet another 220,000-square-foot supercenter, Wal-Mart set its sights on 29 acres at Flamingo Road and Miramar Parkway. In 2005, it acquired the property for $10 million.

But then Miramar’s Monarch Lakes residents raised a storm, worried about traffic and congestion for an already bustling hub. The city commission, surprisingly to some, voted the project down—leading to a Wal-Mart lawsuit to overturn the vote.

But now the deal is officially dead. A judge has denied Wal-Mart’s appeal, and the company is listing the land, which has been upgraded since the purchase, for $19.6 million.

Read the rest of this story ...

| Aug 12, 2009

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If you were to go to a store and steal something (not that I am suggesting you should) you might expect to be stopped, detained, maybe arrested and charged with a crime. What you probably wouldn’t expect is physical harm. Well, leave it to Walmart to break expectations. A man is suing Walmart for excessive force after four employees wrestled him to the ground for which he suffered a dislocated shoulder. Of course the man was shoplifting, which is illegal, but doesn’t four employees smashing you to the ground sound a little extreme when simply stopping the man probably would have sufficed?

The worst part of this story, though, is that this is hardly new. Walmart has a history of using brutal methods to stop shoplifters, or those they think are shoplifting. The result has been some pretty serious injuries and even, in a few cases, death.

Here is a piece of the article from the local TV station:

A Port Arthur man is suing Wal-Mart for injuries he received after he was caught shoplifting. It happened March 13th at the Wal-Mart on Twin City Highway in Port Arthur and it was all caught on tape. Jessica Holloway reports, attorneys say the shoplifter is suing because store employees went too far.

Surveillance video was taken from inside Wal-Mart in Port Arthur. It appears that four employees wrestle Michael Harris to the ground. Harris is suing Wal-mart and two employees for dislocating his shoulder. It’s what happened before, caught on tape, that led up to this point.

| Aug 10, 2009

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Special thanks to “anitac96” for uploading this gem to Fail Blog:

| Aug 10, 2009

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Well, well, well….so Wal-Mart has been saying they are not interested in New York City, but we knew better.  Just like we knew better when Lee Scott said he didn’t think New York City was worth the effort.  In an article published in Crain’s today (see below), Wal-Mart disclosed that they are officially looking for a site.  Wal-Mart Watch anticipated this and proactively mobilized New York City residents against the company earlier this summer, utilizing an argument framed in a fact-filled white paper.  The response was overwhelming.  More than 15,000 letters were sent to New York City Hall, saying no to Wal-Mart.  The campaign was so effective that many New York City Council Members responded.  For one example from Councilman David Yassky, click here.

We took this action because we knew Wal-Mart would be back on New York City’s doorstep because their economics have not changed since the day we started our campaign.  Wal-Mart NEEDS to get into America’s major urban markets.  Their limited profit margins and their need for constant growth demand it.  Sorry, Wal-Mart, not today.

[Crain’s New York Business, August 10, 2009]

More than two years after Wal-Mart’s bruised chief executive wrote off opening a New York City store as not “worth the effort,” the Arkansas-based giant is back in the hunt, scouting out potential locations.

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| Aug 05, 2009

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When they’re not settling lawsuits, cutting employee benefits, and building on Civil War battlefields, Wal-Mart is targeting the profit margins of....adorable Girl Scouts.

Wal-Mart has decided to launch their own Great Value brand of the Girls Scout’s famous Thin Mint and Tagalong cookies.

Just a few day’s after Wal-Mart filed an injunction against a union in Canada for using blue ovals on their website, Wal-Mart makes a carbon copy of America’s favorite cookies and tries to pass them off as their own.

Wal-Mart has finally reached a new low, built a basement under it, and proceeded to dig toward China.

The story was originally addressed by an angry Girl Scout mother, CV Harquail, in her popular mommy blog Authentic Organizations, and was picked up by multiple publications. She writes:

When it comes to assessing whether an organization is authentic, whether it is trying to grow into something more or better, it is important to look at the organization’s actions in that area.

We should be looking at Wal-Mart’s sustainability efforts and encourage them when these efforts seem to demonstrate that Wal-Mart is keeping its promises.

But also, we should look at the organization’s behavior around the fringes, because it is this behavior that clues us in to whether the change effort is real, or whether the change effort is fake.

We’re sure Wal-Mart will try to spin this as some sort of lesson in capitalism for the aspiring young leaders of tomorrow.

Remember kids, this isn’t recess, it’s a recession.

| Jul 30, 2009

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Big news out of Canada.  Wal-Mart has filed an injunction to try to censor the online initiatives of the UFCW in their efforts to reach out to Wal-Mart workers and provide an online forum for them to share their stories. The move filed by Wal-Mart seeks to remove similar Wal-Mart logos and expressions.

Their reasoning? Wal-Mal is worried that the website is “deprecating the value of the goodwill” of their brand. Rest assured Wal-Mart, you did that a long time ago.

Keep reading for Al Norman’s must-read expert analysis.

This breaking news story should be placed in the circular file. Watch what you say around Wal-Mart Canada.

Over the years, the giant retailer, in exercising its own brand of censorship, has forced recording artists to change lyrics and ‘sanitize’ album covers, removed certain magazines from its racks, and generally cultivated its own corporate sense of what the public should or shouldn’t see. Now the retailer has developed a list of words and images that it doesn’t want its workers to read on a union website. On June 19, 2009, the Wal-Mart Canada Corporation filed an injunction in Montreal to force the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada from using words like “Wal-Mart” alone or with other words “in a color scheme of blue, white and gold” which is similar to that adopted by Wal-Mart Canada.

The injunction seeks to bar the UFCW from using such words or symbols on its website, business cards, flyers or advertising. The company has included in its injunction “an oval, circular or semi-circular design that adopts the essential characteristics and color scheme of Wal-Mart’s Rebranded Indicia.” Wal-Mart Canada also wants the union to “immediately take down the website” http://www.walmartworkerscanada.ca, and to stop using the expression “Get Respect. Live Better,” which the retailer says infringes on its trademarked phrase, “Save Money. Live Better.”

The union would be banned from using Wal-Mart’s new “spark design” that includes “spokes or figures” like the company’s logo. Also on the banned list would be the words “Wal-Mart Workers Canada,” and the use of any images or photos of people wearing “the blue vest and name tag badge similar to those worn on the job by Wal-Mart employees in Canada.” Wal-Mart charges that the UFCW’s website and its images constitute a violation of Canada’s Trade Marks Act, and that the UFCW actions are “deprecating the value of the goodwill” of the company’s trademarks.

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