Pohatcong, NJ. Furniture Store Objects to Wal-Mart Plan
Usually retailers are silent on the subject of Wal-Mart. In one small New Jersey town, a furniture store is speaking up, but its concerns may get ‘tabled.’ Pohatcong, New Jersey is a very small township in Warren County, with a population of roughly 3,400 people. The township has been losing population since 1970, and could never support a Wal-Mart supercenter without major help from shoppers in the larger trade area around it. But the surrounding communities already have Wal-Marts. There are six Wal-Marts within 16 miles of Pohatcong, including a discount store 4 miles away in Phillipsburg, and a supercenter 8 miles away in Easton, Pennslyvania. Wal-Mart’s application to build a superstore in tiny Pohatcong must have looked like a cake walk to the retailer, but its application now pending before the township’s land use board has hit a snag. In an unusual move, another regional chain store retailer has raised objections to the plan. According to the Express-Times newspaper, the Raymour & Flanigan Furniture company, which is planning a neighboring store of its own, has intervened in the Wal-Mart case. The furniture company became an objector after hearings on Wal-Mart’s proposal began.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 24 | 0 comments | Permalink
Chesapeake, VA. Wal-Mart Fires Worker Over Photos of Managers
At Wal-Mart, one of the key personnel mantras is “respect for the individual.” One Wal-Mart worker once told me, “I’m sure Wal-Mart respects the individual---I just never met that individual.” Any manager will tell you that you can judge a company by how it treats its front line workers.
Christine Knowels was a loyal Wal-Mart worker who lost her job, and wanted it back. She was hired by Wal-Mart in August of 2000, and worked for roughly seven years-—all at the Wal-Mart supercenter #1841 in Chesapeake, Virginia. She was abruptly fired for “gross misconduct” , with a “mandatory no rehire” finding. According to her store manager, “Christine displayed 13 potentially offensive pictures of the management team in the back hallway while on the clock. Christine used/took company resources (digital media/or photo copies off of company property without permission.” When Knowels went to file for unemployment compensation, the Virginia Employment Commission wrote up her case as follows: “Christine was discharged from her position with Wal-Mart for displaying photos of the management team that were considered to be potentially offensive.
Christine reported that she had been told by the employee who was taking down the photos that she could have them. Christine used a program on her computer to make funny pictures and brought the altered pictures back to work the following day. Christine said she had done such pictures in the past and co-workers thought it was good for morale. Christine said no one had complained about them in the past and while she was putting up the pictures on the board a co-manager saw them and laughed. When Christine was let go she was asked if she had permission to take the pictures and told [the store manager] that [R] who was removing the pictures had told her it was ok to do with them what she wanted. Christine did not feel the pictures were offensive, and did not mean for them to be taken that way.
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Posted by Al Norman on Friday, September 14 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Re-Uses Flawed Reporting Methods
In a report released today (PDF), Wal-Mart claimed that it saves families $2,500 a year. Citing generic drugs and in-store banking centers, the new report sings the “low prices” gospel, but it fails to take into account the hidden costs of having a Wal-Mart in town: higher taxes, lower average wages, and fewer local businesses.
In June of 2006, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report attacking the flawed methodology Global Insight used to calculate customers’ supposed savings. It is the very same methodology Global Insight used again in this year’s study. The “research” glosses over a whole host of problems the company creates, not to mention the fact that Global Insight - far from independent - was comissioned by Wal-Mart to conduct this study. Legitimate, independent reports not commissioned by Wal-Mart show that when the company comes to town, poverty levels go up, wages go down and small businesses go away.
From the report:
- A widely quoted figure from a study by the consulting firm Global Insight (GI) indicates that Wal-Mart’s expansion has resulted in $263 billion in savings to U.S. consumers. We find this to be implausible. The statistical analysis generating this highly influential result fails the most rudimentary sensitivity checks.
- A robust set of research findings shows that Wal-Mart’s entry into local labor markets reduces the pay of workers in competing stores. This effect is greatest in the South, where Wal-Mart expansion has been greatest.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 12 | 31 comments | Permalink
University Students Protest Wal-Mart Exec’s Visit
When Wal-Mart’s Vice President for Ethical Sourcing, Rajan Kamalanathan, came to speak at Georgetown University yesterday, the students didn’t take it sitting down. Georgetown Solidarity Committee rallied in the campus square to set the record straight about Wal-Mart’s ethical standards. Georgetown’s student paper, the Georgetown Voice, has more on the rally.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 06 | 6 comments | Permalink
NORTH CAROLINA SITE FIGHT: WAL-MART LAND MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE
Proposed Wal-Mart crosses the line [The Morganton (N.C.) News Herald]
Land the retailer wants isn’t in the cityIf Wal-Mart goes through with plans to build a super center at N.C. 126 and N.C. 181, the city will have to annex the land before it gets taxes.
After months of anti-Wal-Mart protests aimed at the city, it turns out 40 of the 48 acres Crescent Resources was going to sell to the big box conglomerate are not in the city limits.
Lee Anderson, director of development and design for Morganton, said the city would have to annex the property into its corporate limits in order to tax the business. He said officials from both Crescent and Wal-Mart indicated they wanted Morganton to annex the land.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
New Report Calls Wal-Mart Environmental Initiatives “Smoke and Mirrors”
A new report jointing published by 23 organizations across the country calls on Wal-Mart to reframe its sustainability efforts so that workers, the environment and communities are all respected. The report examines several specific areas where Wal-Mart falls short of its claim of environmental-friendliness. Areas of focus include Wal-Mart’s organics, seafood, wood sourcing, product packaging, dangerous toys, contributions to global warming, energy use, and waste quantities. The report goes on to incorporate workers’ rights and community impact analyses, retaining a wholistic view of Wal-Mart’s business model overall. From the introduction:
Nearly two years ago, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott announced a bold initiative to turn the world’s largest company green. A long-anticipated fi rst progress report on these sustainability goals is expected to be released soon. In advance of the company’s report, 23 environmental, farm, labor, and other civil society groups have offered their own critiques of Wal-Mart’s approach to
sustainability.Some of these critiques focus on specific Wal-Mart commitments and offer recommendations for change. Others argue that even if Wal-Mart achieved all of its stated goals, the company’s
business model makes it inherently unsustainable. All of them remind us of what’s at stake by demonstrating Wal-Mart’s huge and often devastating impacts on real people and places in the
United States and around the world.
Click here to download the full report from the Big Box Collaborative.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 06 | 2 comments | Permalink
Union County, N.C. Court Favors Citizens In 6 Year Battle Against Wal-Mart
After almost six years of trying to build a store near Marvin, North Carolina, in Union County, Wal-Mart now finds itself between a court and a hard place. On August 8, 2002, Sprawl-Busters reported that the Union County Board of Adjustment had granted Wal-Mart a permit to build a 206,000 s.f. supercenter at the corner of Rea and Tom Short Roads. But residents in Monroe and Union County, North Carolina challenged that permit in Superior Court. In March of 2006, the Superior Court judge ruled that the Union County Board of Adjustment had improperly awarded Wal-Mart their permit to build. The judge found that the Wal-Mart plan approved by the board had been modified significantly from the original proposal, and thus required a new approval process. The Superior Court said the board’s decision to approve the permit “was arbitrary and capricious.” But Wal-Mart kept trying to obtain by litigation what it could not get by regulation. In 2007, the case came before three judges at the North Carolina Court of Appeals. This week those judges again supported the citizens, and left Wal-Mart with no supercenter. The appeals court upheld the Superior court ruling. The court’s ruling was by a 3-0 unanimous vote.
“I’m thrilled,” resident Ginger Leppert told the Charlotte Observor just hours after learning of the decision. Opponents have won this battle before in the lower courts, and are leery of Wal-Mart’s ‘rise from the dead’ legal tenacity. So instead of buying champagne to celebrate, Leppert told the newspaper, “I bought two bottles of regular wine.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, September 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
NORTH CAROLINA SITE FIGHT: COURT SAYS NO TO WAL-MART
Court rejects Wal-Mart case [Charlotte Observer]
The N.C. Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Marvin-area residents who are fighting Wal-Mart’s plans to put a store in their neighborhood.
The court upheld a Superior Court ruling that said the county’s Board of Adjustment incorrectly gave Wal-Mart permission to build a 206,000 square-foot Supercenter at the corner of Rea and Tom Short roads.
The court’s ruling was filed today.
The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel marks a significant victory in what has become a nearly 6-year battle against the Arkansas-based company, residents and their lawyers said. But they’re also braced for Wal-Mart’s next move.
“I’m thrilled,” said resident Ginger Leppert, hours after learning of the decision. But she said she stopped short of buying a celebratory bottle of champagne Tuesday.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 05 | 0 comments | Permalink
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