This Valentines Day Tell Wal-Mart to Have a Heart
Valentine’s Day is meant to be a celebration of love, but for those producing the gifts we give on Valentine’s Day, the holiday has a whole different meaning. Human rights and environmental problems have long surrounded gold production. Wal-Mart, along with many other retailers, has pledged to only buy gold produced responsibly. SoJourners is now asking Wal-Mart to adopt the same standards for diamonds. Further discussion of the problems with dirty diamonds and how Wal-Mart can help correct the situation are below. Click here to sign the petition.
UPDATE: As of February 14, Sojourners reports more than 7,000 have signed this petition. Click here to become one of them.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, we’ve all seen the barrage of television ads enticing and imploring us to buy diamond jewelry for our loved ones. But did you know that the international diamond trade has supplied billions of dollars to rebel groups in Africa, fueling wars that have killed more than 4 million people?
This Valentine’s Day, tell Wal-Mart to make sure jewelry purchases aren’t destroying African lives.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, February 13 | 0 comments | Permalink
Could You Spend 30 Days in a Wal-Mart?
A group of three enterprising young men are spending 30 days in a Wal-Mart, subsisting on things they can purchase in the store. Aside from the sheer stamina required to live under fluorescent lights for 24 hours a day, it’s been an interesting experiment. What will they learn about the inner workings of a Wal-Mart store?
I woke up this morning to the sudden thought that I haven’t seen the sky in 8 days! I’ve spent the first week frequenting the back of the store and it has really warped my concept of time. For me the mornings are determined by the selection of staff. Margret and Geoff are both here as well as mary-anne, PJ (who works the register), and Trisha in the photo studio. The nights are occupied by my lonely friend Allen and the small Filipino lady that reorganizes the shoes when all the customers have gone home.
[Via Writing on the Wal]
UPDATE: Guess it wasn’t true after all. Way to cop out on the sociological integrity scale, guys.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, February 12 | 4 comments | Permalink
Workers Strike at Wal-Mart’s Mexico Stores
Wal-Mart employees at the company’s stores in Mexico went on strike yesterday, demanding better treatment from managers and better pay. Wal-Mart came under fire recently for refusing to pay teenagers working in its Mexico stores. The current labor dispute is not related.
Wal-Mart’s Mexico employees are not the only ones to strike in recent weeks. Wal-Mart employees in China held a sit-in at a distribution center, demanding back pay from the multinational retailer. Wal-Mart employees in China are increasingly unionized, but employees in Mexico are not. Wal-Mart employees in the U.S. could just as easily demand better conditions and pay.
Workers strike at three units of Mexico’s Walmex [Reuters]
Wal-Mart de Mexico, the country’s biggest retailer, suffered its first-ever strike this week when 300 workers from two stores and a restaurant walked out for a day in a dispute over pay and conditions.
Jaime Camacho, a top official from a grass-roots workers movement that backed the strike action, told Reuters that black and red strike flags were hung at the entrance of the stores and restaurant in the beach resort of Los Cabos at midday on Wednesday, closing down the establishments.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, February 08 | 1 comments | Permalink
Looking for a Way to Boost the Economy? Shop Locally, Not at Wal-Mart.
This article from the Oshkosh Northwestern in Wisconsin is one of a series of recent articles explaining that the best way to address a sagging economy is not by shopping at Wal-Mart, as the company might want you to believe, but by supporting locally-owned businesses that reinvest in the community.
In the sometimes embarrassing world of sales, one of the first things I was taught was “Friends buy from friends.” It made sense after all, the first thing that someone should try to develop in a sales relationship was just that, a relationship. And the closer that relationship, the more likely it was that a sale was eminent. If you could be trusted for your advice and product or service, you were worth someone’s hard-earned money.
While this principle seems to make sense, it is surprising to me how we, as a society, have gotten away from that idea of being loyal to the business owners we call our friends. More and more, price plays such a much bigger role in buying decisions that some of the largest companies in the world bank on you being less loyal to the local business and more loyal to which one can satisfy your needs for less.
Case in point is Wal-Mart with their philosophy that sold so many over the holiday season. “Save money, live better.” Did they say, “Shop locally, save jobs?” No. Did they say, “Better service means better satisfaction?” No. Did they say, “Buy from those you know?” No. They said, “Save money, live better.” Because after all, if we can save money on what we want, we will have a better life and it doesn’t matter what it means for anone else. Is this what we as a society have gotten to? It’s all about me?
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, February 04 | 4 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Plays Politics, Defends Company Image
Wal-Mart, long-beleaguered for its labor and environmental practices, is playing a hard offensive game these days. This article points out that the company’s marketing team is working so hard, Wal-Mart’s seeming more and more like a well-rehearsed politician. The fact remains, however, that Wal-Mart’s NOT a politician: it’s a retailer. While other companies are dealing with new spring lines and the cost of milk, Wal-Mart is spending its time playing politics.
Rather than making stump speeches and spending money on marketing execs, Wal-Mart would do better to simply address the problems that got the company here in the first place. Some REAL environmental action (do we really need to hear about compact fluorescents AGAIN??), improvements to employee benefits or sustainable contributions to local economies would go much farther than any press release can. Political pandering is not the same as substantive action, and until Wal-Mart starts doing the latter more work remains to be done.
Wal-Mart: The New Washington [New York Times]
Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney… Wal-Mart? The nation’s largest private employer sure sounds like it’s running for president these days.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, February 04 | 1 comments | Permalink
Pay the Kids
Wal-Mart exploits thousands of teenage grocery baggers in Mexico, relying on their work but forcing them to work only for tips. Learn more by watching this video, and then visit our action page to send a letter to Wal-Mart officials and the Mexican Labor Department telling them to end the unethical practice.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, January 30 | 24 comments | Permalink
23 Wal-Mart Clinics Unexpectedly Close
Twenty three - almost a third - of Wal-Mart’s walk-in clinics unexpectedly closed last week. The operator of the clinics, CheckUps, appears to have shut them without explanation. The problem appears to be with the CheckUps company itself, which fell behind on payroll payments and other expenses. As we’ve discussed previously on this site, Wal-Mart’s walk-in clinics are often run by independent entrepreneurs with little or no experience in health care. To cite just one example: the director of Wal-Mart contractor MinuteClinic, Michael Howe, is a former CEO of Arby’s. Howe was quoted as saying “clinics are to health care institutions, what ATMS are to the banking institution.” Making health care more accessible is important, but the quality of that health care is critical. As Wal-Mart expands its health care offerings and does more to keep employee health care expenses in-house, will doing things on-the-cheap really cut it?
Operator of Walk-In Clinics Shuts 23 Located in Wal-Mart Stores [New York Times]
CheckUps, a start-up operator of walk-in medical clinics, has shut down 23 of the clinics operating in Wal-Mart stores in Florida and three other Southern states.
CheckUps, based in New York, fell behind in paying its nurses and other vendors late last year, apparently running short of cash to meet its bills, according to a lawyer for one of its creditors.
Nurses arriving for work at the clinics on Jan. 18 found them to be closed.
CheckUps stopped paying some of its nurse practitioners in December, and it owes about $108,000 to Medtracker Personnel, said Stephanie Granda, a lawyer for Medtracker Personnel, a Louisiana employment agency that provided nurses to CheckUps clinics.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, January 29 | 19 comments | Permalink
Friday Blog Round-Up: Doldrums Edition
WAL-MART KILLED THE MAGAZINE STAR
After Wal-Mart’s decision to stop selling over 1,000 magazine titles this week, not only are magazine publishers running to their mommies, but magazine readers are asking, “Whaaaa?” Does Wal-Mart think its shoppers are illiterate? I mean, who doesn’t enjoy Better Homes and Gardens?
Wal-Mart’s Magazine Purge [Jossip]
What happens when a retail giant who controls 20 percent of magazine newsstand sales drops 1,000 titles from its racks? Untamed terror!
Wal-Mart this week announced the major trimming, dropping the heaviest anvil on Meredith Corp., ousting circulation stunners Better Homes & Gardens and Ladies Home Journal, as well as Fitness. Fellow heavyweight Town & Country, from Hearst, will also disappear, as will Hachette’s Home and Metropolitan Home.
Wal-Mart Thinks Customers Don’t Read Magazines [Media Bistro]
This is a piece about Wal-Mart in which we’re not going to take any cheap shots. We’re not going to say anything about how their stores have wrecked rural economies worldwide, their hostile stance towards unions, their gross underpayment of workers, their demeaning public relations campaigns… we’re not going to mention anything about that. Because that would be unfair.
But Wal-Mart, who are responsible for more than 20% of retail magazine sales in the United States, have decided to stop carrying more than 1,000 magazines in their stores.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, January 18 | 28 comments | Permalink
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