California Site Fight: Wal-Mart Development Faces Lawsuit
Lawsuit challenges Perris Marketplace project [The Press-Enterprise (California)]
An environmentalist group is going to court to force developers of a Perris shopping center to do a thorough analysis of its greenhouse gas emissions.
In a lawsuit filed last week in Riverside County Superior Court, the Center for Biological Diversity alleged the Perris Marketplace project doesn’t do enough to quantify and reduce the gases, which are blamed for global warming.
A 520,000-square-foot project west of Perris Boulevard and north of Nuevo Road, Perris Marketplace is expected to feature a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a mega-store with a supermarket, a vision and hearing center, a photo center and gasoline pumps.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 16 | 0 comments | Permalink
Colorado Site Fight: Fitting in or Causing Fits?
Super Wal-Mart: Fitting in or Causing Fits? [The Daily Camera (Colorado)]
It’s shiny, it’s new, it’s fun to take a look at. But it’s not about to become everyone’s one-stop shopping center.
That was the consensus Monday of about a half-dozen shoppers who were asked whether they would re-direct a substantial portion of their shopping dollar to Lafayette’s new 207,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter, which opened Wednesday.
The Supercenter, located on the west side of U.S. 287 between Baseline and Arapahoe roads, replaced a much smaller Wal-Mart store that had been on South Boulder Road for 20 years.
The new store now offers a tire and lube center and a full-blown grocery store, raising the level of competition among the three major grocery stores that all sit within a mile radius of the retail giant.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 16 | 0 comments | Permalink
Washington Site Fight: Council to Discuss Wal-Mart
Fircrest council candidates talk about Wal-Mart [The News Tribune, Washington]
Longtime Fircrest Mayor David Viafore is facing a primary election contest for the first time in his political career and the W-word seems to be hovering over the three-way campaign.
“I’m going door-to-door and I’ve had to be defensive because I’m hearing that my opponents have mischaracterized my position on Wal-Mart,” Viafore said.
The retail giant said on July 31 it was abandoning plans for a Fircrest store, but community concerns remain about how Viafore and the council handled the application, said his opponents for the Council Position 4 seat, Blake Surina and Leslie Rider. Some residents opposed the store, saying the retailer would have disrupted the community’s small-town lifestyle with traffic and potentially more crime.
Surina and Rider say residents are upset that the city kept them in the dark about Wal-Mart development plans.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 16 | 0 comments | Permalink
Sacramento, CA. Wal-Mart Ponies Up $4 Million In Unpaid Overtime
Right in the middle of its worst stock plunge in the past year, Wal-Mart generated more bad headlines today with the announcement that once again the giant retailer was paying out millions of dollars to workers who were underpaid. It was announced today that Wal-Mart has agreed to pay more than $3.9 million to about 50,000 of its current and former employees in California, because the company owed them overtime and other wages over a five year period of time. The settlement was negotiated by the California Labor Commission. As part of the settlement, Wal-Mart also will pay $198,900 in civil penalties to the state. This settlement goes back two years ago, when Wal-Mart “voluntarily” notified the state Labor Commissioner that the corporation had made “errors” in its payroll that caused thousands of its workers to be underpaid. The payment errors affected all of Wal-Mart’s California workers from February 1, 2002 through January 19, 2007. The underpayments were connected to overtime and other wages. Wal-Mart at the time promised that it would mend its mistake, and pay the workers what they were owed. “This is a matter we discovered and reported ... and the situation has been corrected,” said a Wal-Mart spokesman. “Everyone who was owed money is being paid with interest and we have added safeguards so that these errors don’t happen again.” According to the :Labor Commissioner, some of the affected workers already have a check in the mail, but some have waited years for what was owed to them.
California’s Labor Commissioner praised Wal-Mart for setting “a positive example for other employers who may be out of compliance, because it illustrates how they can work with us to properly compensate workers as well as meet legal requirements.” According to media reports, 90% of the workers were owed $20 over the past five years. But a little bit of money denied to a lot of workers ends up saving Wal-Mart millions of dollars.
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Posted by Al Norman on Wednesday, August 15 | 0 comments | Permalink
California Wal-Mart Workers who were Underpaid Overtime get their Money
From “Wal-Mart to pay $3.9 mln in back pay in California” [Reuters]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay more than $3.9 million to about 50,000 current and former employees in California who were underpaid overtime and other wages, the state’s labor commissioner said on Tuesday.
The world’s largest retailer also agreed to pay $198,900 in civil penalties to the state, Labor Commissioner Angela Bradstreet said in a statement.
In 2005, Wal-Mart voluntarily notified the labor commissioner that errors in its payroll processes had led to underpayment of overtime and other wages. It pledged to correct the problem and pay affected workers all they owed.
“This is a matter we discovered and reported ... and the situation has been corrected,” said Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley. “Everyone who was owed money is being paid with interest and we have added safeguards so that these errors don’t happen again.”
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Posted by Web Team on Wednesday, August 15 | 29 comments | Permalink
Perris, CA. Wal-Mart Sued Over Greenhouse Gas Law
Wal-Mart likes to foster the image of an environmentally green company, but its impact on greenhouse gases has attracted a lawsuit in Perris, California. The City of Perris is located in the heart of Southern California, between San Diego and Los Angeles. Perris describes itself as “a fast growing community with prime available land, an able work force and plenty of affordable housing…(with) miles of frontage on Interstate 215.” Some of that prime land was grabbed by Wal-Mart, but now the city’s appetite for sprawl has brought it some legal problems. The city already has a Wal-Mart discount store on North Parris Boulevard, and no less than 13 Wal-Mart’s within 20 miles, including a superstore 16 miles away in San Jacinto. There is easy access to cheap Chinese goods in Perris. A group called The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit late last week, challenging the city’s approval of the Perris Marketplace, a 520,000-square-foot development that includes a 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter, and will generate as many as 40,000 daily vehicle trips. The lawsuit challenges the project’s failure to consider measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, as required by California law. According to the Center’s press release, “The California Environmental Quality Act, the state’s flagship land-use planning and environmental statute, requires state and local governments to assess and reduce the significant environmental impacts of new projects. Greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming are one of the greatest threats facing Californians’ future, and the law provides an opportunity and a legal mandate for cities to consider options to reduce such emissions and evaluate global warming solutions at a range of scales. ‘The city refused to meaningfully address the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the Wal-Mart Supercenter,’ said Center staff attorney Matt Vespa. ‘Wal-Mart’s public-relations department wants you to believe the company is aggressively fighting global warming, but at the end of the day their project fails to meet even the minimum standards required by California law.’ California is particularly vulnerable to global warming, with projections of temperature increases of 8 to 10.5° F, a 90-percent loss of the Sierra snowpack, 22 to 30 inches of sea-level rise, and a four- to six-fold increase in heat-related deaths in major urban centers by the end of the century. Research indicates that the worst of these impacts can still be avoided, but only if action is taken now to sharply reduce emissions. ‘Wal-Mart is one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluters. Its annual greenhouse gas emissions, including its supply chain, are equivalent to almost half of the emissions of the entire state of California,’ said Vespa. ‘It is fundamentally unfair to allow approval of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter without the basic environmental review required by the California Environmental Quality Act.’”
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, August 14 | 0 comments | Permalink
Parking Lot Safety Examined
Wal-Mart Wants Outdoor Lighting Issue Reconsidered [Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic]
They’re baaack.
Saying it wants to ensure customer safety, Wal-Mart is disputing yet another condition placed on the giant retailer’s plans for a new superstore in the West Valley.
This time the issue is outdoor lighting, which mainly involves the store parking lot but is also a concern to neighbors.
“Right now it’s not well lit, and we all feel that’s very unsafe,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Jennifer Holder said Friday during a phone call from her regional corporate office in Seattle.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, August 13 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Drags Its Feet
Wal-Mart presses on with Snohomish County plans [HeraldNet (Washington)]
The world’s largest retailer is moving along with its plans for more Snohomish County outlets.
Wal-Mart was poised two years ago to saturate Snohomish County with at least four new stores between Arlington and Mill Creek. Rumors flew about additional locations in the area.
Today, the retailer’s added just one store, while two approved sites sit empty and another is tied up in the appeals process.
Wal-Mart’s still coming to more corners of the county, the retailer says, but it’s taking more time than planned.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, August 13 | 0 comments | Permalink
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