‘Better Health Care Together’ Coalition Meets in New York
The Better Health Care Together coalition, formed in February 2007, is a joint effort between Wal-Mart, the Service Employees International Union and several leading corporations advocating for universal health care. Two new companies - Qwest and General Mills - have recently joined the coalition.
Broad Coalition Calls for Health Care Reform [Time]
Most politicians, voters and analysts alike have all assumed that the 2008 presidential campaign, like the midterm elections in 2006, would continue to be a referendum on Iraq and little else. But the growing call for comprehensive health care reform from representatives of major corporations, labor unions, America’s governors, interest groups, and the public has become so strong that it could actually give the war a run for its money.
A Wednesday meeting in New York City involving prominent members of all those groups was the latest manifestation of the passionate and organized drive to get presidential candidates (and the next president) to make health care reform the top domestic priority.
Organized by an ad hoc organization called Better Health Care Together, the meeting was meant to publicize the group’s shared principles and to announce both new members and a drive for commitments to reform from the presidential candidates of both parties.
The coalition was launched in February of this year and has adopted four principles: quality, affordable health insurance for every American; individual responsibility for protecting and maintaining health; improved value for health care dollars spent; and broad participation in finding a solution. Their hope is to have the system on the path to change by 2012 by making it a centerpiece of the 2008 election debate.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, May 09 | 10 comments | Permalink
Women’s Reactions to Eco Initiatives
A cornerstone of Wal-Mart’s environmental intiative has been its heavy marketing and promotion of compact fluorescent light bulbs. The Washington Post ran a story yesterday describing female consumers’ - Wal-Mart’s largest demographic by far - impressions of the bulb. The full story is available below, but Feministing.org had some interesting points to add as well. What does this mean for Wal-Mart’s environmental product push? Will the company achieve its goals if women don’t buy their new eco-friendly products?
Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity [Washington Post]
Alex and Sara Sifford, who live here on the Oregon coast, want to do the right thing to save a warming world.
To that end, Alex Sifford, 51, has been buying compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use about 75 percent less power than incandescent bulbs. He sneaks them into sockets all over the house. This has been driving his wife nuts.
She knows that the bulbs, called CFLs, save money and use less energy, thus cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. She knows, too, that Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey and the Department of Energy endorse them. Still, the bulbs, with their initial flicker, slow warm-up and slightly weird color, bug her.
“What really got me was when my husband put a fluorescent in the lamp next to my bed,” recalls Sara Sifford, 53. She said she yelled at her husband for “violating the last vestige of my personal space.”
Experts on energy consumption call it the “wife test.” And one of the dimly lighted truths of the global-warming era is that fluorescent bulbs still seem to be flunking out in most American homes.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, May 01 | 25 comments | Permalink
SEIU and Wal-Mart
Stern brings US union into modern era [Financial Times ]
In spite of spending tens of millions of dollars every year on public relations, Wal-Mart, the US retail giant, continues to suffer from a declining image and stagnant sales.
Much of that can be attributed to Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, America’s fastest growing union with 1.8m members.
Mr Stern, whose union broke away two years ago from AFL-CIO, America’s largest union federation, is the principal funder of Wal-Mart Watch, one of the retail group’s harshest critics. With plans to spend $60m (€44m, £30m) in the 2008 presidential election – more than any other union – SEIU also hopes to be something of a kingmaker in the Democratic presidential race.
Yet Mr Stern, whose Washington DC headquarters sits next to the capital’s plushest think-tanks on Massachusetts Avenue, talks more like a modern chief executive than a union boss from the era of smoke-filled rooms.
In a move that scandalised his colleagues in Change to Win, the federation of unions that he helped set up in rivalry to AFL-CIO, Mr Stern recently formed a partnership with Wal-Mart and Intel to push for universal health coverage.
Although he remains a critic of Wal-Mart – “you cannot change your image unless you change the reality,” he says of Wal-Mart’s public relations efforts – Mr Stern is emerging as America’s foremost union leader of the post-industrial era.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, April 27 | 7 comments | Permalink
Is Wal-Mart Good Or Bad For America?
MSNBC Democratic Presidential Debate
Orangeburg, SC
April 26, 2007
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Senator Clinton, overall, is Wal-Mart a good thing or a bad thing for the United States of America?
SENATOR CLINTON: Well, it’s a mixed blessing.
WILLIAMS: How so?
CLINTON: Well because when Wal-Mart started, it brought goods into rural areas, like rural Arkansas where I was happy to live for 18 years. And it gave people a chance to stretch their dollar further. But as they grew much bigger, though, they have raised serious questions about the responsibility of corporations and how they need to be a leader when it comes to providing health care and having safe working conditions and not discriminating on the basis of sex or race or any other category. Brian, this is all part, though, of how this Administration and corporate America today don’t see middle class and working Americans. They are invisible. They don’t understand that if you’re a family that can’t get health care, you’re really hurting. But to the corporate elite and to the Adminstration and the White House, you’re invisible. If you can’t afford college, you’re invisible. So I think we need to get both public sector and private sector leadership to start stepping up and being responsible and taking care of people.
WILLIAMS: Senator, thank you.
Posted by Media Team on Thursday, April 26 | 11 comments | Permalink
Sam’s Club Job Cuts, Severance Agreements, and “Flights”
Wal-Mart recently revealed that they are cutting nearly 2,800 Sam’s Club managers as part of a “restructuring” that will replace them with 1,800 salaried positions. With these cuts there comes a severance agreement.
Rumors about these cuts have appeared for some time on Wal-Mart Associate boards and blogs, most notably Wal-Mart Blows. These cuts were rumored as part of what Wal-Mart Associate’s often refer to as “flights” - anti-employee policies implemented gradually or company-wide. The most notable of the flights is centralized computer scheduling (referred to as “just-in-time” scheduling by Wal-Mart’s home office) and pay caps. Many of these “flights” also implement elements of the Chambers memo (PDF). The entire point of implementing these policies is to push long-term employees out for a younger, part-time workforce.
If the Associate boards are to be believed - and they have been exceedingly accurate at predicting what anti-employee policy Wal-Mart will implement next - the Sam’s Club department managers may be the first to go, but they will not be the last.
The agreement that ex-Sam’s Club employees must sign in order to obtain severance pay raises several issues. One section of the agreement releases Wal-Mart from any claim based on age, gender, race, disability and a number of other federal and state laws pertaining to discrimination. This is problematic in light of the Dukes class action case involving gender discrimination, and also because of the clear intent of the Chambers memo to eliminate older employees and employees with health concerns. Wal-Mart may be using these severance agreements as a way to continue its discriminatory policies and potentially block any future employee efforts to receive just compensation.
Posted by Research Team on Thursday, April 26 | 21 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart’s Growing Pains
Wal-Mart’s Midlife Crisis [BusinessWeek]
John E. Fleming, Wal-Mart’s newly appointed chief merchandising officer, is staring hard at a display of $14 women’s T-shirts in a Supercenter a few miles from the retailer’s Bentonville (Ark.) headquarters. The bright-hued stretch T’s carry Wal-Mart’s own George label and are of a quality and stylishness not commonly associated with America’s über-discounter. What vexes Fleming is that numerous sizes are out of stock in about half of the 12 colors, including frozen kiwi and black soot.
Fleming may be America’s most powerful merchant, but a timely solution is beyond him even so. Wal-Mart failed to order enough of these China-made T-shirts last year, and so they and other George-brand basics will remain in short supply in most of its 3,443 U.S. stores until 2007’s second half, depriving the retailer of tens of millions of dollars a week it sorely needs. “The issue with apparel is long lead times,” says the quietly intense Fleming, who spent 20 years at Target Corp. (TGT ) before joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT ) “We will get it fixed.”
For nearly five decades, Wal-Mart’s signature “everyday low prices” and their enabler—low costs—defined not only its business model but also the distinctive personality of this proud, insular company that emerged from the Ozarks backwoods to dominate retailing. Over the past year and a half, though, Wal-Mart’s growth formula has stopped working. In 2006 its U.S. division eked out a 1.9% gain in same-store sales—its worst performance ever—and this year has begun no better. By this key measure, such competitors as Target, Costco (COST ), Kroger (KR ), Safeway (SWY ), Walgreen’s (WAG ), CVS, and Best Buy (BBY ) now are all growing two to five times faster than Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart’s botched entry into cheap-chic apparel is emblematic of the quandary it faces. Is its alarming loss of momentum the temporary result of disruptions caused by transitory errors like the T-shirt screwup and by overdue improvements such as the store remodeling program launched last year? Or is Wal-Mart doing lasting damage to its low-budget franchise by trying to compete with much hipper, nimbler rivals for the middle-income dollar? Should the retailer redouble its efforts to out-Target Target, or would it be better off going back to basics?
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Posted by Media Team on Friday, April 20 | 14 comments | Permalink
Friday Blog Roundup: Security Spying, Self-Help and Emergency Contraception
SELF-HELP AT WAL-MART
This week Wal-Mart introduced a corporate initiative which will motivate staff to be more physically fit and more environmentally conscious. It sounds to us like Wal-Mart’s pushing its corporate problems on to its Associates, but we’ll let someone with firsthand experience talk about that:
Self-help at the Wal-Mart [Behind the Counter]
I was in line at the Starbucks earlier this week and saw the picture from this article and the word WAL-MART in the headline but never got to a library to look it up.
Three words: Public. Relations. Stunt.
This gem of a program has got ultimately got nothing to do with the environment and EVERYTHING to do with cash.
BIG BOX MEETS BIG BROTHER
Wal-Mart’s PR department exploded this week when a story in the Wall Street Journal probed deeper into their corporate surveillance practices. Wal-Mart first defended its practices, then apologized for them and eventually vowed to change. Not surprisingly, no one bought any of it.
Wal-Mart is Watching [Consumerist]
According to the recently fired employee who intercepted calls and text messages from a New York Times reporter (and a few other Walmart employees) Walmart’s surveillance tactics include:
• Scanning employee’s email
• Logging all employee key strokes
• Using monitoring software to detect vendors viewing pornography on their computers
• Using monitoring software to read employee personal email such as hotmail or gmail
• Investigating outspoken critics of Walmart
• Sending “a long-haired employee wearing a wireless microphone to Up Against the Wal’s Fayetteville, Ark., gathering, and eavesdropped from nearby.”
• Locating Nu Wexler’s vacation photos, “Wal-Mart has far bigger concerns than my vacation photos,” said Mr. Wexler, after being informed of the surveillance. “Someone would have had to dig for quite a while to find that link.”
Wal-Mart Is Reading This Post [Wall Street Journal Blog Roll]
A company, person or institution that puts defending its image and stifling criticism first and foremost – rather than addressing underlying problems that can lead to such a soiled image — puts itself at risk of seeming paranoid, thus further hurting its profile.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, April 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
States and the Battle Over Emergency Contraception
Planned Parenthood announced today that it has been notified by Wal-Mart that the retail leader has revised its nationwide corporate policy regarding emergency contraception. The new policy ensures that customers will receive their prescriptions of over-the-counter products without discrimination, harassment or lecture. Emergency contraception such as the Plan B pill will now be stocked and dispensed without discrimination or delay.
This is a turnaround from previous Wal-Mart policy” – last year, Wal-mart agreed to begin stocking Plan B with the caveat that the company’s conscientious objection policy, which allowed pharmacists uncomfortable with dispensing certain prescriptions to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy, would remain in effect. Plan B was approved for over-the-counter sale in mid-2006, meaning a prescription is no longer required for women 18 or older.
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Posted by Corey Himrod on Wednesday, April 04 | 19 comments | Permalink
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