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Looks like Wal-Mart fired James Hirni just in time. Three weeks ago, Wal-Mart terminated its top GOP lobbyist after being indicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Today he plead guilty to “honest services fraud” in D.C. - which included some of your classic Abramoff-style illegal-gifts-in-exchange-for-legislative-favors, as well as a more complicated scheme to convince states to rent their construction equipment, not buy, and only from companies with ‘large dollar amounts of liability insurance coverage.’

Hirni faces the possibility of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

It’s a fine sort that Wal-Mart keeps as company. Think they’ll keep his office ready for him when he gets out of prison?

Ex-GOP aide with Abramoff ties pleads guilty [Roll Call]:

James Hirni, a former congressional aide-turned-lobbyist with ties to Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of honest services fraud in D.C. district court.

The plea came just three weeks after Hirni was fired by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., where he worked as a director of Republican outreach. The charge stems from his time at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal and is unrelated to Hirni’s work for the chain.

Read the rest of this story ...

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Wal-Mart’s health care plan is sprawling, and past attempts (PDF) to asses the plan have proved difficult. So we’re not immediately sure what to make of this announcement from Wal-Mart earlier today.

The retailer’s claims that it will expand health coverage for its associates appear fairly superficial, focusing on maternity care and smoking cessation (as opposed to, oh I don’t know, subrogation clauses). They don’t address many of the fundamental problems with the company’s plan: premiums that are too high, waiting periods that are too long and coverage that’s too sparse. To our Wal-Mart-employee readers, what do you think of Wal-Mart’s proposed changes?

Wal-Mart expands worker health benefits [Reuters]

etail leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Tuesday that it was expanding health benefits for workers, including offering a 2009 program that provides pre-pregnancy and child development services.

The company said a “Life With Baby” program in next year’s benefits package would provide workers counseling with registered nurses through all phases of maternity.

It said that plan also includes expanded benefits such as periodontal cleanings to help prevent gum disease in mother and child, and a new program designed to stop smoking.

In a statement, the retailer said about 15,000 of its workers have babies each year.

Read the rest of this story ...

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In case you hadn’t noticed, Wal-Mart has received some criticism for its business practices over the last few years. Condemnations of low wages, discrimination, environmental damage, damage to local economies and sweatshop sourcing have come at Wal-Mart from all angles. At some point, someone at the company realized these attacks might be bad for business.

So the company went on the offensive. Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect, explained to a conference of editorial writers this week that in recent months, Wal-Mart has made a massive effort to improve its image. Whereas the retailer once focused on lowering prices regardless of the cost, attacks on the company’s ethics made Wal-Mart realize the high price of behaving badly.

Fishman is certainly right on this point: after years of criticism, it seems Wal-Mart’s leadership finally recognized the value of a good reputation. Since its revelation, Wal-Mart has worked to highlight not only its low prices but its good deeds too, spending millions to publicize its environmental efforts and charitable giving. A new ad campaign, a new slogan and numerous public appearances by company executives drive home Wal-Mart’s new message: We’re not all bad, really.

Wal-Mart’s work to become a socially responsible company, however, is far from done. The company’s labor problems remain completely unresolved: wages and benefits for hourly workers are still paltry, allegations of union-busting remain rampant, and the company’s discriminatory practices have resulted in dozens of lawsuits in the last year alone. Labor issues are the most expensive to resolve, but a recent study (PDF) shows that shoppers take a company’s labor practices into consideration above all other social responsibility issues. The company cannot and will not succeed with its image overhaul until these issues are addressed.

Even Wal-Mart’s highly-touted environmental campaign has problems. While the company cites reduced packaging and organic cotton among its crowning achievements, Wal-Mart’s massive energy consumption, unsustainable land use, and unethical sourcing practices negate any positive impact the company might have. Poor product quality contributes to environmental problems too, and several recalls over the last year and a half reveal the high price of cutting costs. The company’s relationship with local communities continues to be a problem as well.

Like Mr. Fishman, we are also interested to know the impact of Wal-Mart’s environmental footprint - both good and bad. But any examination of Wal-Mart’s sustainability efforts should take into account the company as a whole - with all its problems, from factory to shopping cart - not just the side Wal-Mart wants us to see.

Two say Wal-Mart image on mend [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]

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Over the past two weeks, we’ve been keeping you updated on Wal-Mart;s continued assault on high school sports programs by selling logo school gear without the permission of the school, and without donating any of the profits.

So far, we’ve read news reports of high schools in Washington, Wisconsin and Tennessee that have spoken out about the practice. We sent out an email to supporters last week and heard back from dozens who identified Wal-Marts across the country that are selling high school gear. More reports are sure to come in, and you can bet we’ll be keeping track.

In case you missed it, here’s a little recap:

We first heard about this on September 4, when KXLY-4 News in Washington state broke the story about Cheney High School losing much needed profits because Wal-Mart was selling clothes with their logo on them.  Wal-Mart refused to donate any of the profits back to the school. 

On September 10, an article from the Kingsport Times-News reported a similar story about Wal-Mart doing the same thing to Science High School in Johnson City, Tennessee - and that its been going on for several years, despite complaints.

Two days later, on September 12, the Cheney Free Press reported that this had been happening in a host of Washington schools, including Medical Lake High School. Reporter Paul Delaney actually got the first response we’ve seen out of Wal-Mart, who defended the practice and claimed that all legal requirements to sell the gear are met.

Then yesterday, NBC-26 from Green Bay revealed that yet another High School was reporting the same problem.  They explain:

“Students at Kimberly High School work hard to sell t-shirts and other gear. All proceeds directly help fund school programs like marketing. “The apparel is probably the biggest money maker here at this store,” says Senior Joey Moser. The student shop managers, though, were surprised to learn that other stores like Walmart and Pick ‘n Save also sell their gear. Moser says, “We don’t get any of that money."”

It’s questionable whether Wal-Mart has the legal right to sell the gear without permission, there’s no question that it’s unethical. Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world, run by the richest family in the country, and constantly bills itself as a “store of the community”.  There’s no excuse for undercutting local schools, and keeping the profits for itself.

The bottom line is that Wal-Mart is taking a huge chunk out of school budgets, and jeopardizing the future of local sports programs.

We’ll keep you updated. 

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Apparently, what’s happening at Cheney and Science Hill High Schools is not an isolated incident.

This weekend, more reports have come in about Wal-Mart undercutting high school athletics programs by selling school logo clothing without permission and refusing to donate any portion of the proceeds to the school. 

The Cheney Free Press looks at more schools around Washington state, and finds the exact same problem occurring.

Reporter Paul Delaney quotes several upset school officials, and after pressing Bentonville, has published the first response yet out of Wal-Mart: “We want as many students as possible to be able to show their school spirit,” and “All permissions and approvals required for logo apparel are met.”

How kind. I’m thinking maybe that the high schools should come up with some clever slogans and start selling their own Wal-Mart merchandise. Wal-Mart lawyers wouldn’t have any problem with that, right?

Wal-Mart vs. area schools [Cheney Free Press (Wash.)]:

Medical Lake athletics director Chris Spring was just a little surprised recently when one of the high school’s secretaries, Lynae Strieb, walked into his office with a pair of plaid pajama pants embroidered with the Cardinal logo.

“Who ordered those?” Spring asked. Strieb replied that nobody ordered the garment and that she found them - along with other items featuring logos from both her school, as well as those of Cheney High - at the Airway Heights Wal-Mart.

Read the rest of this story ...

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Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits than one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of its workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.

At Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on one of these stories each week, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.

Deborah Metcalf v. Wal-Mart Stores East

In the process of scouring the country searching for egregious examples of Wal-Mart malfeasance, we came across this interesting little case filed earlier this year in Oklahoma. On its surface, it’s a retaliatory discharge case – however, the plaintiff here, Deborah Metcalf, was fired for blowing the whistle on what should be considered some pretty repulsive conduct.

Among the many programs funded by the United States Government, we’re going to focus on one in particular – the federal WIC program. WIC stands for Women, Infants, and Children, and is a special supplemental nutrition program funded by grants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered in Oklahoma by the OK State Department of Health. Basically, WIC provides food and education to low-income women, infants and children deemed eligible for the program. The program’s website tagline delivers the following:

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children - better known as the WIC Program - serves to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, & children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care.

Deborah Metcalf, at the time of her firing, was an employee working at the Wal-Mart Pharmacy located within store #47 in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. In 2001, the Sallisaw Wal-Mart became a participant in the WIC program. Before we go any further, perhaps a little more information is needed on how the WIC program works:

Read the rest of this story ...

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Today, a front-page Wall Street Journal article reported that Wal-Mart is holding mandatory meetings with supervisors and managers to warn them that if Senator Obama wins the presidential election, Democrats will pass the Employee Free Choice Act to unionize their stores.

You may ask: why is Wal-Mart so worried?  The answer is that unionizing gives workers the power to stand up to their employers and demand higher wages, better health care, and more fair work places. Tell Wal-Mart to stop intimidating its employees into voting against Senator Obama:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/voters

Wal-Mart is notorious for its union-busting tactics.  It has repeatedly demonstrated that it will do anything to get out of treating its employees with the dignity and respect they deserve.  As the Wall Street Journal article states:

Through almost all of its 48-year history, Wal-Mart has fought hard to keep unions out of its stores, flying in labor-relations rapid-response teams from its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters to any location where union activity was building.

Not only are Wal-Mart’s actions morally despicable, but they also raise legal concerns. Show Wal-Mart that the country is listening and that we want workers to decide for themselves how to vote:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/voters

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Less than 12 hours after the story broke in the WSJ, news coverage of Wal-Mart’s politically coercive means has reached a fever pitch. We feature the media coverage in the wake of Wall Street Journal’s expose, “Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win.”

Wal-Mart denies that it told employees how to vote [Associated Press]

Wal-Mart Watch, a union-backed group that has criticized the company for what it calls skimpy pay and benefits and poor treatment of its workers, said in a statement that the article “demonstrates once again that Wal-Mart intimidates its workers.” The group, which supplied some of the sources to The Wall Street Journal, said the stories cited in the article are “consistent” with numerous reports it has received in the past week.

The development deals a blow to Wal-Mart’s reputation just as the company has started seeing its image improve and criticism diminish as it works to improve benefits and push through its “Save money, live better” campaign.

Wal-Mart warning managers of labor bill [Reuters]

Wal-Mart opposes proposed legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize by signing a card rather than holding a vote.

“We believe EFCA is a bad bill and we have been on record as opposing it for some time,” Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar said. “We feel educating our associates about the bill is the right thing to do.”

Wal-Mart warning workers off Democrats [Salon.com]

The law in question is the Employee Free Choice Act, which is supported by Democrats and would replace secret balloting when workers choose a union with a “card check” system, something likely to result in increased union membership.

The meetings appear to be legal, though the company may be treading on thin ice by bringing in the department supervisors.

Read the rest of this story ...

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State legislators across the country are facing budget shortfalls and financial crunches, and as they consider cutting back on municipal services, Wal-Mart continues to avoid paying its fair share of state taxes. Wal-Mart - the world’s largest company and one of the nation’s largest holders of private property - has come up with a number of strategies to avoid paying state property and income taxes. Wal-Mart Watch has begun an effort to raise awareness among state legislators of the retailer’s complex and often underhanded tax strategies, beginning with these two documents - Wal-Mart Watch In Depth: Wal-Mart’s Great Tax Dodge; and One Company’s Plan to - Save Money, Live Better: Wal-Mart’s State Tax Avoidance Schemes. Click to download the PDFs.

From the introduction to One Company’s Plan to – Save Money, Live Better:

Wal-Mart, using tax avoidance schemes provided to it by the accounting firm Ernst & Young, has short-changed many states out of millions of dollars of state tax money. As revealed in a February, 2007 Wall Street Journal story, Wal-Mart pays billions of dollars in rent per year, yet in many states the retail giant has been paying rent to itself and then deducting those amounts from its state taxes.

Corporate tax loopholes are having a profound effect on state revenue collections, and mounting evidence demonstrates that Wal-Mart has aggressively pursued them for many years in order to avoid paying state taxes. The tax schemes vary in complexity as well as legality from state to state, but the underlying results are the same: these strategies have saved Wal-Mart from paying hundreds of millions of dollars in state taxes.

Wal-Mart has been taking advantage of a tax loophole that the federal government closed years ago, paying rent to itself then deducting it from state taxes in about twenty-five states. Data from
filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that on average Wal-Mart has paid only about half the statutory state rates over the past decade. Many states have taken a proactive approach and computed Wal-Mart’s tax bills by combining the company’s tax return with those of tax-shelter subsidiaries created during the 1990s, contending that Wal-Mart’s income tax returns have failed to disclose Wal-Mart’s true earnings on its business carried on in a particular state.

The Wall Street Journal, consulting with accounting experts, used an average state tax rate of 6.5% to calculate that for a four year period from 1998 to 2001, Wal-Mart’s REIT payments saved the retailer approximately $350 million in state taxes – the loss of federal deductions that would have been triggered by larger state tax payments still left Wal-Mart with about $230 million in savings. In Wisconsin, for example, public documents show that Wal-Mart had taken home to Arkansas approximately $852 million in net profits between the years 2000 and 2003, while over that same time period, Wal-Mart had paid only $3 million in corporate income tax – far below what the state’s 7.9% corporate income tax rate would suggest the company owed, namely, about an additional $64 million.

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More of Flagler Video’s treasure trove of Wal-Mart videos have been uncovered by Steve Painter of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Read the whole thing if you have time, but here’s a few of the better excerpts:

Managers mocking a 12 year old boy who was badly burned by an exploding Wal-Mart gas can:

One tape from a meeting features a skit involving gas cans. When the display of cans is scattered by a riding lawn mower, an executive remarks that it’s a good gas can, “It didn’t explode.”

Lee Scott, concerned that Wal-Mart’s bullying of suppliers would attract Congressional action:

“The real danger you hear being talked about Wal-Mart is that Wal-Mart’s purchasing power will become so large that the impact will have a negative impact somehow on the suppliers who deal with Wal-Mart. And that we will dictate terms that are in fact bad for suppliers and anticompetitive in a sense that they won’t be able to do what they need to do for their shareholders or their employees or their other customers.”

Regional Vice President, Larry Williams:

“We’re going to quit breaking the law. The OSHA laws we have, the wage and hour laws that we have, the federal firearms law, we’re going to quit breaking the law.—”

Keep dreamin’ boss.

2 pay bills with Wal-Mart tapes [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]:

LENEXA, Kan. — In cramped, leased office space bordered by self-storage units in suburban Kansas City, Mo., Mary Lyn Villanueva and Greg Pierce spend their days figuring out how to keep the bills paid.

Not long ago, the company they own, Flagler Productions Inc., was a $ 10 million-a-year audio-video production and showstaging business with nearly 20 employees and one whopping big client: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville.

Read the rest of this story ...

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Feel like celebrating America this weekend? A trip to Wal-Mart isn’t the way to do it. The retailer has been damaging American jobs and American communities for decades, and this Fourth of July isn’t any different.

Exporting Manufacturing Jobs. Jobs that were once the backbone of the American economy have been exported to countries where labor is cheaper and standards are lower. Wal-Mart has played a critical role in this process, using its size and market share to force manufacturers overseas.

Damaging U.S. Communities Wal-Mart makes a lot of promises when it builds a new store. Town councils are often dazzled by the company’s promises of more jobs and increased revenue, but these promises rarely pan out. The retailer drains municipal resources by forcing its employees on state-sponsored health care, getting subsidies from local governments and frequently undercutting its property and income taxes. Read more about Wal-Mart’s impact on communities >>

Devaluing Retail Sector Jobs. Wal-Mart often woos communities with promises of more jobs, but what communities frequently don’t take in to account is the quality of these jobs. Wal-Mart pays bare minimum wages, and even lowers the overall employment rate of an area by shutting down competing businesses. Just last year, Chicago refused Wal-Mart’s request to build a store on the south side of the city, citing the company’s low wages as the reason. Read more about Wal-Mart’s wages and labor policies >>

Read the rest of this story ...

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If there were a Hall of Shame for corporations, Wal-Mart would certainly belong in it. Luckily, such a Hall exists. Corporate Accountability International, a membership organization that challenges abusive corporations, is already tallying the votes for 2008 inductions into the Corporate Hall of Shame.

The Hall of Shame exposes some of the most abusive, manipulative and harmful corporations — and this year Wal-Mart is one of eight possible inductees. Voting is open now - click here to vote and help us make sure Wal-Mart gets inducted. From the Hall of Shame’s summary about the retailer:

Wal-Mart’s ascendance into a world of stratospheric profits has been remarkable.  But perhaps what is more remarkable is that taxpayers continue footing the bill for an enterprise that takes most of its profits out of the communities in which they operate.

Left in the wake are flailing small businesses that can’t compete with a price-slashing, subsidized behemoth. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is increasingly leaning on part-time workers, which means that more of them wind up depending on public dollars for health care coverage. Part-time employees must wait a full year before receiving benefits, and since the majority of workers are short-term, most do not get covered by Wal-Mart.

Click here to vote on Corporate Accountability’s website.

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Well, at least someone is getting paid.

Another day, another wage/hour class action is awarded judgment against Wal-Mart. This time it comes to us from Minnesota, where Dakota County District Court Judge Robert King Jr. ruled Monday that Wal-Mart broke Minnesota labor law more than two thousand million times over a six-year period by forcing employees to work without breaks and without full pay.

That is, in fact, not a typo. Two million times.

Judge King ruled that, in addition to penalties, Wal-Mart owes workers at least $6 million in back wages. In addition to penalties, you say? Ahhhhh, penalties...this is where it could get expensive for Wal-Mart, a company which, as the Northwest Arkansas Morning News reported last week, is already facing a whole plethora of legal woes. The violations at issue here carry a penalty of up to $1,000 each, which could be pretty pricey when you have two million of the darn things. According to Bloomberg’s math, which I am hardly in a position to disagree with, that puts the ceiling up around $2 billion. It probably won’t get that high, but it will be high, nonetheless...all I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if the next time you’re in Wal-Mart, a brand new copy of Guitar Hero costs...ummmmm...a million dollars?

A jury is expected to decide the amount of punitive damages and penalties in October, according to the judge’s order. And that could drive the amount Wal- Mart pays to hundreds of millions of dollars, said lawyer Frank Azar, whose Colorado firm was involved in the case and began fighting Wal-Mart in the 1990s.

Wal-Mart Faces $2 Billion Labor Law Trial, Judge Says [Bloomberg]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. broke Minnesota labor laws, a state judge ruled, handing the world’s largest retailer its third-straight defeat in a wage-class action trial and the possibility a jury may order it to pay $2 billion.

The company required hourly employees to work off-the-clock during training and denied full rest or meal breaks in violation of state wage and hour laws, Hastings, Minnesota, District Judge Robert King Jr. held today following a non-jury trial. King ruled Wal-Mart broke labor laws more than 2 million times and ordered the company to give employees $6.5 million in back-pay.

Read the rest of this story ...

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Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits than one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of it workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.

Just as important as those large class actions, however, are the countless suits filed by individual plaintiffs – the tiny David trying to win justice over Wal-Mart’s Goliath. We at Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on one of these stories each week, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.

Courtesy of one of our wonderful interns, Cass...an oldie but goodie! (the case, that is)

O’Neil v. Wal-Mart Corporation - Decision and Order

The scene: 2005, New York State, family court.

The plot:  A family court judge order a young women to include her stepchild on her employee benefit plan.  Part of her husband’s custody arrangement is providing medical benefits, and hey, what’s mine is yours, right?  She tries.  Wal-Mart refuses. Then the judge specifically decrees that Wal-Mart put this kid on the employee benefit plan as a dependent. Still, Wal-Mart ignores a court order, inviting the Department of Social Services to sue.

Two years later the civil court judge finally has enough of Wal-Mart’s shenanigans and orders them to follow the court order and put the damn darn kid on the insurance plan.

Note: I’m amazed it took 2 years for the judge to snap.  If there is one thing judges hate, it’s people ignoring court orders. Wal-Mart essentially walked into court and said, “We are going to waste your time and thousands of dollars all while completely dissing the expertise of your fellow judge.  Please, please rule against us!” They could have been more disrespectful if they had literally destroyed the court order in front of said judge sometime during the trail.

Well said Cass! And bravo, Wal-Mart. You do always give us something to write about.

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Pink Magazine - “a beautiful career, a beautiful life” - devotes the cover story of its July/August issue to the top women of Wal-Mart. Included in the write up are Wal-Mart heavy-hitters Susan Chambers, Pat Curran, and Linda Dillman, as well as execs Betty Marshall, Wan Ling Martello and Rosalind Brewer. The title of the story: “Can These Women Save Wal-Mart’s Soul?”

What follows seems to be a Victorian-era lesson on the moral superiority of women, with Wal-Mart in the role of a beast/man to be civilized by the women of its executive workforce. Says one analyst in the article, “To be likeable you have to be more civilized, and to be civilized, you need to have women rising up the corporate ladder.” Emily Post would have been so proud.

Glibly passing over details like class action discrimination lawsuits and “longtime criticism surrounding associate wages and benefits,” the article emphasizes the “result of a more sympathetic female touch on the controls” of the company: greater likeability, emotive advertising and “female styles of collaborative management.” In one fell swoop, author Joanne Cleaver manages to insult both women AND Wal-Mart, simultaneously calling the retailer an untamed corporate heathen and relegating women to the role of doting school marms.

This ill-conceived characterization of Wal-Mart’s female executives is both misguided and misleading. If Ms. Cleaver had looked beyond the talking points of these few well-positioned women, she would have seen serious, systemic problems with Wal-Mart’s treatment of female employees. Susan Chambers is quoted in the piece saying “We’re not saturated [with women leaders] by any means,” and that’s an understatement. Wal-Mart is currently being sued by 1.6 million female associates for gender based discrimination. Ironically, fighting discrimination in the workplace is the subject of the article directly after the Wal-Mart piece in this magazine. If ending workplace discrimination is something that concerns the Pink editorial staff, perhaps it should reconsider writing a feature on the company embroiled in the world’s largest class action discrimination lawsuit.

The article also fails to take in to account the other women of Wal-Mart: the hundreds of thousands of women working in Wal-Mart’s stores around the world. Those women, who make bare minimum wages and are the unfortunate casualties of the insufficient health care plan this article so extensively discusses, might not agree with Susan Chambers’ cheerful descriptions of company policy. Nor would the millions of women working in the sweatshop-like conditions of Wal-Mart’s supplier factories around the world. Some estimates put the female-to-male ratio in Shenzhen factories at 7-to-1, meaning women disproportionately bear the brunt of Wal-Mart’s inhumane sourcing practices as well. They would most likely have a different view of Wal-Mart, too.

Pink Magazine’s article is right about one thing - Wal-Mart’s soul does need saving. But executives buzzwords aren’t the way to do it. We hope Wal-Mart will someday make advances for women working all the way along its supply chain, not only promoting more women to executive positions, but paying better wages and providing better health care for store employees as well as sourcing from factories with fair working conditions for women overseas. Until Wal-Mart looks at the entire scope of its production chain, it hardly deserves accolades for progressive leadership.

Can These Women Save Wal-Mart’s Soul? [Pink Magazine]

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In a story out today about Wal-Mart’s declining reputation, the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas notes that admiration for the company is also falling sharply. Whereas Wal-Mart was once the most admired company in America according to Fortune magazine, the retailer is now barely in the top 20.

One expert called Wal-Mart’s poor reputation a “chronic” condition, as the retailer has repeatedly failed to take action on issues raised by activists and critics. Ignoring these complaints is not only inhumane, it’s a bad business strategy. Wal-Mart has years to go before it can even hope to begin regaining the trust of conscientious consumers.

Report: Wal-Mart Reputation Continues To Slide [NW Arkansas Morning News]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 2007 continued to slip down a list of corporate reputation rankings, according to a survey.

The Bentonville-based retailer ranked No. 44 on the Harris Interactive report, which ranks the reputations of the country’s 60 “most visible” companies based on consumer perception surveys.

It was the third consecutive year Wal-Mart’s score on the list declined.

Wal-Mart’s slipped score was the also the third largest rating change, trailing behind Bank of America and Halliburton Co., which saw more significant declines in reputation scores.

Wal-Mart has similarly dropped down Fortune Magazine’s list of America’s most admired companies.

Read the rest of this story ...

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The Northwest Arkansas Morning News released over the weekend a Kim Morrison piece on some of the largest legal cases currently pending against Wal-Mart, and most of the findings really shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point. There is, of course, the Dukes gender discrimination suit, and the multitude of wage and hour cases pending - the full extent of which you can also see here, on Wal-Mart’s SEC filing. The two largest wage/hour cases to date - Savaglio and Braun/Hummel - have resulted in combined judgments of over $350 million against Wal-Mart, although the cases are currently in the appeals stages, so Wal-Mart has yet to pay a cent.

What you might find really interesting in the story is the way a company the size of Wal-Mart plans ahead for the day it will have to make a possible million billion-dollar payout:

“It’s not like they wouldn’t be able to pay the light bill if they had a billion dollar settlement,” said Patricia Edwards, fund manager with San Francisco-based Wentworth, Hauser and Violic. “It wouldn’t be good, don’t get me wrong. But the low point in cash last year at quarter end was just short of $5 billion.”

Edwards said Wal-Mart reserves cash for potential future lawsuit payouts so there would be a reduced impact on shareholders in the event of such a case. With Wal-Mart’s ability to absorb some of the impact, a billion dollar payout may show up in earnings as a loss of 5 cents per share, Edwards said.

Well that is certainly good to know, that Wal-Mart - instead of making sure its female employees are treated equally, and ALL of its employees are provided adequate breaks and paid for the overtime they work - has socked plenty of money away underneath its $150 bargain mattresses to pay for its legal shortcomings.

Read the rest of this story ...

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Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits than one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of it workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.

Just as important as those large class actions, however, are the countless suits filed by individual plaintiffs – the tiny David trying to win justice over Wal-Mart’s Goliath. We at Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on one of these stories each week, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.

Anita Loya (And yes, that is her real name…)

Ms. Loya was an employee at the Wal-Mart store in Deming, a small city in the southwest corner of New Mexico about sixty miles west of Las Cruces. In January of 2006, Loya filed a complaint against her store manager, Les Williams, claiming she had been discriminated against and sexually harassed. Amazingly enough she was not fired, and in fact Wal-Mart did indeed investigate her allegations.  Meanwhile, Loya transferred in May to a Wal-Mart store up in Silver City while the investigation was ongoing. The parties entered into mediation in June 2006, but that tactic failed, and soon after Les Williams was officially the ex Store Manager at the Deming Wal-Mart.

That, you would think, would be the end of our tale. The victim was at a new store. The guilty party, following investigation, had been terminated. Done? Finito? End of story?? Unfortunately, not so much.

Read the rest of this story ...

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Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits that one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of it workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.

Just as important as those large class actions, however, are the countless suits filed by individual plaintiffs – the tiny David trying to win justice over Wal-Mart’s Goliath. We at Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on one of these stories each week, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.

Tenna Hopkins

Tenna Hopkins was hired by Wal-Mart as an associate way back in 1984 – the year the Russians and others boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles;” the year the Space Shuttle Discovery made its inaugural flight; the year the first Apple Macintosh went on sale. On August 21, 2006, 22 years later, Tenna Hopkins was a store manager at a Wal-Mart Store in Daytona Beach, Florida. On August 22, 2006, Tenna Hopkins was out of a job.

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In recognition of Wal-Mart’s 2008 Annual General Meeting, Wal-Mart Watch today re-released “A Handshake with Sam.” The document was originally announced in 2006 as a proposed agreement of shared principles concerning Wal-Mart’s moral responsibilities based on the highly regarded ideals of its founder Sam Walton.

Each of the seven common sense Handshake principles - such as respecting human dignity, providing employees with quality affordable health care, using market power to improve rather than depress wages and buying local first - are based on business and ethical principles supported by Sam Walton’s writings in his autobiography, “Made in America.”

“Two years later, despite a massive public relations effort to convince people otherwise, Wal-Mart’s current business practices still do not reflect Sam Walton’s principles,” said Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director David Nassar.  “Wal-Mart still fails to pay all of its employees a family-sustaining wage; fails to ensure that all employees and their children have quality, affordable health insurance; fails to use its market power to improve supplier conditions and wages; fails to buy a significant amount of products locally; fails to pay its fair share to communities by continuing to rely on tax-payer funded programs, tax dodges and tax subsidies to inflate its bottom line, and it still faces the nation’s largest workplace gender discrimination lawsuit,” he added.

The 2008 Wal-Mart Shareholders’ Meeting offers an opportunity for the company to address these issues. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart will opt instead for an elaborate display of celebrity performances to entertain and effectively distract its shareholders and employees.  The meeting occurs just weeks after Wal-Mart was essentially shut out of America’s third largest city - Chicago - because it refused to pay a higher wage.

To offset Wal-Mart’s lack of substantive discussion of its business practices at the upcoming meeting, Wal-Mart Watch asked its supporters for input regarding topics they would want Wal-Mart to consider. To date, hundreds of responses have been submitted and posted on the organization’s blog from concerned citizens - the majority of which requested first and foremost an honest discussion on Wal-Mart’s wages, benefits, and increasing trend of overseas sourcing. 

“We still believe Wal-Mart can be a positive market force if the company returns to Sam Walton’s principles,” said Nassar. 

Click here for a full downloadable version of “A Handshake With Sam”

Click here for Wal-Mart Watch’s complete coverage of Wal-Mart’s 2008 Annual General Meeting