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Check out this piece from the Oakland Tribune on our kickoff event for our week of action:

The sick-leave policy of the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is putting the public at risk because workers are not paid the first day they take off for an illness, even if it is a serious contagious disease, according to members of several unions and labor watchdog groups.

The policy of docking pay on the first day of an illness, they said, ignores government recommendations to let H1N1 victims stay home without being penalized.

“Wal-Mart workers are coming to work sick,” said Jenya Cassidy, of the Labor Project for Working Families, during a rally Wednesday organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 5, and Wake Up Wal-Mart.

“Everybody gets sick, but not everyone can afford to get well,” Cassidy said.

Wal-Mart, which has become the largest grocer in the United States, denies the claim. But the specter of workers potentially spreading the H1N1 virus because they cannot afford to take time off has public health officials worried — especially retail workers who have frequent direct contact with the public.

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Earlier today, we gave you a rundown on Internet reaction to Wal-Mart’s support of employee-mandated health care. Well, now yet another voice has weighed in, and this one has a fairly large pedestal.

In its Opinions section, The Wall Street Journal writes that by throwing its support behind the controversial measure, Wal-Mart may have bought itself some protection by selling out its competitors in the business community.

The employer-mandate endorsement falls into the same self-interest department. A boost in the minimum wage helps Wal-Mart because most of its workers already earn well over the wage floor, and it hurts smaller, less-profitable competitors that can’t afford to pay more. On health care, an employer mandate will also reduce the margins of their rivals. This is especially true for businesses of a slightly smaller size that cannot insure on the same scale or currently don’t reach the 55% of the 1.4 million Wal-Mart employees who are insured through the company. (Another 40% or so are covered by spouses or the likes of Medicaid.)

The piece also offers more speculation as to additional motives for the move:

Businesses are going along with this and other gambits in part because of a prisoners’ dilemma: They’re terrified of being shut out of Democratic health negotiations lest they get stuck with the bill. Wal-Mart may also be trying to pre-empt an employer mandate the Senate is considering that would target companies with predominantly low-wage, low-skilled or entry-level work forces.

Everyday Low Politics [The Wall Street Journal]

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Here are what the voices on the Internet are saying about Wal-Mart’s support of employer-mandated health care...not surprisingly, it hasn’t taken long for most to deduce that Wal-Mart is hardly acting in an altruistic way.

Number one on Wal-Mart’s hit list? Easy. Target. Because small businesses would either be exempt from the mandate or face a less-strenuous requirement, it would be Wal-Mart’s large competitors (and more specifically those who have to this point been better at managing health care costs than Wal-Mart) that would feel the brunt of the hurt.

Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic:

I don’t want to make too much of this: Wal-Mart may chicken out once the specifics of an employer mandate end up on the table. Even if they don’t, they may not lift a finger to help. And, make no mistake, Wal-Mart is acting--as it always does--out of pure self-interest.

My undestanding is that, after all of these years, Wal-Mart has suddenly found itself in the same situation its competitors once did: Dealing with unpredictable health costs and facing new competition from businesses that have found ways to spend even less on employee health benefits. Is there some justice there? You bet.

Reihan Salam with the National Review:

There is another way of looking at this. As a large, powerful, deep-pocketed firm, Wal-Mart can sustain regulatory burdens that mom-and-pops and new entrants can’t. And so burdensome regulations are invariably Wal-Mart’s ally. Jonathan Rauch explained this dynamic brilliantly in his book Government’s End. It makes perfect sense for Wal-Mart to back a regulatory initiative that hurts its bottom line as long as it hurts its competitors more.

Megan McArdle for The Atlantic:

Wal-Mart is always going to have a seat at the table when employer mandates are discussed, because Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest private employer.  Target and Macy’s probably won’t have a seat at the table.  So Wal-Mart can influence the rules in ways that benefit Wal-Mart at the expense of the competition.

Jeffrey Young in The Atlantic:

Based on the axiom that nobody in business or politics acts strictly out of altruism, it’s safe to assume that Duke and Wal-Mart’s board of directors concluded that backing the employer mandate would provide the company with some kind of competitive advantage. When I originally reported the story, it wasn’t immediately clear to me what that might be, though I suspected it must have had something to do with Wal-Mart’s calculation of how much money the mandate would cost them relative to other retailers.

Michael Cannon, for the Cato Institute:

A couple of years ago, I shared a cab to the airport with a Wal-Mart lobbyist, who told me that Wal-Mart supports an “employer mandate.” An employer mandate is a legal requirement that employers provide a government-defined package of health benefits to their workers...But it all became clear when the lobbyist explained the reason for Wal-Mart’s position: “Target’s health-benefits costs are lower.”

I have no idea what Target’s or Wal-Mart’s health-benefits costs are.  Let’s say that Target spends $5,000 per worker on health benefits and Wal-Mart spends $10,000.  An employer mandate that requires both retail giants to spend $9,000 per worker would have no effect on Wal-Mart.  But it would cripple one of Wal-Mart’s chief competitors.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, quoted nearly everywhere (here courtesy again, of Mr. Jeffrey Young):

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce took a pretty nasty swipe at Wal-Mart when I emailed them for a comment. Here’s the statement the Chamber’s press office sent me, attributed to James Gelfand, its senior manager for health policy: “Some businesses make the decision to use the government as a weapon against their competition. We do not agree with this method.” Ouch.

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Wal-Mart has agreed to revise a plan on a payroll cut involving 2,000 mid-level managers across its outlets in China after a trade union stepped in to mediate, state media is reporting. Here’s a quick recap of today’s stories. You can find our previous posts on the issues here and here.

Row at Wal-Mart China settled after unions step in [MarketWatch]

Wal-Mart China had planned to relocate about 2,000 mid-level managers at existing stores to new stores it planned to open, the China Daily reported in its online edition Friday, citing a senior official at the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions.

The report said the workers union became involved after Wal-Mart employees reported that senior management announced the relocations under threat of demotion or dismissal, the report cited the federation’s Vice Chairman Wang Tongxin as saying.

Wal-Mart Bows to Union Pressure on China Restructuring [Wall Street Journal Blogs]

Wal-Mart (WMT) has made adjustments to its restructuring plans in China after objections from the state-backed All-China Federation of Trade Unions, state media reported today.

Last week, the company said it planned to trim management positions, a move that would have involved 1,400 (about 2.5%) of its employees in China. The affected employees would have faced pay cuts, relocation to other stores or possible job losses. This upset union leaders, who said their members hadn’t been consulted. (Under government pressure, in 2006 the famously union-resistant Wal-Mart allowed unions to form in China).

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The Wal-Mart Watch Research Department, lovers of corporate information in all its forms, has taken it upon itself to make sure you do not miss the release of Wal-Mart’s latest 10-K filing. In case you didn’t know, publicly traded companies must file a 10-K each year and this filing “provides a comprehensive overview of the company’s business and financial condition and includes audited financial statements.”

In other words, Wal-Mart compiles information on international and domestic store segments, risk factors to the company, legal proceedings, environmental matters and stock value. We know it is not the most exciting document in the world; however, it does provide useful information if you look hard enough to get past all the legal and accounting lingo. Notable entries in this document include: Wal-Mart’s pending settlement of 63 wage-and-hour class action cases (recognizing that they still have nine others on the books) and 12 risk factors ranging from site fight opposition to global sourcing.

To read this document, please click HERE

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Will Wal-Mart succeed in its Latin American invasion?

The Latin Business Chronicle looks at Wal-Mart’s plan to build stores in nine Central and South American stores this year, and cites Wal-Mart’s “success” in Mexico and Brazil. (Although it isn’t without controversy. In Mexico, Wal-Mart’s sales have risen but the retailer has also faced some notable setbacks: it can’t yet set up the controversial in-store banking services it wants to and its credit card interest rates are exorbitant. )

The Chronicle interviews different economists on the issue, and mainstream consensus is that 1) Wal-Mart will benefit from the recession and 2) success still depends on Wal-Mart’s ability to adapt to the cultural differences of each country. This is no small challenge, and Wal-Mart has failed in the past at this in countries like Germany and South Korea. For example, Chile has more wealth and a more differentiated grocery market than Honduras. Service has never been Wal-Mart’s strength and many Latin American consumers clearly value the personal attention their traditional retailers are good at providing. Additionally, Wal-Mart’s standard distribution networks, fairly efficient in the U.S., may prove unmanageable in a region as vast, mountainous and (in many places) still poorly developed as Latin America.

And most importantly, Wal-Mart’s success will depend on the willingness of Latin American governments and peoples to accept the Wal-Mart business model. Will the people of Latin America accept a foreign company moving in in a time of recession to knock local retailers out of business?

The full article article is republished below:

Last May, Michael Bergdahl, former director of human resources at Wal-Mart, told the First Global Forum on Customer Service in Santiago, Chile, “Our strategy of low prices has become a competitive advantage for us. So long as our competition focuses on how much they can get for their products, we focus on how little we can get for ours.” According to Bergdahl, this strategy generated revenues of about $13 billion in 2007, and in 2008, “we open a new store each day, and each week, 176 million customers buy from our stores.”

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THE Wal-Mart lawsuit - Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the largest discrimination class action in U.S. history - now has a new advocate. And let’s just say, it’s kind of a big one.

The federal government (through the EEOC, or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) had to this point elected not to get involved in the Dukes lawsuit. Yesterday, however, despite retaining many holdovers from the Bush Administration, the Commission finally threw it’s opinion into the ring. The EEOC filed an Amicus Brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, saying it was filing the brief because “this court’s resolution of issues relating to punitive damages and back pay in class cases may directly affect the commission’s enforcement of Title VII” of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “particularly its systemic litigation.” The staff in charge of deciding whether to intervene in the Dukes case is currently made up of two Democrats and two Republicans.

“If Wal-Mart’s arguments were accepted, it could effectively preclude a claim for punitive damages in most if not all Title VII pattern-or-practice cases including those brought by the Commission,” the EEOC wrote.

The EEOC isn’t actually taking a stand on the merits of the case itself - the Commission is only supporting the class action moving forward, deeming the issue important enough to its functions to intervene and assert its voice.

“If Wal-Mart’s arguments were accepted, it could effectively preclude a claim for punitive damages in most if not all Title VII pattern-or-practice cases including those brought by the Commission,” EEOC Attorney Barbara Sloan wrote. “It would be ‘nonsensical’ to prevent victims of particularly egregious discrimination from proceeding collectively.”

Needless to say, attorneys for plaintiffs welcomed the news, while Wal-Mart’s legal team and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were less than pleased. The EEOC news comes about a month after the Ninth Circuit announced it would re-hear the class action certification decision en banc - when one party requests an hearing en banc, it means they are requesting a hearing where all judges of a court will hear the case, rather than a panel of them. That hearing is currently scheduled for March 24.

Obama Administration Sides With Wal-Mart Workers [Bloomberg]

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When Mike Duke took over as Wal-Mart CEO this week, we wrote an open letter of support to Wal-Mart workers and asked everyone to sign it. The response we received were overwhelming. Thousands of you signed the letter, and many wrote in their own personal notes of support to the workers.

We’ve seen a clear common trend: the American people are sick and tired of Wal-Mart’s disrespect for its employees and demand that Mike Duke increase workers’ wages and benefits, work to provide adequate health care options, and stop the company’s discriminatory and abusive labor practices.

If Mike Duke cannot or will not treat his employees with the respect they deserve, many respondents supported the Employee Free Choice Act as the best way to force Wal-Mart to change.

Here are some of the comments:

Hang in there; relief may be on its way.  I will be thinking of you and hoping for you.  I hope Wal-Mart will do what’s right and fair, not only what the share-holders want.  Justice in an unjust world is rare but it is time for a little justice at Wal-Mart.

You should have the RIGHT to be paid better, have healthcare coverage, have more sick days and personal days, to choose to unionize if you wish, and to not live in fear for your job if you even MENTION any of the above. Hopefully, the Employee Free Choice Act will help you achieve these goals if WalMart Administration won’t do the right thing and allow fair working conditions for you. The Waltons are INCREDIBLY wealthy,and can afford to do all of the above for you,if they choose to.I am yours in Solidarity,best wishes!!!

I am just speachless about this letter.  First I give praise to God and then to Mike Duke for taking a stand for the everyday working class assoicates at Wal-Mart.  A couple of suggestions .... make equal pay for women the same as men, listen to associates that use the open door, create a group that can check on the assoicates after the open door process to ensure no retaliation has taken place.  Ensure managers are enforcing the policies and work together as a group.  Managers that are not carrying their weight should be held responsible.  Make sure raises are given to people that truely deserve it.  Change the way raises are distributed.

To employees:  I know first-hand what it’s like to be treated like a second-class citizen in the workplace.  Hang in there, for, thanks to those like Wal-Mart who consider themselves our betters, a new bill protecting people who want to organize may soon be law.  I haven’t stepped foot in a Wal-Mart for over 6 months, and I won’t until they start treating their employees as co-equals under the law, with decent wages, AFFORDABLE healthcare and pharmaceutical insurance, and humane treatment of the people who got them rich in the first place:  you.

Please don’t be afraid to stand up for your rights!  You deserve a living wage and to be treated with respect at the very least!  There are so many wal-mart workers and so many people concerned about the welfare of wal-mart workers, if we all make our voices heard things WILL CHANGE!

This is a new day for Wal-Mart. I strongly believe that although it won’t be easy, things can and MUST change for the better for the employees of Wal-Mart. What better chance do we have than now when there is a new CEO. We must let Mr. Duke know that we have not been happy with the way Wal-Mart has conducted policies and treated its employees and there is no better time than now to improve the well-being of the people who devote their work lives to this employer.
This is the time, the law is on your side. Your voices will be heard. Organize and show a united front. There are more of us then there are of them.  If we stand up for our rights, they will listen. Work hard, be responsible, be reliable, then demand the same respect from your employer. Good luck to all of you.

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Following on Obama’s signing yesterday of a law to make it easier for workers to file and win pay discrimination lawsuits, organized labor took another step forward today when the President signed three executive orders meant to increase protections for employees of government contractors, ensuring they have jobs when contracts change and making it more difficult to fire them.

In addition to saying he “disagreed” with Bush Administration labor policies, Obama yesterday took a shot at Wall Street’s excesses, calling the exorbitant spending behavior of top bankers “shameful”. And the bankers aren’t the only ones, considering outgoing Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott’s total compensation amounted to $31.6 million last year (not including the value of his stock options) while many of his employees are living in poverty.

Obama Moves To Reverse Bush’s Labor Policies [New York Times]

On yet another morning of grim economic news, President Obama on Friday sought to further distance himself from his predecessor as he announced steps that he said would strengthen organized labor and improve the lot of middle-class Americans.

At a White House ceremony, the president signed three executive orders that he said would “reverse many of the policies towards organized labor that we’ve seen these last eight years, policies with which I’ve sharply disagreed.”

Soon afterward, Vice President Biden drew applause when he flung another dart at former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney (on Mr. Cheney’s 68th birthday) as he told labor officials in the audience, “Welcome back to the White House.”

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A little bit dated, but an interesting tidbit nonetheless. The most recent issue of the National Journal, which hit the stands late last week, notes that Wal-Mart has hired a new director for federal government relations.

It isn’t necessarily surprising that Wal-Mart will be upping its federal presence, as Politico points out:

And with Barack Obama vowing to make health care a top priority, there’s little doubt Wal-Mart — with its vast employee network and popular $4 generic prescription drug program, among other interests — wants to be part of the debate.

Jason Hill is the new hire. And where, you ask, does Jason come from? Well its funny, because it just so happens that Hill, prior to joining Wal-Mart, worked for the Obama campaign. Hill was stationed in Ohio as a regional voter-protection coordinator. He’ll now be focusing on health care for retail’s Goliath.

In addition to working on the Obama campaign, Hill worked on health care policy for Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) for nearly six years. He’s also lobbied for the American Medical Group Association.

So, are we surprised that Wal-Mart is dipping into the Obama campaign for its “federal relations” staff?

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The saga of Wal-Mart’s efforts to provide financial services to Mexican consumers took a new twist today with word that Mexico’s Congress will consider legislation to fix the maximum interest rate that the retail giant and others can charge consumers. The move, initiated by the National Action Party (PAN), is surprising since PAN is known as Mexico’s pro-business party and in 2007 moved to enable Wal-Mart to offer banking services in-store for the first time. Nonetheless, critics have charged the government with failing to protect consumers from the exorbitant interest rates lenders, including Wal-Mart, charge. Wal-Mart spokesman Antonio Ocaranza has commented that Wal-Mart’s 69% rate on its credit card is “pretty low for this type of product”. Evidently, some in Mexico’s government do not agree.

The full story text is below:

Calderon’s Party Will Propose Law Lowering Loan Rates

Senators from Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s party will propose legislation to lower interest rates on loans, Senator Gustavo Madero said.

The proposal may set maximum interest rates that banks and other companies can charge consumers, said Madero, who is the senate leader for the National Action Party. The measure will replace or expand upon an initiative introduced in Congress last month that aimed to cap credit card interest rates, Madero said.

“Rates are too high,” Madero said late yesterday in an interview. “We’re going to address the cost of credit not only at banks, but also through commercial companies.”

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Wal-Mart’s invasion of the Mexican banking sector continues. Last year, the Mexican government granted Wal-Mart the authority, making them only the second retailer in Mexico to do so, to set up banking operations at its stores. Wal-Mart Bank started fast, with 115,000 new clients its first year and opening service desks in 357 stores, according to an article in Mexico’s El Milenio. That growth may be under challenge, however as this December a law passed the country’s Senate that would potentially prevent Wal-Mart from banking at all.

The bill, originally aimed at providing protections to Mexican consumers who use financial services by outlawing banks from sending pre-approved credit card and other offers by phone or mail, and increasing competitivity in the banking sector, was not satisfactory to Mexico’s major banking players, mostly multinationals like Citigroup and HSBC. Before the bill passed, the banking lobby demanded that the Senators include an Amendment limiting the amount of a bank’s total deposits taking place outside traditional “branch” locations to 25%. To get around the proposed law, the National Banking and Securities Commission, which according to one leading Mexican columnist is hell-bent on deregulating the financial sector, intends to use an administrative measure to authorize Wal-Mart to operate each one of its cash registers in its stores “as if it were a bank branch”.

Considering the disastrous effects financial deregulation and predatory lending practices have had on the U.S. economy, and considering Wal-Mart’s track record of offering exorbitant interest rates on its store-brand credit card, these latest maneuvers give serious cause for concern. Furthermore, in banking with Wal-Mart, Mexican consumers might not suffer only financial, but also physical harm; due to Mexico’s enormous problems with fraud and robberies, traditional branch banks in the country today are heavily guarded and the multinational banks use numerous electronic and physical security measures to protect their customers; these protections would be mostly absent at Wal-Mart’s nationwide cash registers.

The original article (translated) in Mexican newspaper La Jornada is printed below:

In spite of the fact that the [Mexican] Senate set limits on banks’ ability to offer financial services through third parties, such as retail stores now labeled so-called “bank branches”, the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) put forth an administrative measure to give Wal-Mart authorization for each one of its cash registers to become a bank branch.

This kind of authorization has been denied the retailer by U.S. authorities, said analysts.

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We’ve covered Wal-Mart’s wage and hour (and overtime) issues many times over, culminating with last week’s $54 million settlement in Minnesota. We all get that Wal-Mart would prefer its employees work through breaks. And we certainly know that when it comes to paying employees for overtime, well, Wal-Mart would prefer that be optional.

California wage laws are, not surprisingly, fairly strict. And now, with that state facing a financial shortfall, the LA Times is reporting that business groups and GOP lawmakers are using wage and hour law as a bargaining chip in negotiations over how to fix a $14.8-billion hole in the state budget. The argument is that state laws like those in California - the ones mandating breaks for workers working at least 6 hours in succession, and requiring an employer to pay time-and-a-half once a worker has worked more than 8 hours in day - are expensive for employers to follow and force them to flee the state for friendlier confines. Places where breaks are voluntary [for the employer] and overtime exists only in a fantasy dreamland.

Not surprisingly, California Democrats and labor officials in the state disagree.

Employers’ latest efforts to tie both the meal break and overtime issue to contentious budget negotiations are aimed at reversing basic worker rights, said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation.

“It’s about trying to help Wal-Mart and other big corporations get away from the long-established understanding that people should get a meal break at work” or be paid extra for extra hours, Pulasksi said.

“This has nothing to do with the budget or stimulating the economy,” said Barry Broad, a lobbyist for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and other labor unions. “It doesn’t help the economy to lower 20 million people’s wages during a recession.”

It has been suggested that if state lawmakers can’t come to a consensus and close out these budget negotiations, a state government shutdown in the spring is a distinct possibility.

Overtime pay, rest breaks become bargaining chips in state budget crisis [LA Times]

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Check out this week’s issue of the Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials – a compilation of Wal-Mart news from across the country and beyond.

This week’s issue begins with a new study from the group Good Jobs First, which reveals that cash-strapped states are forgoing a total of roughly $1 billion annually in tax revenue because of little-noticed laws that permit retailers to keep a slice of the sales taxes they collect for the government. In fact, the study finds thirteen states do not cap the amount that a retailer can receive as vendor compensation for collecting sales tax, resulting in millions of lost tax dollars.

A large focus this week is also on Wal-Mart’s announcement that Lee Scott will step down as CEO in February 2009, to be replaced by Michael Duke, Wal-Mart’s Vice Chairman of its International Division. In addition to the CEO change, you’ll find stories on the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act, how Wal-Mart will deal with the Obama Administration from a labor perspective, and related news on Wal-Mart’s labor battles in Canada.

And finally, check out our “Stateside” and “Wal-Mart International” sections to find out what’s going on with Wal-Mart around the country and across the globe. Wal-Mart has founded a new consumer group in New England geared towards fighting Wal-Mart opponents, and has purchased its own wind-energy supply based out of Odessa, Texas

Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials [November 21, 2008]

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Despite its best efforts, Wal-Mart could not hold off Barack Obama and the incoming Democratic wave hitting our nation’s capital. When asked about the election results, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, in a letter to associates, said Wal-Mart was committed to working with either party.

“A number of associates asked me how our company viewed the election and what our post-election plans were. I told those associates that this is clearly a time of great opportunity for our country, and also a time of great challenge. I reminded them that last June I said that Wal-Mart looked forward to working with the new President and Congress, regardless of party, to find solutions to our challenges. We are even more committed to that objective today.”

Talk about revisionist history. Wal-Mart, since the beginning of the campaign, made it clear to everyone that the company would rather deal with John McCain. While disappointment is in the air in Bentonville, regular associates around the country should rejoice. Now workers have an advocate in the White House!

So where does Wal-Mart go from here? It looks like Wal-Mart has decided to hire a new set of “reputation warriors” and other government relations personnel to mislead inform Congress about two key issues – health care and sustainability. These new directors will beg for mercy advocate for Wal-Mart’s interests on Capitol Hill.

I think we are all familiar with Wal-Mart’s benefits package and green campaign. Good luck to the brave souls who fill these positions, you will need all the help you can get.