0 comments

---

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]

0 comments

---

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.

0 comments

---

It isn’t EFCA, but this week the Oregon legislature took its own step towards ending employer intimidation towards employees seeking to form a union. The Oregon Senate passed Senate Bill 519 - the Worker Freedom Act - by a 16-14 vote. The vote nearly split down party lines, with 16 Democrats voting in favor, and 12 Republicans (plus two Democrats) voting against. The measure now moves to the Oregon House, where a similar bill passed in 2007.

Senate Bill 519, which moved to the House on a 16-14 vote, bars businesses from requiring workers to attend company-organized meetings about politics — including union organizing — and religion. There are exceptions for churches and political parties.

The House bill passed 31-27 in 2007, and five more Democrats have since joined the state house. So, needless to say, the measure’s chance of becoming law are looking pretty good.

With public and legislative support behind the bill - 88% of Oregonians, in a December poll, said they did not think an employer should be allowed to force workers to attend meetings about the employer’s opinion on politics, religion, or union organizing - Oregon’s AFL-CIO President appeared surprised in an April email alert that Republicans were fighting the measure so strenuously. As you will note, the bill doesn’t bar the meetings from taking place - it simply bars employers from taking retribution against employees who choose not to attend meetings on politics, religion or union organizing during work hours.

“SB 519 simply states that an employer can’t discipline or fire a worker for opting out of a meetings on one of these topics. Are our Senators, and are the business associations who opposed this bill, upset that we are limiting their right to fire a worker who disagrees with their political or religious views? That’s all this bill does.”

Read the rest of this story ...

0 comments

---

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus acknowledges he sees in the retiring Justice David Souter a jurist with a “moderate or restrained record” – one which plaintiffs’ lawyers and unions would hope to avoid in a replacement. Earlier today President Obama announced his nominee to replace Justice Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court – Sonia Sotomayor, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – and the question now: Is this a good thing for businesses like Wal-Mart?

The primary reason for asking this question at this time is because there exists the very real possibility that at some point in the relatively near future, Wal-Mart’s lawyers will be defending their client before the very Court that Judge Sotomayor is being nominated to.

Just two months ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals re-heard en banc arguments in the well-traveled Dukes v. Wal-Mart sex discrimination case – plaintiffs are hoping the full court will affirm a previous Ninth Circuit decision that upheld the lawsuit’s ability to proceed as a class action. If that happens, Wal-Mart will have two options – accept the decision and proceed to trial, or appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Should Wal-Mart come out on the short end of the Ninth Circuit and find itself in front of the Supreme Court, Sotomayor could be the newest of the nine justices the company will have to convince in order to have Dukes’ class action status removed. Judge Sotomayor’s voting record is now being parsed, and certainly as the vetting process moves forward, we’ll learn more about what kind of effect she could have on a potential Dukes decision. Most view her record as decidedly moderate, though she has implied in the past that the gender and ethnicity of judges should and does influence their judicial decision-making.

As a woman and a minority, could this be a bad omen for Wal-Mart? We’ll see...until then, however, we’ll have to make do with some of her career highlights, which you can find after the jump…

Read the rest of this story ...

1 comments

---

In the State of Washington, proposed legislation called the Worker Privacy Act would give workers the option of refusing to attend mandatory meetings where employers tell their side on issues of personal conscience, including politics or unionizing. Actually, the bill being considered in both the Washington House and Senate also mentions religion and charitable giving as protected issues, but politics and unionization are the ones getting all the media love. Yesterday, the Washington State Labor Council pointed out the following in arguing in favor of the bill to the House Labor and Commerce committee:

Under current law, companies can force their employees to attend such meetings to discourage union organizing or to press political views, as Wal-Mart did last year when it urged employees to vote against Barack Obama and Democrats.

Indeed, Wal-Mart Watch was intimately involved with the development of an August 2008 story in the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story of Wal-Mart’s “mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies—including Wal-Mart.”

The actions by Wal-Mart—the nation’s largest private employer—reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership. That could lead to higher payroll and health costs for companies already being hurt by rising fuel and commodities costs and the tough economic climate.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don’t specifically tell attendees how to vote in November’s election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

In addition to those stories in the WSJ piece, some of the reports Wal-Mart Watch received were even more egregious - in one example, a worker said they were shown a slide that said “Obama = union” while being told why unions were bad. The Washington legislation would allow workers to elect not to attend such gatherings, without fear of reprisal.

Read the rest of this story ...

26 comments

---

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 ...

11 comments

---

Over the summer, we heard from many employees that Wal-Mart was in many ways openly opposing the candidacy of Barack Obama for president. When the Wall Street Journal published a front page story on August 1st on the allegations of manager meetings where workers were no-so-subtley urged to vote for John McCain, the issue became a national news sensation.

We’d assumed that the story was mostly over, but the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger today makes a new allegation that we haven’t seen printed before:

Wal-Mart, in response to reports that it had banned employees from speaking Obama’s name while at work, said it is discouraging its employees from engaging in certain political discourse on the job.

“One of the basic beliefs of our company is respect for the individual,” Wal-Mart corporate spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said in an e-mail statement.

“We are a bipartisan company and our associates reflect the wide range of attitudes and political diversity of this country. We prefer to maintain a politically neutral working and shopping environment in our stores,” Hardie said. “As such politically charged discussions are discouraged in order to ensure individual beliefs are respected.”

Any of our employee friends want to comment on this? We’ve heard stories hinting at this sort of thing, but not (to my knowledge) alleging an outright ban on mentioning a presidential candidate’s name in the store. One would assume that the story is true - given that Wal-Mart actually responded to the allegations, and didn’t even try to deny it.

Needless to say, it’s not a policy that jives well with Lee Scott’s recent love letter to our new President-Elect. 

1 comments

---

This just in: Lee Scott responds to last week’s election results.

It goes something like this: He says that it’s unfortunate that Obama won, despite strong efforts by his company to get associates to vote for John McCain. He rages further: Wal-Mart is lining up its lobbyists and lawyers, and emptying its pockets to ready for an all-out fight with Unions and the Obama Administration over possible labor reforms, which might give his employees a little more of a voice, and might possibly require the company to (gasp!) spend more on its workers and/or treat them a little more fairly.

Ah, just kidding. It’s actually all pretty generic and obvious. We’re going to work harmoniously with the new president, we need to improve health care and decrease energy use (as long as someone else foots the bill for it), solve all of the world’s ills, etc., etc.

Lee Scott Memo Regarding 2008 Presidential Election

Dear Associates,

Last week America elected Barack Obama as our 44th President. In many ways this was a historic election. Our country elected our first African American President, and more Americans voted than ever before. As I travelled to stores and clubs after the election, I saw the desire of our associates and customers to rally behind our new President and make real progress on the critical issues that confront this nation.

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.

Read the rest of this story ...

2 comments

---

This is right from Wal-Mart’s government affairs guru Leslie Dach’s playbook on “How to Appear Nonpartisan and Back a Winner.”

Jake Wagman pointed out on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Political Fix blog yesterday, Wal-Mart ponied up $10,000 for governor-elect Jay Nixon – two days after he won Tuesday’s election. Repeat: after he won. 

Given that Wal-Mart has avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes in Missouri and no doubt violated every labor law in existence - under the current administration’s oversight - it’s easy to understand why Wal-Mart would want to attempt to curry favor with the state’s new governor. Sure, political contributions often come into campaigns after elections for one reason or another, but Wal-Mart is clearly trying to send a message and buy a little access as it faces the changes that will come with new administrations in Missouri and nationally.  As Wal-Mart girds for a fight over EFCA and undoubtedly a host of other issues, Lee Scott and the Walton family are understandably nervous and willing to drop a few bucks here, there and everywhere to try to keep the status quo. 

Look for more on the Walton family influence here. 

44 comments

---

Several stories over the past two days have outlined the oncoming fight between Wal-Mart and the Obama administration over labor reforms, primarily over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - but also health care reform and a slew of other potential legislation.

This is no suprise for anyone. Wal-Mart isn’t stupid, it read the writing on the wall and has been preparing for a democratic win and a push for labor reform for a while. It’s been donating more money to politicians (including democrats) to curry favor, as well as funding major anti-EFCA initiatives (not to mention explicitly telling its employees to vote for John McCain.)

Other big business - retailers especially - will be play major roles in the fight, but no American Business’s model is more threatened by labor reform right now than Wal-Mart - which looks to be ground zero in the upcoming battle with the new administration.

A labor attorney quoted in Reuters sums it well:

“You’ll see an all-out battle at Wal-Mart” by labor, said attorney Richard Hankins, who leads the labor and employment practice at the law firm of Kilpatrick Stockton.

Jonathan Birchall at FT tells about the Obama administration could hit Wal-Mart on health care as well:

On healthcare, Mr Obama’s platform included setting a minimum contribution level for businesses to their employees’ healthcare plans - an approach that has been opposed at state level by big non-unionised retailers, including Wal-Mart...The retailer, with more than 1.3m staff, has said it wants to work on healthcare reform with a new administration.

And if Wal-Mart hadn’t already made it clear enough how much it refuses to change or pay its workers a dime more, check out the gall on Lee Scott - quoted by the Associated Press at the recent analysts’ meeting:

“It’ll be generations in the impact it [EFCA] has on this country. And it won’t be positive. I guarantee you that. It will not be positive. But for Wal-Mart, in the short term, and in the longer term on a relative basis with our peers, we’re going to run this business,” Scott said. He continued, ”We like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.”

Will the next four years see better wages and benefits for Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million employees? Will it loosen Wal-Mart’s grip on the steering wheel? We look forward to finding out - and blogging about it. 

35 comments

---

So, apparently there’s an election going on right now?

It seems there’s only a few hours left for Obama and McCain to make a run at the Wal-Mart vote.

Undoubtedly, talk in recent weeks about Wal-Mart Moms has cooled down a little bit - but it’s still there. From Wednesday on (hopefully), we’ll start to know whether this year’s new hot political demographic really made a difference in the results, or maybe even whether it exists at all. We’ll know whether the candidates Wal-Mart supported won or lost. And we can start to discuss on the blog how a new administration might affect the world’s biggest company.

If election mania is leaving you any time to read Wal-Mart news, here’s a rundown of Wal-Mart mentions in recent political coverage:

**And don’t foget to vote tomorrow!

Counting On Wal-Mart Women [Newsweek]:

Just about every poll shows Barack Obama ahead in key battleground states, yet an internal McCain campaign memo, conveniently leaked to the media, calls the race “functionally even.” The memo’s author, highly regarded pollster Bill McInturff, argues that McCain’s salvation will be “Wal-Mart women” without a college degree making below $60,000 a year. These are the voters the politicians overlook and who have found their voice in Sarah Palin and their gender counterpart in Joe the Plumber—or so the theory goes.

William Safire: ’08-isms [New York Times]:

This year, Gov. Sarah Palin modernized the soccer mom with the hockey mom and the Wal-Mart mom. (That chain has a great euphemism for the guy on the way out who makes sure you’re not stealing stuff: the exit greeter.)

McCain to face close fight in Indiana [Financial Times]:

Even then, the main local topic of discussion was not al-Qaeda or the invasion of Iraq, which still lay six months ahead – but the new Super Wal-Mart planned for the edge of town. Nothing has turned out quite as the optimists imagined, including the Wal-Mart. Prices are said to be higher here than at neighbouring branches, because there is no competition.

Read the rest of this story ...

6 comments

---

Yesterday, Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, told reporters that Wal-Mart is “relentlessly non-partisan.” His claim does not make sense when you look at the facts.

While it is true that in the latest election cycle, Wal-Mart’s PAC is giving more money away to House Democrats than House Republicans by a $456,700 to $418,500 margin, Wal-Mart overwhelmingly supports conservative causes and groups. Released just a few weeks ago, our Walton influence website clearly shows how the Walton family and Wal-Mart both support a right wing agenda. In fact, Wal-Mart’s PAC is giving more money to Senate Republicans and more money to conservative PACs by a significant margin. In addition to PAC giving, Wal-Mart’s lobbying skews conservative. By lobbying against port security to save money on shipping costs, lobbying against country-of-origin labeling to shroud its supply chain in secrecy, and lobbying against the Americans with Disabilities Restoration Act, Wal-Mart shows its true colors.  After the release of the 3rd quarter lobbying numbers, Wal-Mart’s in-house lobbying expenditures jumped to $5.22 million dollars – a 3629% increase since 1999. And let’s not forget the Employee Free Choice Act. An August story in the Wall Street Journal shows just how far Wal-Mart will go to prevent an Obama victory and unionization in its stories.

The Walton family is no different. The family, which controls 43% of Wal-Mart’s stock, is consistently pushing a right wing agenda. Worth over $100 billion dollars, the Walton family is free to spend their billion on causes like the school voucher movement. Public school supporters worry that the Walton family exerts a disproportionate level of influence in this area. Since 2000, the Walton Family Foundation donated over $47 million to the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, a lobbying organization devoted to weakening the public school system in America by “providing research and publications to school choice groups and submitting amicus curie briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on voucher issues.” The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), which promotes the voucher movement to African-American families, received over $3.8 million from the Walton Family Foundation since 2002. 

Sounds like Wal-Mart and the Walton family are relentlessly partisan to us. 

8 comments

---

The National Journal’s Under The Influence Blog brings our attention to a new 501(c)6 group called the “Workforce Fairness Institute,” whose sole purpose is to fight the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The National Journal tells us:

Packer would not identify the WFI’s funders. But sources familiar with its creation speculate that such big retailers as Wal-Mart and Home Depot—a which are high-profile opponents of EFCA—are likely among the group’s donors. One source says the WFI is trying to raise as much as $10 million for its operations.

Presumably, Wal-Mart and other companies are spending early while preparing for a possible Obama administration and strong Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate - which are expected to make a push for the legislation which, of course, would make it easier for Wal-Mart workers to form unions and negotiate contracts for higher wages and better benefits.

The WFI website is savetheelection.org, and the featured video is a fake news broadcast which for the first minute or so openly implies that the presidential election is being taken away. Halfway through it tells us we’re talking about a possible change in unionization rules.

But - the website reminds us that WFI (just like Wal-Mart!) is “NOT anti-Union.” Which is reassuring.

We’ll do our best to investigate WFI’s funding disclosure laws, and Wal-Mart’s role in the venture. As usual....we’ll be watching. 

32 comments

---

Well, my faithful blog readers, after two years of working on Wal-Mart issues and more than a year as the main editor of this blog, our Friday Blog Round-Up today will be my last post. I hope you all continue reading, commenting and working to challenge Wal-Mart’s business practices. Enjoy the writing of my Wal-Mart Watch colleagues and try to keep the infighting to a minimum. As for now - on to the week’s blogs!

BLOGGERS WEIGH IN ON “EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT”

Real Voices, Some More Wild Stuff [Working Life]

Wal-Mart Watch has set up a website where you can actually hear and read about the actual workers who have to put up with the oppressive behavior of The Beast. This is part of the picture: the Great Robbery that we have all endured for a number of decades--wages not going up (even though productivity goes up), no health care, no pensions--plays out, day-to-day, in those aisles at Wal-Mart.

The voice of the workers (Part 1) [Writing on the Wal]

What you get there is a look behind Walmart’s PR curtain to see what employees are really thinking, but too afraid to tell their supervisors since they don’t have a union to protect them. Indeed, let’s start this series there, in the category that Wal-Mart Watch calls corporate culture.

After the jump, union-busting in Canada, bottle water, Nike’s suit against the Bentonville behemoth and Sarah Palin.

Read the rest of this story ...

1 comments

---

Wal-Mart’s official company position on politics is bipartisan, but glimpses into Wal-Mart’s corporate culture reveal this is far from true. Daily Kos diarist Arkydem wrote a post today about a party his adult daughter attended in northwest Arkansas hosted by two Wal-Mart executives. From the sound of it, Wal-Mart’s executive corps is made up entirely of the insensitive meatheads you hated in high school, but instead of teasing you about your lame off-brand sneakers, now they tease you about not being a Republican. Says Arkydem:

I live in the Republican stronghold of Arkansas, the northwest corner. The home of over 7,000 Wal-Mart employees and since early 2002 when Wal-Mart made the announcement that if you’re a vendor, you set up shop here, adding another 30-40K folks and a sea of vendor offices all over the county, all carrying the misinformation and hate that corporate Wal-Mart spreads through its ranks and its vendor slaves about Democrats and about a million other things.

Wal-Mart strives to be seen as a politically neutral company for several reasons. The politics of Wal-Mart have never been positive for the company: low wages, poor benefits and other stingy practices have dogged the retailer for years, and have damaged its reputation. The farther the company can distance itself from these issues, the better. But Wal-Mart is also desperate to break in to several predominantly Democrat markets, and aligning with Republican values never helps this cause. Stories like Arkydem’s present a real problem for Wal-Mart, and seriously hamper its attempts to woo Democrats. Stories like this one don’t help much either, but no one said the company was interested in actually changing its practices to achieve change.

They Attacked our Daughter [Daily Kos]
Wal-Mart on the attack [Arkansas Times]

5 comments

---

Kim Morrison writes a nice piece in the NW Arkansas Morning News today about Wal-Mart Watch’s new website - waltoninfluence.com.

We’re glad to see that a Wal-Mart spokesman was asked by media to comment on the new site. Unsurprisingly, spokesman David Tovar had no comment. What he did say, however, was that Wal-Mart gives near-evenly to Democrats and Republicans.

That, of course, is laughable.

A quick look through the donation data on waltoninfluence.com (pulled from opensecrets.org) shows that the Wal-Mart PAC has always given the vast majority of its money to Republicans and conservative causes. Wal-Mart likes to brag that in the 2008 cycle, it has given slightly more to Democratic House candidates ($456,700 for Dems compared to $418,500 for Republicans.) But its giving in the Senate more than compensates for this - and according the openssecrets.org the Wal-Mart PAC has given more total to the GOP candidates in the 2008 cycle (47% to Democrats, 53% to Republicans).

And what about this year’s donations to non-candidate political groups? The top 5 and the vast majority are all Republican groups:

Washington State Republican Party: $50,000
Mitch for Governor Campaign Committee: $48,000
National Republican Congressional Committee: $30,000
National Republican Senatorial Committee: $30,000
Republican National Committee: $30,000

But regardless, Wal-Mart’s giving in 2008 is the exception to rule. Kim Morrison quickly points out that Democrats have received 22% of less of Wal-Mart’s support in the previous two elections. And if you look further and further back, you’ll see a company whose giving to Democrats moves closer and closer to zero percent.

The point is that Wal-Mart has seen turning of the political tide, and has decided to make a one-time handout to the party on the rise. What it is, is a shrewd (and probably wise) political move, what it isn’t is a sign of a bipartisan company.

Group tracks Wal-Mart’s political involvement [NW Arkansas Morning News]

12 comments

---

Wal-Mart Watch has launched a new website - http://www.waltoninfluence.com - which analyzes and tracks the Walton family’s and Wal-Mart’s growing influence on American politics.

Although Sam Walton believed his company should stay out of politics and stick to retailing, Wal-Mart’s strategy changed immensely after his death. From 1999 to 2007, Wal-Mart’s lobbying expenditures for outside firms increased 7425%. Although Wal-Mart attempts to tout its bipartisanship, the Wal-Mart PAC has given the vast majority of its over $7.5 million in the past decade to the Republican Party and other conservative groups.

With more than $12 billion in profits last year, Wal-Mart is the biggest and arguably most powerful corporation in America. Sam Walton’s heirs, the majority owners of the company, are worth over $100 billion - making them the wealthiest and certainly one of the most influential families in America.

During the past year, Wal-Mart Watch conducted an analysis of public lobbying and political contribution records for the Walton family and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., in order to determine how this influence is used to affect politics and policy. The conclusion is clear: Wal-Mart and the Walton family spend millions of dollars every year to fund an extreme right wing corporate agenda that is often directly at odds with the interests of Wal-Mart’s workers and shoppers.

Read the rest of this story ...

60 comments

---

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

“Wal-Mart Moms” or “Wal-Mart Women” are the new “it” demographic this election cycle. That may be good news for Wal-Mart shoppers, but it is not good news for Wal-Mart.

Like soccer moms and security moms in prior elections, pollsters believe that Wal-Mart Moms will play a key role in choosing the next President. Wal-Mart executives have promoted this idea, even releasing their own poll about “Wal-Mart Moms.” Led by Leslie Dach, executive vice president for corporate affairs and government relations and a former Democratic strategist, the company wants to believe that the courting of Wal-Mart Moms by the presidential candidates places Wal-Mart on an untouchable political pedestal. This is foolish thinking on Wal-Mart’s part.

The values of an average Wal-Mart Mom are not Wal-Mart’s values. In fact, their values are in direct conflict. The more Wal-Mart encourages Wal-Mart Moms to vote, the more it endangers the “values” that the company depends on for its business model to succeed. An organized voting bloc of Wal-Mart Women may very well demand change, but it will not be the change that Wal-Mart wants.

Read the rest of this story ...

70 comments

---

Blogger Jessica Smith is one of 11 moms Wal-Mart selected for a new campaign targeting female shoppers. As a blogger for the company, Jessica weighs in on everything from diapers to politics.

If anyone deserves to be called a “Wal-Mart Mom,” it’s Jessica. She’s a mom who actually writes for Wal-Mart about many of the issues concerning middle-class mothers today. Why does this matter? From a post on JessicaKnows.com earlier today:

Ever since Sarah Palin was tapped to be John McCain’s running mate, the media classified Sarah Palin’s likely voter-base as being the “Walmart Moms”.  At first I chuckled at this broad generalization.  Then, as more and more assertions of this assumption showed up in my Google Alerts, I started to get a little peeved.  Here I am, my picture and profile on Walmart.com, making it pretty explicit that I’m a “Walmart Mom”.  But…the problem is?

I don’t relate even one iota to Sarah Palin.

“Wal-Mart Moms” are the sought-after demographic in this year’s presidential election, and pundits on all sides are desperately trying to to understand working-class women’s views on the issues. Wal-Mart itself even conducted a political survey of its shoppers last week, injecting itself further into the presidential election. But when one of its own rails against assumptions about “Wal-Mart Moms, “ perhaps that category needs to be redefined. Is there really a “Wal-Mart Moms” demographic? Or are these voters united by something broader?

And perhaps most importantly - if Wal-Mart is right and “Wal-Mart Moms” are primarily concerned with bread-and-butter economic issues this election season, will we see them vote to change Wal-Mart?

13 comments

---

We’ll take this news from the Financial Times as proof that Wal-Mart Moms agree with our post last week: they’re worried about the kinds of economic problems caused by Wal-Mart.

The FT article makes it seem a bit like working class white women have been responsible for the outcome of every election in the last ten years. We might not go that far, but it’s certainly true that millions of people shop at Wal-Mart’s stores each week, and they all have a vote come November. So what are Wal-Mart Moms thinking now?

Ms Palin’s fading star is only part of the reason why Democrats see a fresh opportunity to go after working class, white women. At least as important is the return of “kitchen table” economic issues to the heart of the campaign, eclipsing the debate over values and culture that Ms Palin helped ignite.

Wal-Mart moms have been hit harder than most by America’s economic storm as their household budgets come under pressure from the rising cost of food, energy and healthcare, while wages stagnate.

A big part of this is Wal-Mart’s role in our economy. Though the retailer claims its low prices help working class families, Wal-Mart reps are less eager to discuss the company’s depressing effect on wages, its tendency to ship well-paying jobs overseas and putting its private health care needs on the public tab. Wal-Mart moms are concerned with the forces that drove them to shop at Wal-Mart in the first place, and the forces which keep them there, too.

Wal-Mart moms beginning to buy Democrat’s message [Financial Times]