National and Local Ads Challenge Wal-Mart’s Outsourcing of Jobs
WAL-MART WATCH CAMPAIGN CONTINUES – NATIONAL & LOCAL ADS CHALLENGE WAL-MART FOR ITS ROLE IN OUTSOURCING OF AMERICAN JOBS
For Immediate Release
Monday, April 25, 2005
Contact: Tracy Sefl, 202-557-7451
Washington, DC, April 25, 2005 – Wal-Mart Watch, a newly formed nonprofit organization aimed at reforming the business practices of retail giant Wal-Mart, continues its national advertising campaign this week with a full-page ad in today’s USA Today and subsequent local advertising throughout the week. (A copy of the ad and its factual backup is attached.)
The new ad asks, “What happened to the Wal-Mart ‘Buy American’ Program?” The ‘Buy American’ program, once the centerpiece of Wal-Mart’s business model and of much of their marketing and public relations, has been abandoned by the company in recent years. Now as much as 70% of Wal-Mart merchandise is imported from China alone. The ad illustrates one aisle in an actual Wal-Mart store, where the majority of the merchandise is made in China.
The terrific pricing pressures imposed by Wal-Mart on its suppliers has forced those companies to relocate factories and jobs overseas, a massive outsourcing of American jobs that has left communities and families devastated.
Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director Andrew Grossman said, “Wal-Mart may say ‘low prices’ but we’re here to ask, ‘at what cost?’ At the cost of America’s manufacturing base? At the cost of well-paying American jobs and the families, communities, and futures they support? Wal-Mart does more than simply exploit and profit from the outsourcing of American industry to China. With its unprecedented leverage in the retail sector and its relentless pressure on suppliers to slash their prices, Wal-Mart has actively forced the shipping of American jobs to China and elsewhere.”
This latest advertisement by Wal-Mart Watch comes as the company comes under increasing scrutiny. Stock analysts began sounding greater alarm as news broke Friday about a federal grand jury probe into corporate malfeasance, while the stock price further dipped. Jon Jacobs at Cantor Fitzgerald cautioned, Wal-Mart “may be in for rougher going.”
Wal-Mart Watch, a campaign of Five Stones, a 501(c)(4), was founded in December 2004, along with The Center for Community and Corporate Ethics, a 501(c)(3). Their mission is to reform Wal-Mart’s business practices and help improve Wal-Mart as a neighbor, employer, and corporate citizen. Reforms by Wal-Mart, the world’s largest and perhaps most imitated business, will spawn improvements in corporate practices around the world. Operationally, the organizations have three broad goals: to synthesize and distribute Wal-Mart-related data and resources; to foster enhanced communication and cooperation among the hundreds of organizations currently engaged against Wal-Mart and its practices; and to help provide intellectual and political leadership to this nationwide community of citizens and activists.
