WalmartWatch.com Launches Online and in New York Times

WALMARTWATCH.COM LAUNCHES ONLINE AND IN NEW YORK TIMES

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Wal-Mart Watch, a campaign of Five Stones, a newly formed non-profit organization aimed at reforming the business practices of retail giant Wal-Mart, today debuted its initial public advertising with a full-page ad in today’s New York Times.  (A copy of the ad is available online.)

The ad highlights the “Wal-Mart Tax” – the more than one-and-a-half billion dollars in federal taxpayer dollars that flow to the company each year on top of its annual profits of over ten billion dollars.  And millions more in corporate welfare from state and local governments further add to the company’s bottom line.

Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director Andy Grossman said, “Wal-Mart may say ‘low prices’ but we’re here to ask ‘at what cost?’ As the biggest corporation in the world, Wal-Mart is also one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare in the world.  They greedily use American taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to enrich themselves at the expense of smaller businesses that don’t get corporate welfare.  Shameful.”

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.

Said Grossman, “Today marks the beginning of a new public campaign to force Wal-Mart to change their business practices that harm America.  Our mission is to prod and pressure Wal-Mart into behaving more responsibly toward its neighbors, its employees, our environment, and the American business community.”