Walmart Watch

A new report from Food & Water Watch, Why Walmart Can’t Fix the Food System, analyzes  the rift between the image Walmart markets and the company’s actual impact on the food system.

For those of you in New York City, at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 23, Walmart Free NYC (a local coalition that is aligned with Making Change at Walmart) and Food & Water Watch will hold a press conference on the steps of New York City Hall. Anticipated featured speakers include Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter, Bertha Lewis from The Black Institute, Matt Ryan from ALIGN, Stuart Applebaum, President of RWDSU, Mark Dunlea of the NYS Hunger Action Network, Benjamin Solitaire of the Brooklyn Food Coalition and East New York activist Maria Maisonnett. They will address Walmart’s role as the largest food retailer in the United States and the company’s potential impact on New York City if it is allowed to open stores.

“This new report from Food & Water Watch peels back the shiny outer layer of Walmart’s food initiatives and exposes them as nothing more than an ambitious public relations campaign ,” said Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart. “The truth is Walmart’s very business model prevents it from achieving sustainability.”

Here is a guest blog post from Barry Lynn:

We all know Wal-Mart treats its workers poorly. We also must face up to the fact that Wal-Mart is just plain too big – economically and, especially, politically. We all know the founders of our nation rebelled against the British East India Company. What would they say if they learned that our generation had allowed a single company to monopolize commerce in America, and then to use its power to make us depend on the manufacturing capacity of a single foreign nation? And further, that we had allowed this same private company to grow big enough to influence almost every senator, congressman, governor, state legislator, and mayor in the nation?

A decade ago I began to detail the new structure of the U.S. and world economic systems, in tandem with the editorial team at Harper’s magazine. In my first long article, “Unmade in America” in June 2002, I showed how President Clinton’s trade policies threatened to subvert the independence of our nation. In my second, “Breaking the Chain,” [link to article] in July 2006, I showed how President Reagan’s overthrow of antitrust law had subverted the market system in America, and cleared the way for Wal-Mart. Now, in the final chapter in this trilogy, “Killing the Competition” in the February 2012 issue, I make clear that was is at stake today in America are our most vital liberties.

Those of you who have been fighting Walmart these many years should be proud. You are in the vanguard of the American people both in recognizing that we face a political crisis and in doing something about it. I encourage you to read “Killing the Competition.” [again, link to article] The article helps to clarify the true nature and scope of the danger we face. It also identifies some of the groups of citizens who, in the battles to come, will serve as allies. I also encourage you to support Harper’s in whatever way you can. These days, publishing the truth can be costly.

Click here to read more from Harper’s Magazine.

Over at the Huffington Post, our friend Al Norman has a disturbing article about Romulo de Oliveira Santos, a Brazilian immigrant who died while working a Walmart-related construction project in Massachusetts.  Here are the details:

On the night of September 8, 2008, Santos was working as part of an inexperienced, unsupervised subcontract crew on a remodeling project at Wal-Mart store #2103 on Providence Highway in Walpole. There was no properly licensed supervisor watching over crew members from Italo Masonries, for whom Santos worked.

Italo had never done demolition work before. Wal-Mart hired a general contractor to oversee the reconstruction of its Vision Center, and that contractor has subbed out the interior demolition to Italo. Santos was working without licensed supervision.

-snip-

The construction scene inside the Vision Center was a tangle of unlabeled wires and cords. Wal-Mart had insisted that the remodeling job would proceed while the store remained open. On Santos’ last night, the general contractor, electrical contractor, and Italo Masonry all left no supervisors at the site. But several light circuits were left on, because the renovations could be done quicker and easier by leaving the area “hot.”

Click here to read the rest of the story, including how the contractor that hired had a shoddy safety record and how Santos family is seeking justice.

Leaders of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) expressed concern about Walmart’s apparent decision to eliminate the position of greeters, employees who welcome customers to stores and watch exits for shoplifting. OUR Walmart, an employee association with thousands of members, called for Walmart CEO Mike Duke to clarify the company’s plan for greeters.

“Walmart’s recent decision to reassign greeters has left us uncertain about our job security, concerned about our ability to provide customers with quality service, and nervous about increases in store theft,” said OUR Walmart in a statement. “We believe Walmart can regain its market strength and revive same store sales by investing in us, the Associates, who are the backbone of this company, not by cutting back and compromising customer service and security.”

Walmart has signaled that the decision to eliminate greeters is part of an overall strategy to reduce costs. Already, thousands of Walmart Associates have seen significant cuts to their hours. Now, it appears that the company may reassign greeters to fill in the gaps where these employees used to work.

“This is very troubling for the thousands of people who work as greeters across the country,” said Jerome Allen, who works as a greeter in a Walmart in Fort Worth, Texas. “Our customers are used to seeing a friendly face when they enter the store. What would Sam Walton think about eliminating these positions?”

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, first started the tradition of hiring greeters in 1980. Since then, the position has become synonymous with the Walmart brand and featured in several ad campaigns.

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Making Change at Walmart is a campaign challenging Walmart to help rebuild our economy. Anchored by the UFCW, we are a coalition of Walmart associates, union members, small business owners, religious leaders, womens’ advocacy groups, multi-ethnic coalitions, elected officials, and ordinary citizens who believe that changing Walmart is vital for the future of our country.

Yesterday, warehouse workers being threatened with termination rallied outside of Schneider Logistics, a Walmart contractor, in Mira Loma, California. More than 100 workers will lose their jobs after participating in a Federal and State wage and hour case to recover stolen wages. They were joined at the rally by many supporters including members of Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), Occupy Movement, UFCW Local 770, and UFCW Local 1428.

Walmart and other large retailers rely on companies like Schneider Logistics to deliver goods from coastal warehouses to stores across the country. However, these contractors often treat workers poorly to keep costs down.  Earlier this week, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health handed down $256,000 in fines to National Distribution Centers, another warehouse that handles goods destined for Walmart, for serious safety violations. Additionally, the Department of Labor Standards Enforcement cited employers at Schneider in October over $1 million for improper recordkeeping and failure to provide workers with the required documentation of the amount of time worked.

That didn’t end the problem. Back in September, employees of Schneider filed a new lawsuit alleging that they were not paid the minimum wage for all hours worked. They also claim the company denied breaks and failed to pay overtime. Instead of urging Schneider to pay the workers what they were owed, Walmart simply terminated the contract with Scheider. As a result, more than 100 workers will lose their jobs on February 24^th.

In today’s economy, we need to fight for every job. That’s why you should sign the petition calling on Walmart to stop abusing warehouse workers. The company needs to adopt a responsible contractor policy that guarantees workers will be treated with respect, including being paid a living wage and adequate benefits.

Contact: Jennifer Stapleton, (202) 466-1576, jstapleton@ufcw.org

DUTCH PENSION FUND DUMPS WALMART

Cites repeated violation of international labor standards

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Leaders of the Making Change at Walmart campaign hailed the news that one of the largest pension funds in the world has decided to divest from Walmart stores. Algemeen Burgerlijk Pensioenfonds (ABP) announced today that the retirement fund would no longer invest in the retail giant due to the company’s repeated violation of international labor standards. The fund, which has over $300 billion in assets and is the third largest in the world, had over $147 million invested in Walmart as of September 30, 2011.

“This is an important day for Walmart associates who want to be treated with respect,” said Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart. “We’re pleased to see that ABP realizes that Walmart might be saying the right thing about respecting workers, but continues to engage in all kinds of bad behavior. This should send a clear message to Walmart and its shareholders: treating workers poorly is bad for business.”

Last October, Walmart associates brought that message to company shareholders during the annual analyst meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Workers testified about the unfair tactics deployed by management against employees. One of those workers, Ernestine Bassett, hailed today’s decision.

“I’ve been targeted for simply talking to my co-workers about working together to improve things at our store,” said Bassett, an associate at the Walmart store in Laurel, Maryland and a leader in the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), a nationwide movement of Walmart associates working together to improve their work environments and their lives. “I’m subject to all kinds of arbitrary discipline and unfairly written up by management. In fact, my managers often refuse to let me go to the bathroom, despite the fact that I have diabetes. I’m glad that ABP has heard the cry for respect coming from Walmart workers.”

Walmart is one of only five American companies to be blacklisted by the Dutch pension fund in 2012. (The other four companies are engaged in the production of clusterbombs.) ABP also cited PetroChina, an oil company with holdings in the Sudan and Burma.

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Making Change at Walmart seeks to promote the American values of equality, dignity and respect in the workplace. The campaign is making change by working directly with Walmart associates to claim the respect on the job they deserve, holding Walmart corporate managers accountable to hourly employees and the public for their practices, and joining with community leaders in major cities across America to make sure that any new jobs offered by Walmart meet strong standards for healthy, growing communities.

More: makingchangeatwalmart.org / twitter.com/ChangeWalmart

Want to know the real story behind Walmart’s efforts to portray itself as an environmentally-friendly company? Look no further than the online magazine Grist, which has been running a fantastic series questioning Walmart’s commitment to green principles. Written by researcher Stacey Mitchell, the articles explore everything from Walmart’s energy use to the company’s giving to anti-environmental  political candidates.

Here are links to all of the articles in the series:

• Walmart by the numbers: Green vs. Growth
• Is your stuff falling apart? Thank Walmart
• Think Walmart uses 100 percent clean energy? Try 2 percent
• Walmart’s promised green product rating falls off the radar
• Can you say ‘Sprawl?’ Walmart’s biggest climate impact goes ignored
• Walmart spends big to help anti-environmental candidates
• Eaters, beware: Walmart is taking over our food system

Back in 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled that corporations were entitled to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of elections. The court actually ruled that corporations had the same rights as people– how ridiculous is that?

It’s so absurd that the 2012 election cycle wouldn’t be complete without a mock candidacy by the nation’s largest corporation: Walmart! Of course, we already know that Walmart has spent millions of dollars supporting various candidates for elected office. That’s why it makes perfect sense for Walmart to take things to the next level and become a full-fledged candidate for President of the United States.

Check out the announcement below and visit Candidate Walmart’s website to find out how you can get involved in the campaign.

In the immortal words of Mitt Romney – “Corporations are people, my friend.”

Unlimited corporate spending on elections is the driving force in our democracy. Yet, there is a growing movement in this country to deny corporations the rights afforded to them by the Supreme Court of the United States. Los Angeles passed a resolution declaring that corporations are not people and money isn’t speech. South Carolina Democrats want to put a resolution on the ballot asking the public to vote on corporate personhood. There are even people who would blame the lingering recession and growing inequality in our society on major corporations.

That is why, today, I am officially announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. It’s time to take a stand and fight for those who have come under so much attack in recent months, the 1%. They need a strong voice in this race, and as America’s largest private employer and the world’s largest retailer, with over $480 billion in revenue in 2010, I am that voice. Some might scoff at such a notion, since no major corporation has ever even been elected to Congress. But this is America-where corporations are considered people and any retail conglomerate can grow up to be President.

The Internet is abuzz with the news that the six members of the Walton family—heirs to the Walmart fortune—have as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of Americans combined.  That’s the conclusion of a new study released last week by the University of California’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Over at Salon.com, reporter Justin Elliott breaks down how the numbers were crunched:

The calculation is based on data from 2007, the most recent round of the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which measures the net worth of Americans. (The extensive survey is performed once every three years, and the 2010 edition is expected to be released next year.)

Allegretto then compared those numbers to the net worth of the six members of the Walton clan as reported on the Forbes 400 list in 2007. They are all children or children-in-law of the founders of Walmart. Their total net worth that year: $69.7 billion.

That’s a heck of a lot of money. However, as Stacy Mitchell argues over at the Huffington Post, it’s not just the size of the Walton fortune that’s so offensive. It’s how America’s richest family made the money in the first place.

The Waltons are a fitting face for the 1% (actually the 0.000006%), because Walmart has arguably done more than any other company to undermine the American middle class and force an ever-growing share of the population into working poverty. As Walmart has grown, it has eviscerated two key pillars of the middle class — small business owners, who have lost their livelihoods by the tens of thousands, and union-wage manufacturing workers, more than 3 million of whom have seen their jobs shipped to low-wage countries, thanks largely to pressure from Walmart and other big-box retailers.

Despite these troubling trends, the Walton family seems oblivious to their negative impact on the American worker. In fact, Alice Walton—through the Walmart Foundation and Walton Family Foundation– recently poured more than $1 billion into Crystal Bridges, an art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg labeled the museum a “moral blight” because of the great chasm between the salaries of Walmart workers and the Walton family.

I suspect it is also the only building associated with Wal-Mart that is devoted solely to American-made goods. The goods in this case consist of the best American paintings, photographs and sculptures that Walton could buy. And given her net worth, the art in her museum is very, very good. The collection is comprehensive and well-curated: There are Marsden Hartleys and Thomas Hart Bentons, Georgia O’Keeffes and Hans Hofmanns.

But many of the paintings in Crystal Bridges hang in eloquent rebuke to the values of the company that has made the Waltons so very wealthy…[many of the paintings]…celebrate an American landscape that has been systematically disfigured by thousands of hangar-sized warehouses bearing the Wal-Mart name.

Strong words, but fitting for a family that has amassed tremendous wealth on the backs of Walmart employees.

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© 2011, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.