Open your mailbox and you're likely to find an advertisement from Wal-Mart---twenty pages of smiling women and gift ideas for Mother's Day. Beneath the surface of those glossy ads is the unfortunate truth: Wal-Mart is quite possibly the most anti-family, anti-mother corporation in America.

Wal-Mart faces the largest gender-discrimination lawsuit of all time, with 1.6 million women suing over unequal pay and unequal opportunities. Its managers have told women they "don't belong in management" and that they "can't manage men." More recently, Wal-Mart has repeatedly denied military moms leave to see their children before they deploy to war zones.

Instead of printing more 20 page "Mom's day" ads, Wal-Mart should be printing 20 page apologies to every woman hurt by its unfair policies.

Today, we need to ensure that Wal-Mart respects the hardworking mothers employed in their stores. This Mother's day, join our mission to change Wal-Mart's anti-family policies for the betterment of women and mothers across America. Add your name to our petition to CEO Lee Scott and 3 demands for change.

Click this link to sign our petition

Change won't come on its own. We've seen time and again that Wal-Mart has little respect for mothers, or the sacrifices they make for their families. Just ask Olga Sanchez or Susan Lyons, two long-time Wal-Mart workers.

When Olga's son, Mark, was deployed to Iraq, she requested leave to see him off. Her request was denied. Wal-Mart told Olga that, as a department manager, her commitment was to the company. At Wal-Mart, unfair scheduling policies often take precedence over families, and over the morale of America's armed service members.

Olga's story is just the beginning. Last September, Susan Lyons learned her daughter would be on leave from Iraq during the following December. Susan requested a mere two days of vacation time to see her. Wal-Mart denied the request because of the holiday shopping season. When she expressed her disappointment, Wal-Mart told Susan that if her daughter's deployment upset her so much, her daughter "should not have joined the Air Force."

These stories are a slap in the face to mothers, and they insult the dignity of the armed service members we also celebrate in May.

Don't let Wal-Mart continue to treat mothers this way. Sign our petition today. Keep the pressure on Wal-Mart to change and you can make these outrageous policies history.

Sign on to our 3 demands for change, add your name to our petition today

Thanks for taking action, and have a happy Mother's Day.

Meghan Scott
WakeUpWalMart.com

Today in a Reuters Story, Wal-Mart's CEO for U.S. stores is reported as having said:

"The economy continues to get tougher and the 'paycheck cycle' is more pronounced for customers than in past months," Eduardo Castro-Wright, head of Wal-Mart's U.S. store division, said in a statement.

"As money gets tighter for them toward the end of the month, sales drop more than we have seen in the past."

Poor, poor Wal-Mart. They're the worlds largest corporation, the number one fortune 500 company, rake in billions of dollars a year, but their sales may go down a bit because average American families are having trouble making ends meet. If it is not bad enough that Wal-Mart is complaining about not making that extra few million while their workers and working families across the country are facing real hardship, consider that Wal-Mart helped create this mess. By not paying their employees a living wage, driving down area wages, forcing companies to move jobs to China and elsewhere, and not providing adequate benefits Wal-Mart had a hand in creating the "paycheck cycle" they now bemoan.

Here's the Reuter's article via the Washington Post:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) on Thursday reported a better-than-expected 3.2 percent rise in April sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, boosted by demand for basic items like groceries and medicine.

But the world's largest retailer gave a tepid outlook for May as the economic situation gets more difficult and consumers try to stretch their dollars by purchasing cheaper cuts of meat or trading down to pasta.

"The economy continues to get tougher and the 'paycheck cycle' is more pronounced for customers than in past months," Eduardo Castro-Wright, head of Wal-Mart's U.S. store division, said in a statement.

"As money gets tighter for them toward the end of the month, sales drop more than we have seen in the past."

Continue reading "Poor Wal-Mart"

You've all read here about how Wal-Mart wants your rebate money, and we've given you some suggestions of other ways to spend it. We think it's an important issue, so we put together an ad. It's a Wal-Mart thank you to President Bush for sending them all that tax payer money. It asks you, the American people, not to let Wal-Mart send your rebate money to China. Check it out, and enjoy:

Wal-Mart is trying to brand itself a leader in health care. They've rolled out cheap prescriptions, changed their employee coverage (as paltry and sad a change as it was), and opened in store clinics. CEO Lee Scott even chastised business leaders for not weighing in on health care policy (we won't harp on the obvious irony). But this latest news from the Wall Street Journal is likely to throw a wrench in Wal-Mart's PR plan. It seems that Walk In Clinics are hard to manage, and they're hard to make money with. What with Wal-Mart's obsession with making gobs and gobs of money, it'll be interesting to see how long Wal-Mart's clinics will last. Wal-Mart had long touted these clinics as a cost effective solution to health care. It would eliminate doctors visits and safe people money, they said. It was, in essence, Wal-Mart's scheme to fix our health care crisis. Instead, we think Wal-Mart should offer affordable, quality health care to its workers, and legitimate policies on sick days. They can't make a ton of money off of it, but I'm pretty sure it'll work better than walk in clinics at keeping people healthy.

Here's the story from the Wall Street Journal:

Health Clinics Inside Stores Likely to Slow Their Growth

The boom in walk-in health clinics located inside pharmacies, supermarkets and big-box retailers is showing signs of slowing.

Hailed as an inexpensive option for treating minor health ailments like sore throats and rashes, the retail clinics have grown in
number to 963 as of May 1 from just 125 three years ago. The clinics typically feature nurse practitioners who can prescribe basic drugs, and the price for a visit ranges from $50 to $75.

But in recent months, retail health-clinic operators based in New York, Nevada, Indiana and Alabama have closed their doors, shuttering 69 clinics in 15 states, including ones operating inside outlets of Shopko Stores, Meijer Inc., Bi-Lo LLC, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Medicine Shoppe unit of Cardinal Health Inc.

Now, the biggest retail-clinic operator, CVS Caremark Corp., says it is scaling back expansion plans for its Minute Clinic brand.

"We have seen fallout in this industry, on a smaller scale, that is not unlike the dot-com bubble," says Tom Charland, the owner of industry consultant Merchant Medicine LLC and a former vice president for strategy at Minute Clinic. "The big mistake was for people to think they could reach break-even in six months," he says. "People are learning this is an 18-to-24-month process to get to break-even."

Mr. Charland says the venture capitalists and private-equity firms that backed many of the retail clinic operators failed to appreciate how complicated and expensive the clinics are to operate. Research shows that patients are enthusiastic about the clinics' convenience and quality of care, but acceptance has been slow.

Continue reading "Walk In Health Clinics"

Wal-Mart's relationship with music vending has been somewhat tenuous of late. They lost the number one spot for Music sales to i-tunes, they bludgeoned major record labels with a new pricing scheme, and they dumped a ton of their online music library.

Now, they seem to be putting more emphasis on online sales, having just sealed a deal with Warner Music Group to vastly expand their music offerings. One wonders how much of this move is due to a bruised ego over losing to an online service.

hyperbot has the story:

WalMart Adds WMG MP3's. Napster Next?

The Warner Music Group family of labels has widened its full catalog mp3 offering to include WalMart.com. Previously Amazon was the only North American based download provider with the catalog.

Hypebot reported yesterday that WMG was about to broaden its DRM-free program to include other sites. Last month WalMart drop all tracks from WMG, Universal and Sony BMG and took its digital store DRM-free. EMI and a limited number of indies provided content until this morning when WMG effectively doubled WalMart.com's catalog.

Continue reading "Wal-Mart Expanding Online Music Sales"

Usually a whistle-blower is taking action against a large corporation, but in this case, the whistle-blower is Wal-Mart itself. Apparently Wal-Mart tipped off the UK's Office of Fair Trading that large manufacturers and large grocery stores might be involved in some sort of price fixing scam. Now these major companies, many of whom supply Wal-Mart, or are Wal-Mart's competition, are under investigation. By tipping the OFT off, Wal-Mart avoids a fine if any illicit activity is discovered. What a deal! Wal-Mart avoids a massive fine, and their competition is under investigation. The only negative side effect is that they've pissed off some of their suppliers (but what can they do, it's not as if they can stop selling to Wal-Mart). Imagine if whistle blowers were treated like this. Instead of getting fired, harassed, and losing their livelihoods, they would get a nice raise, a promotion, and maybe have to suffer a few glares from coworkers. Again, what a deal!

Here's the article from the Telegraph:

Wal-Mart was whistleblower in OFT's supermarket investigation

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, was the whistleblower behind the Office of Fair Trading's current probe into alleged price fixing of food and toiletries, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The investigation has embroiled some of the world's largest consumer goods manufacturers such as Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Reckitt Benckiser, as well as UK retail giants, including Tesco and J Sainsbury.

In blowing the whistle, Wal-Mart, which owns the Asda chain, has guaranteed itself immunity from a fine should the OFT discover any cartel activity. Any company found guilty could be fined up to 10 per cent of its annual worldwide sales, which in Wal-Mart's case would be $37bn (£18.7bn).

The move is likely to make the US retailer deeply unpopular with the companies involved, many of whom are its largest suppliers.

Last weekend this newspaper revealed that around 100 OFT officials and lawyers raided the offices of the country's biggest supermarkets ten days ago over allegations of price-fixing involving dozens of popular household brands, such as PG Tips, Aquafresh toothpaste and Andrex toilet roll. Consumer goods companies in the UK and the US were also visited or asked to provide pricing information.

It is understood that following an earlier OFT investigation into price-fixing of dairy products, which resulted in some supermarkets and dairies paying fines of £116m, senior Wal-Mart and Asda executives made the decision to go to the OFT with new information.

All the companies involved in the probe have strenuously denied that they are involved in any cartel activity, and Asda's decision to tip off the OFT does not mean that price-fixing has necessarily occurred. The OFT has refused to comment on the investigation.

Legal experts believe it will be at least two years until the OFT publishes any findings.

Continue reading "Wal-Mart Whistleblowing"

As always, we take heart when a community stands up for itself. We'd like to offer a big congratulations to Duluth. Here's another great article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

With Wal-Mart fight over, participants reflect on battle

It was a bruising fight.

But now that Wal-Mart has scratched plans to build a 176,000-square-foot supercenter at the corner of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Sugarloaf Parkway in Duluth after almost a year of trying, the various participants are reflecting on what happened.

For the citizen group Smart Growth Gwinnett, born out of residents' opposition to a big-box development so close to their neighborhoods, it feels like a victory for the little guy —- proof that you can take on a Goliath and even occasionally win.

"I think that this shows that citizens getting involved in their government can have a positive impact," said Ed Wilson, president of Smart Growth, which represents residents from 11 neighborhoods. "I heard from numerous people that it was quite enlightening to get involved and observe how the city works."

It was also instructive, and gratifying, he said, to be involved in the creation of the city's comprehensive ordinance that governs all aspects of buildings over 75,000 square feet.

Hammered out by the city, local developers and citizens and adopted in December, the new guidelines reflect the community's consensus of what the Duluth of the future ought to look like.

Continue reading "More from Duluth, GA "

Cité Libre has a great article that, once again, links Wal-Mart to sweatshops. One interesting, but not surprising, fact in the article is that none of the workers in the factory profiled had heard of Wal-Mart's Code of Conduct. While most major companies have such a document, Wal-Mart's is just for show. It exists so Wal-Mart can point to it when someone writes about their sweatshop addiction.

Wal-Mart's Shirts of Misery from Bangladesh

When you purchase a shirt in Walmart, do you ever imagine young women in Bangladesh forced to work from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week, paid just 9 cents to 20 cents an hour, who are denied health care and maternity leave; screamed at to work faster; with monitored bathroom visits; and who will be fired for daring to complain or ask for their rights?

At the Beximco factory in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone in Bangladesh, there are 1,000 workers, at least 80 percent of them young women, sewing shirts and pants for Walmart and other retailers. Beximco is a sweatshop, where human rights are systematically violated.

Shame on Walmart

Walmart and its contractor Beximco do not pay the overtime premium. In fact, as we have seen, they do not even pay the legal hourly wage of 33 cents. They pay only 20 cents an hour and pay overtime at this same illegal 20-cent rate.

These workers are locked in poverty, being cheated out of over $20 a week in legal wages by the largest retailer in the world. The workers are being illegally paid just $16 for a full 80-hour workweek. For the forced 80-hour week, they should be earning at least $36.96. Surely Walmart, with $7.6 billion in annual operating profits, could afford this wage!

Some of the poorest people in the world are being illegally robbed of their wages, driving them deeper into misery. Even the 33-cent an hour wage does not come close to meeting basic subsistence needs.

Continue reading "More Wal-Mart Sweatshop Connections"

Forget flowers or a phone call, don't bother with breakfast in bed, or a nice card; Wal-Mart thinks your mom wants Wii Fit for mother's day. That's right, Wal-Mart is betting that mothers out there want a video game. Is it me, or does this sound like one of those sitcom moments when the husband buys a gift for his wife that he really wants, and doesn't get why she's so upset (what? I thought you really might like a table saw with laser precision). Walmart.com is plastered with ads for the Wii: console, games, extras, and of course, Wii Fit.

Here's an article from Reuters explaining the marketing strategy:

Walmart.com using Wii Fit to boost Mom's Day sales

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forget the flowers and candy -- Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.OS: Quote, Profile, Research) highly anticipated "Wii Fit" video game will debut in the U.S. later this month, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc's (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) online division is trying to persuade shoppers to order the game as "a perfect gift" for Mother's Day.

This weekend, the Walmart.com homepage will be dominated by the Wii Fit -- a physical exercise program that uses a pressure-sensing board as a controller -- including a link to order the product now, ahead of its May 19 U.S. launch.

Through May 11, shoppers who "pre-order" the $89.74 game, or pay in advance to guarantee delivery when the game launches, will also get a $10 online gift card to use for a future order at Walmart.com.

"Initial response is extremely strong, and we're feeling really good about Nintendo Wii Fit dominating the home page," said Kelly Thompson, Walmart.com's chief merchant, of early shopper demand for the game. "... We really like the angle of marketing it to Mom."

The move comes as retailers look for creative ways to entice shoppers to keep spending amid the economic downturn.

Many U.S. consumers are shunning discretionary purchases as more of their budgets go toward rising food and fuel costs, and they have run out of access to easy credit to fund their shopping sprees.

Retailers now see holidays, like Mother's Day on May 11, as potential bright spots when cash-strapped shoppers may be persuaded to spend some of their limited cash.

Continue reading "Wal-Mart: Your Mom is Fat"

From Eileen Drennen at the Atlanta Journal- Constitution.

Wal-Mart announced late Thursday night that it would not build a 176,000-square-foot Supercenter at the corner of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Sugarloaf Parkway in Duluth.

While every step of the stores rollout was greeted by crowds of protesters wearing red T-shirts and carrying "Stop Wal-Mart" signs, there was no indication that pressure from neighborhood group Smart Growth Gwinnett had an effect on the decision.

Continue reading "Duluth, Georgia says "No" to Wal-Mart Supercenter"