Walmart has some strange habits. First, many stores like to forces customers to show receipts before they leave, even though customers don't have to. This has lead to several unpleasant, and even violent, encounters. Second, Walmart aggressively goes after some shoplifters (sometimes so aggressively that they cause serious injury and death) while ignoring others. They even have a policy (that may have changed, we haven't been able to figure out their current policy) not to prosecute anyone under the age of 18 for shoplifting, or anyone stealing anything under $25.

While these policies seem a bit strange and contradictory, they don't explain what happened recently in Michigan. It seems that a gay couple and their two adopted children were shopping at their local Walmart and when they went to leave, a Walmart employee asked if they had bought Bic lighters. They said they had and handed them to the employee who then demanded to see the receipt, which was also handed over. At that point, the couple was accused of shoplifting (which they had not) and the employee demanded that they go back to their detention room. When the couple refused to go for fear of what might happen behind closed doors, the store called the cops who, without asking questions, put both men in separate squad cars and handed the two children over to Walmart who put them in their detention room.

After Walmart, and the cops, had review the security tapes, they determined that the men had not stolen anything. Instead of apologizing for putting the family through a traumatic experience, Walmart informed the family that they were banned from any Walmart store for life for being "uncooperative".

The whole story is really worth a read because it is just so unbelievable. It is entirely unclear why this happened. Many are suggesting that the family was singled out because they were gay. We don't know if that is the case, but it certainly seems that Walmart treated these particular customers far harsher than usual.

You can read the full story here. It is well worth a read.

Walmart has no store locations in the afterlife, but that won't keep the company from making a few final dollars off their customers even after their lives are spent.

Perhaps crossing the boundaries of good taste, Walmart has gone public with a new, rather morbid product line: funeral supplies. The company now offers an array of urns and caskets at various price points. Finally, Walmart customers can take "comfort" in the fact that Bentonville caters to them from the cradle to the grave.

Retailers offering funeral supplies is nothing new. Costco has long had an eerie "Funeral" tab displayed prominently on its website, but no one kicked up any dust about it. Conversely, Walmart's line of caskets has fueled hundreds of pithy news articles. Interesting.

Of course there is nothing wrong with selling funeral supplies. Even so, I still agree with the media consensus here: caskets are a bad move for Walmart. Why? Because Walmart's reputation is simply too tarnished for Americans to imagine (willingly) resorting to Walmart for such solemn purchases. We grow up reading about the elaborate tombs sculpted by Michelangelo. We can't help but notice the silent, stately rows of headstones when passing a cemetary. There is a certain beauty in that. What possible appeal lies in a "Walmart brand" resting place?

Then again, perhaps this is more a timing issue.

Who thought rolling out a line of caskets right before Halloween was a good idea?

When we saw this story today, we were pretty interested. It seems a Walmart loss prevention officer (read security guard) was fired for chasing a man who he had witnessed steal some merchandise. It is not clear if he was fired for running after the man or because the man had a knife. We were interested because in the past, there have been several incidents where shop lifters have been injured and have even died because of rather brutal tactics by Walmart's loss prevention. But, as far as we know, no one was fired over these incidents.

Here's the story from the local paper in Florida:

Josh Rutner said he was just doing his job as a Wal-Mart "asset protection officer" earlier this month when he chased a knife-wielding theft suspect across the store parking lot.

The man, later identified as Marc Ash, was arrested by Ocala police and the merchandise was recovered.

The next day, Wal-Mart fired Rutner.

Rutner said it boiled down to doing what was right or following policy. For him, it was an easy choice.

"I couldn't let him get away," Rutner said. "That's wrong."

But Michelle Bradford, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman, said the store's no-chase policy is clear.

"We take the safety and security of our customers and associates very seriously," she said. "There are specific instructions as to what an associate can and can't do during a shoplifting episode."

According to Ocala police reports and Rutner's account, the trouble happened at the Wal-Mart on Southwest 19th Avenue Road near the Paddock Mall. Ash picked up a pack of golf balls, valued at $42.98, and put them in his pants.

Ash then took the golf balls to another section, left them, and ate deli chicken without paying, Rutner said.

Rutner said he watched Ash put the golf balls back in his pants and head out the front of the store.

After radioing for assistance, Rutner and two other employees tackled the man outside the food center doors.

Rutner worked for Wal-Mart for nearly four months, he said. He'd done plenty of stops before.

He wasn't expecting Ash to pull a knife, slash at his face and take off running, Rutner said.

"I felt now that he was a danger to the public and the city," he said. "If he'd pull a knife on two security guards, he'd pull a knife on anyone."

Rutner attempted to hit the man with a shopping cart, he said.

Customer Franchesca J. Marie told authorities she followed Ash into the parking lot from inside her car. She told him to stop and to put down the knife, which officials say she then picked up and threw in the middle of the road.

Police arrested Ash, who was charged with robbery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault.

Rutner returned to work the next day.

"I was doing my normal routine," he said. "Nobody said anything."

Around lunch time, he was called into a manager's office. A corporate representative from Arkansas was waiting.

"They said this is a non-rehirable offense," he said. "At the age of 65, I can't even come back and become a greeter."

Bradford, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, declined to comment on Rutner's potential for rehiring.

Rutner said he knew Wal-Mart policy prohibits employees from going after suspects armed with a weapon, but there was no time to think about the consequences.

Rutner turned in his keys, security codes and badge.

"I didn't get hurt. They got their merchandise," he said. "And yet I got fired."

Rutner said he was required to give a deposition Tuesday in Ash's court case.

Ash remains in the Marion County Jail in lieu of $57,000 bail.

We're not sure about you, but it seems a pretty odd situation when an employee can literally kill someone on the job and not get fired, but an employee who does his job and gets the merchandise back gets the boot. Perhaps its time Walmart take a look at their loss prevention strategy so that folks aren't getting brutalized and employees aren't getting fired.

Simple: wipe the animal off the endangered species list. At least, that's what Walmart developers want to do in New Jersey.

Jay and Linda Grunin have been fighting to build a Walmart in Manchester, NJ for years. Their site, however, has been identified as a home to the Northern Pine Snake: an threatened species in New Jersey. In turn, the state Department of Environmental Protection put the kibosh on their plans for the new Walmart, lest it destroy some of the isolated species' habitat.

Hoping to "compromise", the builders proposed concessions that would only partially ruin the animal's local habitat. They were still denied. Now the developers have gone for the nuclear option.

In part for the benefit of the Walmart project, the New Jersey Builders Association wants to strike the threatened Pine Snake from the state's list of endangered species completely.

Such a move could be a devastating blow to the animal. Development in other areas of the country have pushed Pine Snake populations out. One expert notes that "Before too long, the Pinelands [of New Jersey] is likely to be... its stronghold."

Conservationists are not happy:

Environmental activists already think the Pinelands Commission compromises on pine snakes, and they are alarmed by the builders' push, said Carleton Montgomery of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance.

"The approach the Pinelands has taken is to protect the habitat of protected species wherever you find it," Montgomery said. "If you say, "There's enough of their habitat over there, so let's trash it here,' you're on the road to failure."

Walmart doesn't appear to be bowing out of this one gracefully. So much for their new PR angle: apparently "Sustainability 360" doesn't have qualms about contributing to the eradication of an endangered species.

According to NJ.com, State biologists say they can make a strong case to keep the pine snake a protected creature. We have our fingers crossed for them.

Walmart has a rather seedy past when it comes to gender discrimination. The company has been sued by women who were systematically denied equal wages and promotional opportunities because of their gender. Their law suit is the largest class action case in the country and includes more than 1.6 million women. Imagine having to sue a company just to be treated fairly.

This is, of course, not the only example of gender discrimination at Walmart. Today, according to the Associated Press, "The highest court in Massachusetts has upheld a $2 million jury award to a former pharmacist at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed she was fired by the retail chain after asking to be paid the same as her male colleagues." The plaintiff in the case, Cynthia Haddad, had worked at the Walmart store for ten years, and was not only discriminated against, but also fired for simply asking to be treated the same as everyone else. Imagine how hurtful it would be to find out that your employer was not paying you the same as your coworkers simply because of your gender. Now imagine that when you went to talk to your manager to fix the situation, they fired you. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Google news is usually peppered with stories detailing crimes committed at Walmart stores. We don't blog them often: in part because they are (sadly) very common, in part because we can't keep up with the sheer volume of them. This one is too amazing to pass up.

In Westminster, CO, police say a man attempted to abduct a little girl from a Walmart toy section. He nearly succeeded, making it 15 feet from the store's exit before he was stopped, little girl in tow.

Did Walmart security apprehend the suspect? Not this time. It took wheelchair-bound Cameron Aulner to tackle the creep and hold him until authorities arrived.

Stories like this one have given Walmart the reputation of being a seedy place to visit. Additionally, the Walmart crime data we've gathered near Westminster makes me, for one, question the efficacy of Walmart's security efforts in the area.

Thankfully, things worked out this time. We can breathe a sigh collective sigh of relief. But, in the future, maybe Walmart should spend less time enforcing its iron-fisted shoplifting policies and work on making its stores safe places to stop.

Every year, Forbes prints a list of the 400 hundred riches Americans, and how much they are worth. This year, like last year, the Waltons, owners of the Wal-Mart company rank numbers four through seven. To understand just how much they, and the company, is worth, first you have to consider that together, the Walton family is worth 79,400,000,000. That's 79.4 billion folks.

Next time you hear anyone claim that Walmart can't afford to give their employees quality, affordable health care, or a decent wage, or anything else, you just remember how much the Waltons are making off the backs of their employees.

Here are the top 24 richest Americans this year.

"Smart Choices" is a food labeling program backed by industry heavyweights like Kellogg, Con-Agra, and (of course) Walmart. The idea behind it is obvious: if you flag "healthy" foods with a uniform labeling system, consumers can easily identify them and make better snap decisions.

Unfortunately, the program's health criteria are riddled with holes. Many products are rewarded merely for limiting sugar, fat, and salt, allowing questionable items like fudgcicles, microwave popcorn, and Lunchables to qualify for the "healthy" label.

When it comes to evaluating breakfast cereals, Smart Choices really puts on the kid gloves. Basically, a cereal containing a single encouraged nutrient and up to 12 grams of added sugar per serving earns the coveted green ribbon of health. This has allowed ridiculously unhealthy products like Froot Loops and marshmallow-laden Lucky Charms to sport the Smart Choices Label.

There is no news as to how extensively Walmart plans to implement the program, but the company remains on the Smart Choices Roundtable. We can only encourage Walmart to do the right thing by using its clout to make Smart Choices a little less... dumb.

For more, check out the New York Times article: For Your Health, Froot Loops

Walmart has had their trouble with wrongful termination in the past. They've fired folks for being disabled, or being in the military, or any number of other reasons, but this is the first I've heard of someone being fired simply for being of a particular faith.

It seems Mohammed Zakaria Memon was working as a consultant at Walmart Headquarters. As a practicing Muslim, he would take a few quick breaks throughout the day to pray. As part of his prayer, he would perform a short ritual called the "wazu", which entails washing before prayer. Apparently, though, the people at Walmart headquarters didn't like Mr. Memon sprinkling water on himself and complained. That's when the company he worked for pulled him from the project and then fired him for poor performance, despite only good reviews in previous projects.

The whole situation is pretty sad. There is no reason that someone should lose their job because of their identity, and it seems pretty clear this was about identity. It wasn't about the time lost during work, because it was only a few five minute breaks a day, and when the complaints started, it was suggested that he go to his hotel (thirty minutes away) to pray. It shows a basic lack of respect at Walmart's corporate headquarters.

You can read the article here.

This article was originally published by the Huffington Post.

You steal, you die.

That's the international policy apparently at Wal-Mart stores, where reports indicate another alleged shoplifter has died at the hands of a gang of overzealous Wal-Mart workers -- this time in China.

According to the Associated Press report this week, Yu Xiachun, a 37-year-old woman, died 500 yards from the Wal-Mart store in Jiangxi province. Based on the local police report, Yu had exited the store and was on her way home on August 30th when she was surrounded by five Wal-Mart workers, who accused her of shoplifting.

The Wal-Mart workers asked Yu to produce a receipt, which she did. But then Yu tried to take the receipt back -- questioning who the four men and one woman were, because no one was wearing a Wal-Mart uniform. The police say that the Wal-Mart workers fought with Yu, and she was knocked to the ground. She was taken to the hospital, where she died three days later. The police have arrested two of the young Wal-Mart workers who fought with Yu. It is not clear yet what they are being charged with, if anything.

Wal-Mart's domestic 'loss prevention' strategy seems to be one of 'shoot first, ask questions later.' This horrible outcome in China is reminiscent of the equally appalling story from August of 2005, when 30-year-old Stacy Driver, a master carpenter and the father of a two-year-old son, died from a heart attack while lying face down in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Houston, Texas. Driver was pinned down on the burning hot pavement by several Wal-Mart workers who accused him of shoplifting a package of diapers, a pair of sunglasses, a BB gun, and a package of BBs. "When we got there," a paramedic said of the scene, "the man was facedown (in cardiac arrest) with handcuffs behind his back. About 30 people were saying, 'Let him up, it's too hot,' Another employee brought a rug for Driver to lie on, but one of those holding Driver said he was fine where he was. One eyewitness reported, "After about five minutes, (Driver) said, 'I'm dying, I can't breathe, call an ambulance.'" After Driver was handcuffed, the eyewitness said one employee had his knee on the man's neck and others were putting pressure on his back. "Finally the guy stopped moving" and the employees got off him. They wouldn't call an ambulance. "I looked at him and said, 'Hey, he's not breathing,' but one guy told me (Driver) was just on drugs. I told them his fingernails were all gray, and finally they called an ambulance."

Three years later, in December of 2008, another Wal-Mart patron died in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Patrick Donovan, 53, died over $393 in Wal-Mart merchandise, lying face down in the giant retailer's parking lot. Donovan's death came at the hands of three Wal-Mart workers, who wrestled the alleged shoplifter to the ground, where the man died. The Wal-Mart workers and one bystander held Donovan down, while one leaned on his back and another held down his arms and head. The police report says Wal-Mart workers told Donovan to stop fighting, and asked witnesses to call 911. By the time Donovan had stopped struggling, he had died.

Wal-Mart has been very quiet in response to this death in China. All the company has told the media is that "an incident occurred" between two of its "security associates" and a "female visitor." In past incidents, Wal-Mart's corporate office has refused to discuss its procedures for detaining and using force against shoplifting suspects. But here is their policy: Wal-Mart has an entire Loss Prevention Associate Guide. In that guide, it says that employees should "address the shoplifter politely and directly." It says that "reasonable force can be employed if the shoplifter refuses to return (to the store)." The policy goes on to clearly state, "If the situation becomes violent, or is deemed potentially dangerous, you should allow the shoplifter to leave." Wal-Mart Guides don't seem to carry much weight at the local store level.

After the Houston incident in 2005, a spokesman from the National Retail Federation said, "Most retailers have a policy of not going into a chase or getting into a combative fight with someone. Most retailers' policies would say that if a person becomes combative, let them go. You can tell police, and let the police handle the investigation and follow up."

It is only a matter of time before another 'visitor' to Wal-Mart is killed for allegedly shoplifting. In a matter of minutes, Wal-Mart will try, convict, and sentence the visitor to death in their parking lot. This corporation, which boasts that it has squeezed all the inefficiencies out of the supply chain, also has managed to squeeze out its customers' rights to protection under the law, and due process. Wal-Mart's loss prevention team needs to set a higher priority on preventing the loss of life at their stores.

You steal from Wal-Mart, you die.

As part of its "Project impact" initiative, Walmart is removing "underperforming" products from its shelves to create cleaner, less cluttered aisles that the retailer hopes will appeal to a new generation of bargain hunters.

Conveniently, Project Impact coincides with another strategic push by Walmart: a new move for larger slices of its suppliers' marketing budgets. Basically, Walmart is telling its suppliers: purchase more co-branded consumer ads, more advertising on Walmart.com, and more in-store adverts or join the cut list.

According to AdAge.com, for a large supplier like Proctor and Gamble, avoiding the "cut list" could divert billions of advertising dollars right into Walmart's ever-expanding marketing budget.

Some might call it monopsonistic privilege, others industrial blackmail, but if you think Walmart lacks the gall to play hard-ball with its suppliers, think again. From AdAge.com:

One case increasingly talked about in industry circles is Walmart's recent reversal of its decision to delist Arm & Hammer liquid laundry detergent from close to 90% of its U.S. stores.

Walmart eliminated most of the brand's distribution this spring despite Church & Dwight Co. hiking its marketing support for the brand to record levels last year. But people familiar with the matter say Walmart determined it didn't need both Arm & Hammer and Henkel's Purex in most of its stores. Both are value brands with similar consumer propositions and prices, and Purex had a higher market share at Walmart.

In recent weeks, however, Arm & Hammer liquid detergent began reappearing at all the stores it disappeared from a few months earlier. That coincided with the brand making appearances in Walmart's circular and TV ads earlier this month -- appearances that suppliers say are included in a catalog of options with price tags attached.

It hardly seems legal (or moral) but clearly Walmart is capable of leveraging its economic clout to bend suppliers to its every whim. The real question: is Walmart consolidating its supplier stranglehold or is Bentonville simply ushering a new low into the already cutthroat world of big-box retailing?

Welcome to Walmart's race to the bottom. Sound off.

Over the weekend the Associated Press ran an interesting correction. Apparently back in April they ran a story claiming that last year Mike Duke, Walmart's current CEO made $6.49 million in compensation. While that SHOULD sound like a ton of money, by today's absurd standards of executive compensation, it instead sounds like small salary.

Of course the AP fixed the number. Duke did not, in fact, make six and a half million, he made $29.07 million. That's 1,318 times the average Walmart employees wage. To put that another way, an average associate at Walmart would have to work 1,318 years just to make what Mike Duke made last year.

The comparison between the two salaries should highlight not just how little Walmart workers make, but also how much its executives make. It should also highlight how much money Walmart has. If they can pay their top executives (remember Mike Duke wasn't yet CEO when he was making nearly $30 million a year) such an outrageous sum, they can afford to better take care of the associates.

Walmart employees have been cheated out of their well deserved money yet again. News reports from last Thursday reveal that Walmart won preliminary court approval to settle 30 lawsuits for only $85 million. The class action lawsuit was filed by Walmart employees in 29 different states. Employees had been denied their mandatory lunch breaks, overtime pay and even had their time cards intentionally changed by Walmart.

$85 million might seem like a lot of money, but that is for all 30 lawsuits. Last December, Walmart paid $54.25 million to workers in the state of Minnesota for ONE lawsuit. To truly compensate the workers (for backpay) and the States (for breaking wage and hour laws) Walmart should have to pay much more.

Here an excerpt of the article from Bloomberg:

Wal-Mart Wins Initial Approval for Wage Settlements

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, won preliminary court approval to pay as much as $85 million to settle 30 lawsuits claiming the company didn’t pay employees for all hours worked.

The settlement covers cases filed in federal courts in 29 states and Puerto Rico, according to court filings. The accord is part of a global $640 million resolution of wage-and-hour claims reached between Wal-Mart and workers in December.

The settlement is “fair, reasonable, and adequate,” U.S. District Judge Philip M. Pro said in granting tentative approval today. The agreement was a “hard-fought compromise of claims that have been actively litigated before this court” since February 2006, he said.

The suits claimed that Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart violated wage and hours laws by denying workers rest breaks and manipulated time cards to “shave” their pay. The suits were filed as class actions, or group lawsuits, on behalf of all hourly workers in the individual states, including Alabama, Michigan, Maryland, Oregon and Texas.

It is important to understand that this is not one isolated incident. All over the country Walmart makes money by blatantly stealing time and money from its employees.

Check out some of the previous posts we've done about the issue.

It is truly sad that the men and women who work for the world’s larges retail store, must fight so hard just to be paid for doing their jobs.

Back in August of last year, we filed an official complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) because of Walmart's mandatory political meetings where employees where warned about voting for Democrats. The meetings were coercive, used scare tactics and intimidation, and we thought they were breaking the law. So did many others.

It's been almost 10 months and the FEC has just decided not to investigate. The Commission, made up of 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, voted along partisan lines on whether the country's largest retailer should come under scrutiny, and in such a deadlock, the complaint is thrown out. According to CQ Politics, the Republican's on the Commission "found that the instances described in the complaints and media accounts did not constitute a violation of law." The Democrats on the commission, however, "said accusations regarding 'alleged political coercion' of its employees on the part of Wal-Mart were 'very serious charges.'" And so, with half of the FEC believing that Walmart used political coercion amounting to very serious charges and the other half believing that Walmart broke no laws at all, the Commission will not investigate at all.

Is it me, or does this sound like the craziest system around? In a case where there is disagreement over whether or not a company broke the law, especially an even split, why in the world wouldn't they investigate and find out who is right? It wasn't as if this was some anonymous tipster and the commissioners were deciding based on whims. Countless employees came forward and laid out exactly what they were told in the meetings and who was there. We're thoroughly disappointed with the FEC.

You can read the full article from CQ Politics here.

Sometimes Walmart simply astounds us. There are instances when Walmart could easily avoid a knock-down-drag-out fight by doing something rather simple, but instead they do just the opposite.

A few days back we told you about several more prominent actors, historians, and elected officials who came out against Walmart building a store very close to an important civil war battlefield. All that anyone is asking of Walmart is that they consider a new location which won't degrade the battlefield, a relatively small request, in our opinion. Instead of considering a new location, however, Walmart has decided to stick with the site.

According to the Orange County Review, the local paper, Walmart is defending the site, arguing that,

"the Walmart property has been zoned for commercial uses for 24 years and is designated for commercial uses in the county’s Comprehensive Plan; that the same site runs the risk of development for other commercial uses without design and aesthetic controls; and that a recent poll conducted by an independent firm for Walmart found there is overwhelming support within Orange County for the store and that the proposed store would not negatively impact the Civil War sites."

Of course many, many experts disagree with Walmart's assessment. The article notes that, "information released by the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition, a group of nine preservationist and activist organizations, claims the Walmart stores’ close proximity to historic areas threatens the integrity of the area."

For our part, we're inclined to believe the experts, historians, public officials, and people who work for and know about the battlefield over Walmart. Besides what does Walmart lose by moving the proposed store to a new site?

In the press conference with Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and Wal-Mart vice president Hank Mullany that just happened, the parties announced that Walmart will, instead of facing a $10,00 fine, pay $400,000 to a victims' compensation fund, give $1.5 million in grants to Nassau County social services programs and nonprofit groups, and set up safety regulations in their New York state stores.

According to the Associated Press article, "The agreement included no admission of guilt by Wal-Mart."

While $400,000 sounds like a good chunk of money for Jdimytai Damour's family, accepting the money would mean waving their right to a civil law suit.

Walmart isn't known for paying its employees well. The average employee makes very little, usually around $7 or $8 an hour. Walmart did pay Lee Scott well, however. Last year the company paid Scott a remarkable $30.2 million in total compensation. That included $17.4 million in stock awards, $4.4 million in options, $5.8 million as non-equity incentive compensation and his regular salary. While his salary was down a bit from the year before, I think you'll agree that this is a staggering figure. If Scott worked a forty hour work week last year, he made roughly $14,520 an hour (which is about what many employees see in a year). That means Lee made roughly 1,340 times more than the average employee.

Here's an excerpt from the article from Reuters:

Wal-Mart paid ex-CEO Scott $30.2 mln in FY09

Wal-Mart Stores Inc's (WMT.N) recently retired Chief Executive, Lee Scott, took home a total of $30.2 million in the year ended January, slightly down from a year ago, as revealed by the company's proxy statement.

Scott, who retired as the world's largest retailer's president and CEO effective January 31, had received a total compensation of $31.6 million in fiscal 2008.

Scott had served as Wal-Mart's CEO since January 2000.

Much of Scott's tenure was marked by struggles and a stagnating stock price. From 2000 through 2007, the company's stock fell 31 percent, with most of the drop coming shortly after his promotion.

In fiscal 2009, Scott received $17.4 million in stock awards, up from $14.1 million in the previous year.

His fiscal 2009 option awards were valued at $4.4 million, down from $6.8 million a year ago.

He received $5.8 million as non-equity incentive compensation, down from $8.4 million.

Scott's total compensation also includes salary, non-qualified deferred compensation and all other compensation.

The state press in China is reporting that the state run Union, the All China Federation of Trade Unions, is blocking Walmart's "restructuring" plan. If it had gone through, Walmart was going to slash around 1,400 jobs, mostly mid-level executives. The media is also reporting that many executives who had been told they were to be fired are going back to work. It's pretty incredible that back in February, Walmart did essentially the same thing here in America but instead of the workers getting to go back to work, they are all out of a job now. In other words, Walmart's Chinese employees have more job security than its American workers. Amazing. And sad.

Here's our official statement:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 20, 2009

WALMART’S CHINESE EMPLOYEES MORE PROTECTED THAN ITS AMERICAN WORKERS

On April 10th, Walmart announced that they would restructure their workforce in China affecting 1,400 employees and eliminating mid-level executives. Today, however Chinese state press is reporting that the All China Federation of Trade Unions has blocked the move. Executives who were told they would be laid off have reportedly returned to work.

“There’s something wrong when Walmart’s Chinese employees have more job security than its American employees,” said Meghan Scott, Director of WakeUpWalMart.com. “If Walmart decided they wanted to do the same thing here in America, those workers would sure still be out of a job today.”

While this is certainly good news for the 1,400 workers in China who would have otherwise lost their jobs, it also highlights the lack of protection Walmart’s employees are afforded here in America. In February, 2009, Walmart announced to 800 layoffs at its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas. Unlike the Chinese restructuring, however, those 800 employees had no protection and are now out of a job. The different outcome of these two similar situations is stark and disturbing.”

Walmart has historically been vehemently anti-union, using propaganda, strong-arm tactics, coercion, intimidation, even spying to stop workers from unionizing. If Walmart can function alongside a union in China they can do it here.”

“The disparity between protection of Walmart’s employees here and in China should be a wake-up call. It is simply shocking that Walmart’s Chinese employees are protected on the job while their American counterparts have no such protection.”

Back in January of 2005, workers at a Walmart store in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada voted to allow a union to represent them. Of course, Walmart being Walmart, instead of letting their employees have a say at the workplace, they stalled. For more than four years, Walmart kept the case held up in court. And then, when it looked like they couldn't stall any longer, they tried to say that, because it had been four years since the initial certification and because labor laws had changed in Quebec, the court should make the employees vote again to certify a union. The courts thought that was absurd (which it is). Walmart was the one that kept stalling and they don't get to ask for a recount because they stalled. So an arbitrator granted the Walmart employees a contract with a union. That makes these employees the only Walmart employees to be covered under a union contract in North America. In the contract, workers get, "seniority rights, wage increases and a wage ladder free from favouritism, and, for the first time ever, a legally-binding grievance procedure that provides more stability, fairness, and dignity in the workplace."

Of course, if you read this blog regularly, you know that Walmart will do ANYTHING to avoid unions. In the past, they've simply shut down entire stores, or parts of stores, or stopped providing a service in order to avoid unionization. So it remains possible that this store too, will close. Andrew Pelletier, vice-president of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart Canada, said, when asked about the store closing, "We’ll have to see. Our objective has always been to run a viable store in St. Hyacinthe."

That sounds to us like they're seriously considering closing the store. And it wouldn't be a big surprise if they did, but it would be shameful. Walmart would be firing hundreds of associates for simply availing themselves of their legal right to form a union.

Here's our official statement:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 13, 2009

CONTACT: Meghan Scott

CANADIAN WALMART WORKERS WIN UNION CONTRACT

WAKEUPWALMART.COM CALLS ON WALMART TO DO THE RIGHT THING, HONOR THE CONTRACT

An arbitrator awarded workers at a Saint-Hyacinthe, Canada Walmart store a union contract more than four years after the employees voted to certify the union. The workers at this store are the only Walmart employees in North America to be covered by a union. Andrew Pelletier, vice-president of corporate affairs for Walmart Canada said he couldn’t speculate on any store's economic future, when asked about whether the Saint-Hyacinthe store would close, “We’ll have to see. Our objective has always been to run a viable store in Saint-Hyacinthe.”

“We’re glad to see that these employees finally have a union contract,” said Meghan Scott, Director of WakeUpWalMart.com. “They voted to be represented by a union, and that choice should be respected. After nearly four years of legal stalling by Walmart, the employees at this store finally have a voice on the job. While this is a great victory for the workers, it sounds like Walmart will use the same old dirty tricks to avoid treating their workers fairly.

“Walmart has a history of simply shutting down stores when its workers win union representation. We’ve already seen Walmart close an auto shop in Gatineau and an entire store in Jonquiere. Mr. Pelletier’s comments would seem to leave the door open to a similar scenario in Saint-Hyacinthe.

“Closing the store down would mean employees there would not just lose a rightful voice in the workplace, it would mean they’d lose their jobs. Walmart cannot be allowed to fire hundreds of employees because they voted for union representation.

“We hope Walmart keeps the Saint-Hyacinthe store open and honors the contract with its workers. It is the right thing to do, and Walmart has a responsibility to their employees. Firing hundreds of associates rather than allowing them a voice on the job would show a gross disregard for that responsibility.”

You can also read the statement from the UFCW Canada, who will represent the workers here, and the story from the Dow Jones Newswires here.

A lawyer for several witnesses to the Black Friday stampede at a New York Wal-Mart reports today that his clients have been called before a grand jury. It is possible that Wal-Mart could be the target of a criminal charges for its role in the deadly stampede. Though the penalty could be as little as $5,000 or $10,000, a criminal prosecution would be an important message to even the countries largest retailer. Wal-Mart too often gets away with breaking laws simply because they are large and have an army of lawyers on staff. We hope the District Attorney is going after Wal-Mart for criminally negligent homicide. While we're no lawyers, we strongly believe that Wal-Mart could have prevent this tragic event. Moreover, we believe Wal-Mart had a responsibility to prevent the death of Mr. Damour and the injuries of others.

Read the article from Newsday here:

Lawyer: Wal-Mart stampede witnesses get grand jury call

Witnesses to a shopper stampede that killed a man at a Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Black Friday last year have been called to testify before a special grand jury, their lawyer said.

Robert Steinberg of Garden City, who represents two people who were hurt in the melee, said one of his clients has already testified before the grand jury and the other has been subpoenaed. He declined to identify his clients.

If a grand jury has been empaneled to look into the case, it could mean that the district attorney is exploring criminal charges against Wal-Mart, experts said.

Eric Phillips, a spokesman for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice, would not confirm that a grand jury has been empaneled because he said there is an ongoing investigation into what happened.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore also would not confirm that a grand jury is meeting, and would not speculate on the possibility that the superstore could be charged with a crime.

Seasonal security worker Jdimytai Damour, 34, of Jamaica, Queens, was trampled during a stampede at Green Acres Mall by some 2,000 frenzied shoppers who broke through a glass door in a rush to take advantage of sales. Damour's family and several other people who were involved in the melee have filed lawsuits against Wal-Mart.

Damour's "family supports any effort to investigate this terrible tragedy, and ensure that justice is served," said Andrew Libo, a Manhattan lawyer representing Damour's relatives.

Experts said prosecutors are more likely to bring criminal charges against Wal-Mart than they are against individuals who were present during the stampede, although that possibility cannot be ruled out.

If the grand jury were to indict Wal-Mart on a charge of criminally negligent homicide - the charge experts said would be most likely - prosecutors would then have to prove that the company failed to perceive that it was taking a substantial risk in the way it handled the Black Friday event, said Eugene O'Donnell, a law and police science professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

Prosecutors would likely focus on how much warning the store had that such a large crowd might turn up and how it trained employees and security personnel, among other things, O'Donnell said.

If Wal-Mart were charged criminally, it could be punished with a fine - up to $5,000 for a misdemeanor or up to $10,000 for a felony. It could also receive a "conditional discharge" and the conditions could include providing restitution to people hurt in the crush or their families, O'Donnell said.

James Acker, a criminal law professor at Albany Law School, said even though $10,000 is a pittance to a huge company like Wal-Mart, it can make a strong symbolic statement.

"It's an attention-getting device that shows the community that this is serious," he said.

Since last year, We've heard quite a few stories about how aggressive Wal-Mart has been getting with shoplifting. They've started to demand that customers show their receipts upon exiting the store, which recently turned violent. They have also apparently instructed their loss prevention officers to get serious about catching criminals because we've received e-mails and calls about some pretty brutal and physical treatment from customers who were (wrongfully) suspected of shoplifting, not to mention this story w

Today, we hear that a suspected shoplifter died after a 'scuffle' with Wal-Mart security guards, and it's not the first time this has happened.

Al Norman over at the Huffington Post has a full rundown of this and past incidents:

Another Shoplifter Death at Wal-Mart

Oh no, not again.

The media in Missouri reported Tuesday that a 38 year old caucasian man, identified as Russell S. Palmer, died Monday night, February 2nd while struggling with two Wal-Mart security guards as the result of an alleged shoplifting incident.

The fatality was a repetition of a similar death-by-shoplifting scene that took place less than two months ago in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when 53 year old Patrick Donovan died while being wrestled to the pavement by Wal-Mart employees. The retailer alleges that Donovan had stolen $393 worth of merchandise. Wal-Mart workers and one bystander held Donovan down, while one leaned on his back and another held down his arms and head. The police report says they told Donovan to stop fighting, and asked witnesses to call 911. By the time Donovan had stopped struggling, he had died.

A similar harrowing incident took place in August of 2005, when 30 year old Stacy Driver, of Cleveland, Ohio, a master carpenter and the father of a two year old son, died on from a heart attack while lying in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Driver was pinned down on the burning hot pavement by several Wal-Mart workers who accused him of shoplifting a package of diapers, a pair of sunglasses, a BB gun, and a package of BBs. After Driver was handcuffed, one eyewitness said a Wal-Mart employee had his knee on the man's neck and others were putting pressure on his back. "Finally the guy stopped moving and the employees got off him," the eyewitness told police. "They wouldn't call an ambulance. I looked at him and said, 'Hey, he's not breathing,' but one guy told me (Driver) was just on drugs."

The Kansas City Star described this latest death as the result of a 'scuffle,' which took place at Wal-Mart supercenter #234 on North Church Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. Palmer reportedly "went limp and abruptly stopped fighting," while being subdued by Wal-Mart employees. The guards attempted to conduct CPR on Palmer, but he died later in the hospital.

The Kansas City police said that according to the suspected shoplifter's girlfriend, Palmer took drugs for an unspecified medical condition. One TV station claimed that Palmer was a crack cocaine user, with a prior arrest record for stealing.

Wal-Mart issued a statement extending its "deepest sympathies to the family."

According to one Wal-Mart employee handbook, workers are told: "Great caution must be used in any shoplifting situation. If you suspect someone is shoplifting, maintain eye contact with the suspected shoplifter and notify a member of management. DO NOT, in any circumstance, accuse or try to apprehend a shoplifting suspect on your own. You may assist in the apprehension if directed to do so by a member of management or Loss Prevention." Wal-Mart also tells its employees, "Wal-Mart takes a very stern view of shoplifting and will prosecute, to the fullest extent of the law, anyone caught shoplifting."

This is not a 'hands off' policy. It clearly suggests that Wal-Mart employees can "assist in apprehension," instead of leaving it to the police to handle. Wal-Mart likes to tell its workers to practice "aggressive hospitality," but it looks once again like Wal-Mart's workers have been a tad bit too aggressive.

These parking lot deaths would stop if Wal-Mart spent the time and money necessary to train its workers how to collect the information they need to help authorities make an apprehension. Deadly force is not appropriate, or needed, in these cases.

Regardless of whether you think every shoplifter is a drug dealer with a long rap sheet -- their life is worth more than a cheap pair of underwear, and they don't deserve to die face down in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Wal-Mart's "deepest sympathies" appear to be with loss prevention, over loss of life.

Recently Leana Lockley talked to the press about her experience in the terrifying stampede at a New York Wal-Mart on Black Friday. She discussed how scared she was and how Jdimytai Damour, the temporary Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death, saved her life. Now she is suing Wal-Mart. Her lawyer claims that Wal-Mart did not do enough to control the crowd. Frankly, we agree. There were lots of things Wal-Mart could have done to prevent what happened. A fenced off line, more security, a simple blockade in front of the door to prevent it from breaking, even a few security guards outside may have made a difference.

Here's the article from Newsday:

Woman sues Wal-Mart after stampede

The family of Jdimytai Damour, the Wal-Mart employee killed in a shopper stampede at Wal-Mart in November, found some comfort knowing that he died helping another, their attorney said Friday.

A South Jamaica woman who was five months pregnant at the time of the stampede at the Valley Stream store recently spoke out crediting Damour, 34, with saving her life and that of her unborn daughter.

"The family takes some measure of solace that at the end of his life, he was helping someone else," said Andrew Libo, a Manhattan-based attorney representing Damour's family. "It doesn't surprise them. He was always looking out for other people."

Leana Lockley, 28, said she did not know where she could contact Damour's family, but she said: "I would like to give my condolences to them on the death of their son and my appreciation in him saving my life ... and also the life of my daughter."

Lockley's lawyer, David Sloan, of Hicksville, has said that Wal-Mart failed to provide proper crowd control and they are preparing a lawsuit against the store. Libo said the Damour family is also planning a suit against Wal-Mart, the security company and the Green Acres Mall where the incident took place.

If Lockley files suit against Wal-Mart, she will not be the first to do so. Last month Emmanuel Moultrie, of Jamaica, Queens, filed suit saying store managers ignored dangerous conditions, Moultrie's lawyer, Ken Mollins on Melville said.

Another attorney, Bruce Baron of Brooklyn, also filed lawsuits on behalf of two people: Theresa Sgro, who says her 14-year-old daughter suffered multiple fractures in the stampede, and Jennifer Jones, who Baron said suffered neurological damage.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman declined Friday to discuss the incident but Wal-Mart officials have maintained in the past that it is closely working with law enforcement and government officials to put security measures in place.

Lockley said she arrived at the store at 1 a.m. with her husband, Shawn, and two other family members. She said the crowd swelled to more than 2,000 when the store opened at 5 a.m.

She said she tried to pick up an older lady who fell and she ended up falling to her knees.

She said she could see Damour trying to push people back.

"I was screaming that I was pregnant, I am sure he heard that. . . . He was trying to block the people from pushing me down to the ground and trampling me," said Lockley, a nursing student at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City.

"Mr. Damour was to the right of me, he was on his knees I could look at him eye to eye and he was trying to push them back and the crowd pushed him down and he fell on top of me."

Eventually on a second try, her husband was able to pull her out and free her.

She was taken to the hospital and treated for injuries where doctors examined the baby who appeared to be OK. Lockley said she suffers from back and neck pain, eye problems and also has insomnia.

Representatives from the Wal-Mart store did send her some baby items about two weeks later, along with a card that read: "May angels carry your little one through life upon their wings."

As details about the Black Friday stampede at Wal-Mart began trickling out in the days and weeks following the tragic event, the story got more and more horrifying. Perhaps one of the most sobering details was that the man who was killed was attempting to shield a pregnant woman. Today, a new interview with Leana Lockley, the pregnant woman Jdimytai Damour was trying to protect when he was killed, has been released and it adds another layer to this awful story.

Here's the story from the local CBS station:

Pregnant Wal-Mart Stampede Victim Remembers Horror

A post-Thanksgiving stampede claimed the life of a Wal-Mart employee assigned to open the door on "Black Friday." Now, another stampede victim, a pregnant woman, is speaking out for the first time and expressing her thanks to the security guard who gave his life to save hers.

Leana Lockley calls it a miracle she did not lose her baby in the "Black Friday" stampede.

"There were so many people on top of me it just went silent," Lockley said. "I started hearing my teeth grinding in my mouth and my body being crushed. I really thought I lost my baby."

Lockley, her husband and young son, were in line at 5 a.m. at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream when Wal-Mart opened its doors for the post-Thanksgiving Day sale blitz.

"Everyone started to push," Lockley said. "There was glass on the side of doors that started cracking and the hinges broke off. People were pushing. I was literally being carried into the store."

As Lockley became separated from her family she started screaming she was pregnant. One employee she now recognizes as victim Jdimytai Damour was crushed trying to rescue her.

"My back was to the crowd. His chest was facing the crowd. He had his hands up. Unfortunately, the crowd overpowered him. He fell back on me. That's when I fell to the ground. My whole body was flat, my face to the ground. It was dark," she said.

A grateful and emotional Lockley said Damour lost his life saving hers. Photos were taken by Hicksville attorney David Sloan just after she was released from the hospital. They are suing Wal-Mart.

"I just thought I was going to die," Lockley said.

Lockley is due to give birth to a baby girl on April 7. She said she wants to return to Wal-Mart to thank employees, but she doubts she will ever shop there again.

Lockley and her attorney say Wal-Mart has contacted them and is already sending baby diapers, baby food and clothing.

We here at Wake Up Wal-Mart are in contact with a lot of workers, so we are often reminded of how difficult it can be for a typical Wal-Mart employee. Whether it's how much they make, or the benefits they can't afford, or unfair treatment they receive, many Wal-Mart employees are struggling to get by, especially those with families. Here's an interview from Air America's Tom Hartmann that will remind you just how tough the working poor have it. We've heard countless stories like this one from Wal-Mart employees across the country.

Long time readers will remember the story about a woman who bought flip-flops from Wal-Mart that severely burned her feet. They were made in China and something in them caused a serious chemical burn. Now, more than a year later, a man in Texas had the same problem with some work boots he bought at Wal-Mart. The boots were also made in China. We're not sure if the same chemical is responsible, but wouldn't you think that after the first time, Wal-Mart would make sure it wouldn't happen again? I guess getting really cheap stuff is just more important than insuring your customers don't get severe chemical burns.

Here's the story from the local new station:

Man claims work boots cause painful burns

The man from Magnolia says he picked up some work boots at a Wal-Mart store, and he says the shoes have given him some major problems. He wants to know why.

It's the last thing Jay Kowolski thought would ever happen. He bought a new pair of work boots and almost immediately his feet began to itch, then burn. It wasn't until he took off the boots that he realized the extent of the damage to his feet in just one day. He took pictures to show the severity of the reaction.

"It's a real lightweight suede boot, sued leather work boot," said Kowolski.

Kowolski bought at the boots at a Wal-Mart in Tomball. They are the Brahma brand; a popular, reasonably priced boot. Kowolski wears boots at his job and on a rainy day, the new boots got wet, and that's when he says his feet began to have a burning sensation.

"When I got home and pulled my boots off, my toes were all covered in red, just literally started eating into the skin," he said.

The next day Kowolski could barely walk. His wife took him to a doctor.

'They said it was an allergic reaction to something in the boot, from the water going through the boots creating some sort of chemical reaction and had burned his feet," said Jay's wife, Kandie Kowolski.

Kowolski spent the next three weeks off his feet and on antibiotics. His skin eventually grew back, however he says the tips of his toes remain slightly red.

Kowolski's wife, meanwhile, began researching the boots and found similar experiences had happened to at least two other people. Kandie Kowolski sent a certified letter to Wal-Mart's president and CEO in Arkansas. She says she's upset the company has not responded.

"Actually, I am because they seem to, you know, they portray that they care so much about the American people but you get a letter like this and you don't even respond?" she said.

She is worried the problem could happen again.

"I would like for them to take these boots off the shelf," said Kandie. "Don't put the rest of these American people at risk because of something like that."

Because of the holiday weekend, a Wal-Mart spokesperson was unable to speak specifically about the boots, but offers this general statement.

"The safety of our customers and associates is a top priority. Wal-Mart is committed to the highest standard of quality and safety with the merchandize that is available in its stores. We take every claim seriously and investigate each and every one."

As for the Kowolskis, they tell Eyewitness News they have stopped buying any type of shoes at Wal-Mart until their complaint is resolved.

In 2007, about 10 customers claimed they received burns and blisters from flip-flop sandals they bought at Wal-Marts across the country. It's a different brand from the boots. After learning about the problem, Wal-Mart pulled the sandals off store shelves.

Wal-Mart has once again demonstrated its true talent of earning really really bad PR. They just seem to thrive at it. And when a family called to get a Birthday cake made with their son's name on it, they once again stepped up. What is so bad about making a Birthday cake? Well if the child's name happens to be Adolf Hitler and his family happens to be holocaust deniers, it is, at the very least, bad PR, and we think pretty offensive to boot. What makes it worse is that other stores in the area had the good sense to say no to the family and that Wal-Mart has made this particular cake three years running.

And we can't forget that this isn't Wal-Mart's first run in with the Nazi issue. There was the tee shirt that Wal-Mart sold with a Nazi logo on it, which they subsequently failed to pull from shelves. There was an ad they bankrolled which went after a community group who did not want Wal-Mart to build in their town by using Nazi imagery. There was the book they sold, called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which "recounts" as fact a plot by Jewish citizens to take over the world. It has been widely discredited as a fraud but was nonetheless used by Nazi propagandists. Wal-Mart's description of the book apparently did not indicate that it was, unambiguously a made up, antisemitic book.

The story is, deservedly, getting a lot of play. Most are simply bemused all around. Here's what Keith Olberman had to say last night:

Because more than 70% of Wal-Mart's goods come from China, and because Wal-Mart cuts corners (or forces manufacturers to do so) to save money, they have been plagued with stories of unsafe products sold at their store. Most notably, lead has been an issue. It's been found in toys, Christmas lights, dinner plates, charm bracelets, even pet toys and more.

While there haven't been nearly as many news stories about it recently, Wal-Mart is still apparently selling lead tainted products. The Center for Environmental Health recently released a report and found that products from Wal-Mart and other retailers contained high levels of lead which is both dangerous and against the law. They report that

A surface coating on a WalMart store-brand green frog charm for a child’s necklace tested as high as 37% lead, more than 600 times over the standard set by the state law that was developed from CEH’s landmark January 2006 settlement with the jewelry industry. The surface coating has variable lead levels, with some pieces testing at more than three times the legal limit.

You can check out The Center for Environmental Justice's full report here.

Shoplifting is never advisable, but at a local Wal-Mart in South Carolina, it became physically dangerous to boot. A "Loss Prevention" officer physically assaulted a woman he thought to be shoplifting, picking her up in a bear hug and, "slamming her face-first onto the floor." The loss prevention officer was arrested after the woman was rushed to the hospital to treat her injuries. She sustained a rather severe black eye, as you can see in the picture.

Now, of course, we don't condone shop lifting, but we're pretty sure that you shouldn't be slammed on the floor for it, either. Wal-Mart's statement regarding the incident were a bit blase: "First and foremost, the safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority. We always expect the utmost professionalism from our associates at all times. We are currently investigating the claims related to this situation and will take appropriate action. We are cooperating with police on their investigation." The guy was caught on camera, so what is there to investigate? If Wal-Mart is serious about the safety and security of their customers and the professionalism of their associates, shouldn't they simply fire this guy?

Here's the full story form WYFF news in South Carolina:

Officers: Wal-Mart Guard Slammed Woman To Floor

A Wal-Mart loss prevention officer is under arrest after police said that surveillance video showed him grabbing a woman he suspected of shoplifting in a bear-hug and slamming her face-first onto the floor.

Spartanburg Public Safety officers were called to the Wal-Mart on Dorman Centre Drive on Tuesday after loss prevention officer Joseph Gregorie delete said he had detained a shoplifter at the store.

Gregorie told officers that he had observed 58-year-old Deborah Blackwell, of Greer, conceal several items in a tote bag while a male companion watched her do it. Gregorie said that Blackwell and the man then headed out the grocery store exit without paying for the items.

Gregorie said that Blackwell dropped the tote when he identified himself as an officer, but that she continued to try to leave the store. He said he grabbed her, and she lost her balance and they both fell.

Blackwell told officers that Gregorie had grabbed her in a "bear hug" and slammed her to the ground face first.

The officer reviewed the surveillance video, and said it confirmed that Gregorie had grabbed Blackwell in a bear-hug and threw her to the ground.

Blackwell was transported by ambulance to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center for treatment of facial injuries. Police said that Blackwell's severe black eye was caused by the incident at Wal-Mart.

Blackwell is charged with shoplifting. Gregorie is charged with assault and battery.

Both have since been released.

Wal-Mart sent a statement to WYFF News 4 saying: "First and foremost, the safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority. We always expect the utmost professionalism from our associates at all times. We are currently investigating the claims related to this situation and will take appropriate action. We are cooperating with police on their investigation."

Here at Wake Up Wal-Mart, we talk to a lot of workers. Both through e-mail and on the phone, Wal-Mart employees get in touch with us because they're being mistreated, they've been unjustly fired, or just because they think Wal-Mart is doing something wrong.

Recently we've been hearing from quite a few associates that Wal-Mart has been calling them in to meetings to inform them, basically, that they are not allowed to say anything bad about Wal-Mart, ever. It is certainly understandable that Wal-Mart doesn't want their employees trash talking the store while on the job, but this is something much more. According to employees, Wal-Mart is suggesting that saying anything negative about the store anywhere, at any time, is a fire-able offense. In other words if you happen to be overheard saying 'man, Wal-Mart sucks, I can't afford their health insurance with the terrible wage they pay me' while you are at home, or out at the mall, you could be fired. Or if you go online to a personal web page, a social networking site, a blog, or a site like this one and criticize Wal-Mart, you could be fired. This is a pretty serious business.

Here's what one employee wrote us (we'll withhold their name because apparently Wal-Mart is watching):

Subject: new WM policy announced at morning meeting!

Chatting about "people" (actually manager means talking about walmart) on the internet will be under scrutiny. "you better have your facts straight when talking about people".

This is a scare tactic! To ward off negative press. Please post this new policy!

Wal-Mart is being sued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) once again. This time, Wal-Mart fired Barbara Hacker for having a seizure. Barbara has epilepsy and upon being hired at Wal-Mart, told them of her condition and requested only that she be allowed to sit in a quiet room after having a seizure, should one occur. There seemed to be no problems at first, but when Barbara had a seizure recently during work, Wal-Mart promptly fired her.

You could chock this up to a single bad manager at a single bad store. Of course if you've been following Wal-Mart news, you know it's not a single incident. Wal-Mart has a pretty sordid history of discriminating against and firing employees with disabilities.

Take Glenda Allen who was fired because Wal-Mart claimed she wasn't working fast enough. She had suffered a gun shot wound that left her disabled years before. Wal-Mart knew this and fired her suddenly. Wal-Mart was forced to pay a quarter of a million dollars for the illegal firing.

Or take Tom Hampton who was fired for using his wheel chair at work one day. He had requested permission to use it weeks in advance because the holiday season was coming up and he knew it would be busy. He didn't hear from anyone for some time and one day he decided he needed to use his wheelchair. Wal-Mart fired him on the spot after demanding he either stand up or leave.

Or take Patrick Brady who was hired as a pharmacy clerk but moved to taking out garbage and collecting carts because, Wal-Mart said, he moved too slow on account of his Cerebral Palsy. Wal-Mart was forced to pay him $900,000 for breaking the law.

Yes, once again, Wal-Mart proves they don't care about their employees.

Here's a piece of the story from the Rockford Register Star:

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission files suit against Wal-Mart

ROCKFORD —The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued Wal-Mart in federal court on behalf of a Rockford woman who claims she was fired because she had epilepsy.

Barbara Hacker worked as a greeter at the Wal-Mart store on West Riverside Boulevard in early 2006, EEOC attorney Aaron Decamp said, and had told her supervisors when she was hired that she had epilepsy. Hacker, who is in her early 30s and has a young child, asked to be allowed to sit down for a few minutes in a quiet location when she had a seizure.

Decamp said Wal-Mart complied initially, but later stopped accommodating her request. She was fired after having a seizure while in a back room at the store.

It seems that no matter how hard they try to get good press, something always seems to pop up... and today is no exception. Apparently Wal-Mart, through a 3rd party company, is funding a white supremacist blog with some pretty offensive stuff on it. Take a look at the screen shot below:

According to ValleyWag who caught the banner, Wal-Mart responded to their inquiry with this statement: "We are investigating this matter and take it very seriously. This site used our banners without our authorization and we are working to have them immediately removed." Is anyone satisfied with the removal and investigation of this situation?

Wal-Mart has been pretty slow at catching up with web scene and the blogosphere, but I'm not sure there is any excuse for supporting this kind of hatred.

(h/t ValleyWag)

So apparently Wal-Mart has been forging back to school shopping lists complete with details making it look like an official school list. One imagines that this was an attempt to get parents to buy a few extra supplies, but why in the world did they think they could get away with this? Perhaps the best detail of this story is that the fake list included items banned from schools.

The full story is posted below from Kelby Carr. Enjoy!

My daughter is about to start kindergarten, so naturally we did some back to school shopping. Our state sales tax break weekend happened recently. When we noticed the local Wal-Mart had shopping lists not only specific to school and grade level, but to teacher, we were thrilled. We started tossing items in the cart to spend, spend, spend.

Weren’t we a little surprised to learn afterwards that Wal-Mart invented those lists. Not only were we a bit surprised to learn they did not, in fact, base the lists on anything remotely suggested by the school. Wal-Mart, in fact, put items on the list that are BANNED from being brought to school.

Our daughter’s school said Wal-Mart makes up those lists on their own, and a number of items (such as crayons) are on a list from the school. A list of items parents are specifically told not to have their child bring to school. Seriously?

The real back to school list also featured several items that are not on Wal-Mart’s list.

So these lists are, in essence, a trick to get parents (and I can only assume, being that it’s a discount store like Wal-Mart, a great many parents who are on a tight budget) to drop cash on unnecessary purchases. That really aggravates me. It isn’t a big deal if I buy a few extra supplies. I can afford it, and I am sure we will use these items elsewhere. I wouldn’t have bought them otherwise, but it isn’t the end of the world.

But what if I was broke? Or a single mom living on a low income? Or both? I truck over to Wal-Mart thinking I will stretch my precious dollars, only to drop cash on crap I don’t need just because I am trying hard to be sure my poor child isn’t embarrassed by missing needed supplies. That part of it sickens me.

I can imagine they would say that they are making these lists as suggestions to assist shopping parents. (In fact, Wal-Mart officials can feel free to comment and explain the rationale here. I will definitely approve your comments, and would frankly love to hear your explanation).

Here is the problem with that, however. I have done things like create registries and so forth. Often there is a suggested list of items to get or add to the list. Always, it is clear to me these items are not necessary. So, for example, Wal-Mart could make a list that is titled something like, “Suggested Back to School Items for Kindergartners.” Shoot, even then I would make the top of the page have a statement along the lines that these are suggestions and are not an official list from the school.

Instead, there is no way to describe these lists except as ones that are trying very hard to look official. They have a fax send line at the top of the page (who on earth faxed these, if not the schools?). They not only state the school, but also the grade level and they have various lists based on teacher. Each teacher has slightly different supplies required. If that doesn’t look like something official from the school, I’m not sure what would. Perhaps adding a medieval wax seal to each list?

I also presume other retail stores are doing the same thing, but I honestly haven’t checked.

Either way, be sure you get your back to school shopping list from the school itself. And let me know what’s on it. Because right now I have a shopping bag packed with crap I don’t need. Classy.

The Consumerist just published another article about a Wal-Mart shopper who was detained and harassed for failing to show a receipt for his purchase. It turns out that the cashier threw away the original receipt by mistake but the customer, Ben of Germantown, Maryland, was nonetheless verbally and physically harassed by a Wal-Mart security guard upon trying to exit the store. He was also stopped by a local police officer. This story is very similar to one we commented on in our blog two months ago. We have received many e-mails complaining of similar instances as well. Wal-Mart shouldn't treat its customers like prisoners. If Wal-Mart keeps doing so I suspect that many, like Ben, will choose to bring their business elsewhere.

Here's the full version of the story:

This guy was trying to make strawberry jam this morning, and he had to go buy 4 bags of sugar. The cashier threw away the original receipt but put the sugar in a couple of Wal-Mart shopping bags, so Ben left the store thinking everything was, you know, normal for a Saturday morning. Then he was stopped by a security guard, a store manager, and an off-duty police officer, all of whom went batshit crazy on Ben over his 4 bags of sugar and lack of receipt. Before it was over one of the shopping bags was ripped open, a bag of sugar lay broken open on the parking lot, the guard had threatened to kick Ben's ass, and the police officer said, "you'd better not be lying to me." Ben was marched back into the store so they could verify with his cashier that he wasn't a sugar thief. Welcome to Wal-Mart, the police-state superstore where prices are low and civil rights don't exist.

I was at the Germantown Wal*Mart to buy four bags of sugar because earlier in the day I had been at Butler’s Orchard picking 10 pounds of strawberries to turn into delicious jam. And to make delicious jam, you need lots of sugar. I grabbed four bags and headed to the checkout, where I also decided I could use some refreshment. I grabbed a Mountain Dew from the cooler, but the cashier had already processed my card for the four bags of sugar. He apologized and rang up another transaction for the Mt. Dew. At that point, he crumpled up my receipt for the four bags of sugar and handed me the receipt for the Mountain Dew. I headed for the exit, and was greeted by Wal*Mart security who wanted to check my receipt. I produced the receipt for the Mountain Dew and explained that the cashier had tossed the other receipt for the sugar. I would repeat this explanation 6 more times before this affair ended.

At this point, I attempted to leave, but was told I could not. I immediately asked if I was being detained. I was told “no” but that I wasn’t allowed to leave unless I walked back to the cashier to get a receipt. I said that I was “happy to let the security guard talk to the cashier, but that I was heading home with my sugar.” I attempted to leave again, and the door was blocked. I asked again if I was being detained, and was told “yes.” I asked on what grounds, and the security guard said “Because you stole.”

I informed the guard I had done no such thing, that the sugar was my property, and I was leaving with it. This time I pushed passed him and left the store, with him following me demanding I stop. As I left, he grabbed my bags, ripping them open. As he followed me he attempted to grab my bags, and grab the items inside of my bags. At one point, he told me that he should “kick my ass.” As I reached the end of sidewalk outside the store and headed towards my car in the parking lot, another employee came running and blocked my path. Soon afterwards a manager arrived. I again asked if I was being detained. I was informed by the manager that I was. I again asked for what reason, and was told by the original security guard that it was for stealing. I once again informed them that I hadn’t stolen anything and that I was leaving.

At this point, the manager informed me that Wal*Mart policy did not allow me to leave the store without showing a receipt. I said that I had paid for my merchandise, that it was in fact a store employee that had thrown away my receipt, and that I was not compelled to prove that items that I legally owned belonged to anyone but me. Again I inquired whether I was being detained, and was told my only options were to go back in the store to talk to the cashier or have the police called. I informed the manager that she was welcome to call the police, because I had done nothing wrong. At tht point, she radioed for someone to call the police. Once again, I started to walk to my car as the two security guards again attempted to block my path in the parking lot.

At this point, and off duty police officer came to the scene (he appeared to be heading into Wal*Mart to shop, not the one called by the manager), showed his badge, and asked for an explanation. Everyone was calmed by this, and tensions visibly eased on the faces of the Wal*Mart employees. I explained my side, and Wal*Mart employees explained their side. After the explanations, I asked the police officer if I was being detained, and he said yes. I asked on what grounds, and he said “suspicion of theft.” The officer told me I could give them “their merchandise back” and leave at that point or I could go inside and talk to the cashier. I indicated that since he was detaining me, I was willing to go back into the store and speak with the cashier, but that the merchandise belonged to me. At this point, one of the bags of sugar fell from my ripped bags and split open on the pavement. It was an accident, but I could tell no one believed me when I said so.

On the way into the store, the officer informed me that it was his day off, he had important things to do, and he didn’t want to take me to jail. But I had one last chance to give them their merchandise back and just leave, because if I wasn’t telling the truth, he would personally drive me to the station. I agreed wholeheartedly with him, and told him so. I’m fairly certain he thought I had actually stolen the sugar at this point. He then asked what I needed so much sugar for anyway. At the time, I was literally covered with strawberry juice. It had stained my shorts and shirt red, and I thought it was fairly believable that I was going to make strawberry jam. He still seemed skeptical, asking where I had been picking strawberries, and only seemed to believe me after I was able to name Butler’s Orchard. He then asked if I had ID, what my name was, and how old I was. Upon telling him this, he said “You better not be lying to me,” so perhaps I was too quick to think he didn’t assume I was guilty.

Of course, upon re-entering the store and speaking with the cashier, he informed everyone that I had paid for the sugar and the receipt was found in his trash can. His story differed slightly in that he told them he had given me the receipt but I had thrown it into his trash can. That was impossible based on where his trash can was from the checkout counter, but it didn’t matter. The original security guard was cordial, shook my hand, and apologized. The Wal*Mart manager and police officer lectured about how next time if I just cooperated and gave up my rights at the beginning, it would have been much easier on everyone. Trust me, Wal*Mart, there won’t be a next time.

If you defend Wal-Mart for this treatment of an average customer, you are a slave. There are other ways to prevent shoplifting. How about the security guard follows the suspected shoplifter to his car to take down his license plate while radioing someone in the store to confirm whether or not his story is legit? Besides that, Ben had four bags of sugar in Wal-Mart branded plastic bags—the likelihood that he was shoplifting them was low, and the value of the sugar to the store was virtually nonexistent compared to other merchandise that was and is probably being stolen from Wal-Marts all over America this weekend. No matter how belligerent a customer is in this situation, the guard, manager, and officer should remember that if the customer is innocent, he has a right to be belligerent and offended that he's being harrassed to such a degree—especially over something as trivial as four bags of sugar.

It is almost hard to figure out what to make of this one. A student at Texas Southern University sold her car and was paid in Wal-Mart money orders. When she went to cash them, Wal-Mart accused her of forgery and had her arrested. Then, as if that wasn't enough, they sent her a letter demanding she pay $200 to settle a shoplifting charge that they must have made up. The first shocking thing about this story is how poorly Wal-Mart treated Nitra Gipson for doing nothing more than attempting to cash her very real money orders. Does Wal-Mart make it a policy of throwing customers in jail just because they happen to have a large sum in money orders? Was the manager following Wal-Mart's rules, or has he just been taught to reduce costs any way possible, and this seems like a good way to do it. The second shocking thing about this story is the letter they sent after they locked up this young woman for 2 days, demanding $200.

Here's the story from KHOU, and be sure to check out the video of the site, it's got a good interview with Nitra.

HOUSTON -- A college student’s trip to Wal-Mart last month ended with her in handcuffs and a two-day stay in the Harris County jail.

Nitra Gipson was charged with felony forgery after the Meyer Park Wal-Mart manager accused her of passing bogus money orders. Thing is, the money orders were legit and had been purchased at Wal-Mart to begin with.

The cash-strapped college student had just sold her car to pay for her last two semesters at Texas Southern University, where she is studying criminal justice. She was paid with Wal-Mart money orders, which the giant retailer advertises as “good as cash.”

In Gipson’s case, they were as good as time behind bars.

“Humiliating is not the word for it,” said Gipson. “I was horrified. I think they singled me out because of the amount of money that it was and (thought) I was trying to get over on them.”

No manner of effort by Gipson to show that the money orders were legit worked. The store manager insisted she be charged.

The district attorney’s office saw it differently. Charges were dropped after the money orders were verified when Gipson provided the purchase receipts.

But after spending 48 hours behind bars, the damage had already beeen done.

“Wal-Mart should be held responsible and accountable for letting this child go to jail for two days. All because she was doing what any customer of Wal-Mart should do,” said community activist Quannel X.

Gipson said Wal-Mart then added insult to injury when she got a letter in the mail.

“I started to read it and thought, ‘Oh my God.’ They are asking me to pay them when it was clearly their mistake,” said Gipson.

The letter demanded Gipson pay Wal-Mart $200 to settle a shoplifting charge. It is a charge that never existed, though.

When 11 News contacted Wal-Mart officials they said they were looking into the case and would provide no further details.

The spokesperson did claim that the decision to pursue charges was up to the law enforcement officials on the scene. But the copy of the criminal complaint obtained by 11 News, shows that the store manager is who pressed charges.

photo credit: this photo comes from yet another stellar New York Times article

On the day we learned that nearly 50,000 more Americans lost their jobs, Wal-Mart saw fit to throw a party in Bentonville to literally dance on the American economy’s grave, It’s just another reminder that what’s good for Wal-Mart is bad for America, something its Chief Financial Officer as much as admitted when he said "tough times are actually a good time for Wal-Mart." Instead of celebrating the hard times Americans are facing, Wal-Mart should make the real changes to support its workers that would make our country stronger.

After agreeing to tape all firearm purchases, and crack down on background checks, Wal-Mart received some praise for taking gun safety seriously. On the heels of that story comes a tragic case. An unqualified Wal-Mart employee sold a woman ammunition which she used to kill herself. Had the clerk been trained, she might have known that the woman did not have the proper ID card. Had the clerk been trained, she might have known that the woman was a former psychiatric patient and thus not allowed to buy guns or ammunition. Unfortunately, she wasn't trained.

Here's the story from a local Illinois station:

Man files wrongful death suit against Wal-Mart

A Peoria man is taking on Wal-Mart saying the lack of an employee's training led to the death of his wife.

Mark Johnson says his wife Candace bought bullets from the Peoria Wal-Mart on Allen Road in January, then went home and shot herself.

Now, we've learned he's suing the company.

Mark Johnson is a former Marine, and says he had a gun in the house, but no bullets.

Johnson's attorney Ralph Davis says Candace did not have a firearms owners identification or FOID card, and therefore, should not have been sold the ammunition.

The Peoria County State's Attorney's office filed criminal charges against Wal-Mart clerk Christy Blake for selling the ammunition, but later dropped the charges.

We spoke with Blake, who after being suspended, is back to work at Wal-Mart.

She had no comment.

Attorney Ralph Davis says this case goes beyond the clerk and that Wal-Mart should be held responsible.

"She had been a mental patient," said Davis. "In the state of Illinois, they're not allowed to get firearm ammunition or firearms, and that's for the purpose of protecting them and society at large. So that's why the lawsuit is filed. They (Wal-Mart) dropped the ball unfortunately there's a dead person."

HOI 19 News obtained a copy of the police report, where a manager confirms Blake had not received training for ammunition sales, which is store policy.

Wal-Mart has 60 days to file a response to Johnson's lawsuit.

As of Monday afternoon, a call seeking comment from the company was not returned.

The lawsuit seeks damages over $75,000.

When you think of West Virginia, scorpions don't exactly come to mind, so you can imagine how surprised Megan Templeton was when she was stung while picking up a Watermelon at her local Wal-Mart. Here is yet another reason to shop for locally grown produce: you can't get stung by exotic creatures when you pick up a head of lettuce grown in the next town over. A Watermelon from Mexico, however, can bring all kinds of nasty critters with it, as we can see here.

Here's the AP story via USA Today:

Girl stung by scorpion in Wal-Mart watermelon

BARBOURSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — One young shopper at a Wal-Mart in West Virginia had to watch out for more than falling prices.

A 12-year-old girl picking up a seedless watermelon from a bin was stung Sunday by a tan, inch-long scorpion that had apparently stowed away in a shipment from Mexico.

Megan Templeton, of Barboursville, was taken to the hospital as a precaution but later released. Her father, William Templeton, said the pain was a little worse than a bee sting.

He initially didn't believe his daughter when she said she had been stung by a scorpion, but then he saw the critter scurry underneath a box. It was captured by Wal-Mart employees.

Most of the nearly 2,000 kinds of scorpions are not dangerous to humans.

This is a pretty unbelievable case. Andre Johnson, an NFL star bought several bikes at Wal-Mart through his charity (to be given to underprivileged children), and Wal-Mart agreed to donate some water and ice to the event. Somehow the order got messed up and because Andre Johnson did not end up buying as many bike as he originally planned, Wal-Mart refused to give him the water and ice.

How callous does one have to be to refuse a donation because the person in question spent a little less at your store? For that matter, why should their donation be dependent on spending money at all?

Here's the story from TMZ:

NFL Star: Wal-Mart Left Kids Out in the Cold

NFL superstar Andre Johnson claims his charity got stiffed by Wal-Mart -- it all involves water and ice. Yes, ice.

Johnson ordered 750 bicycles to be given to underprivileged kids at an event sponsored by the Andre Johnson Foundation -- in return for the purchase, Wal-Mart agreed to donate water and ice for the May 3 event.

But there was a problem with the order, so Johnson ended up buying fewer bikes than planned. Wal-Mart countered by not giving the water and ice as promised. That's cold.

Wal-Mart is trying to rectify the situation. They tell TMZ, "We are reaching out to the Andre Johnson Foundation as we speak to rectify the situation. It's disappointing that this happened."

Via Wal-Mart Watch's blog, here's a letter from Christopher Shank, Debbie Shank's son. You can see how profoundly this ordeal has affected this family's life, and how different it would have been if Wal-Mart had done the right thing.

First of all, let it be known that I’m Debbie Shank’s son, and not some random dude putting in his two cents. That being said, here’s the skinny…

When we sued the trucking company, our lawyer told us that the only amount we could get off of the trucking company was what the truck was insured for...namely, a million dollars. As they were a small trucking company, they had no real net worth, and the amount we could sue them for was just for their insurance.

When we received the settlement of 1 million, a third of that was paid out to the lawyers. After that, my dad was given a portion of that to make up for lost wages. We told Wal-Mart about all of this, and they basically said “Okay.” and did nothing. We set up the rest, 417K, to take care of mom. We took care of her for three years on that, but when the statute of limitations was set to expire on Wal-Mart suing us, they literally had days left, they filed to sue us. Our lawyer told us at the time that they were only doing this to keep their options open, but Wal-Mart decided that they wanted to go after the settlement, as they say time and time again, “out of fairness for everyone in the medical plan”.

And so it went. The first ruling came August 31, 2006. At the time it was the worst thing that had happened. Six days later, my brother was killed. Dad said “Fine. Whatever. They won.” We were without any will to keep going. Our lawyers said “We’ll appeal. You just don’t worry about things. We’ll take care of all of it.”

Appeal after appeal, Wal-Mart won them all. We finally appealed to the Supreme Court. Last week, they said they weren’t going to take our case. We lost. Now, Wal-Mart can’t take any more money than we had in the trust fund, so they get that. But, we still have 150K in outstanding medical bills. We have a fund set up that has accepted donations, but it quickly depletes due to bills. Even with government assistance, we still must pay anywhere from 500-1000 per month to keep mom in the nursing home, and that’s not counting bills she has from trips to the hospital (a couple weeks ago she was bleeding internally) . The outstanding bills we have, they can sue my father directly, so it’s looking like he may have to sell his home at least. My youngest brother, if he wants to have the money to go to college, will himself either have to take out thousands in loans or join the military.

Dad has worked all his life, was set to retire in 5 years, but now it’s looking as if he’ll have to work longer and longer. Plus he has cancer to worry about.

So, that’s the story. I have a feeling that somewhere along the lines, be it by Wal-Mart, the courts, the lawyers, the trucking company, or a combination of all, we’ve been taken advantage of. We could only sue for so much, we had to pay the lawyers, the courts decided to maintain the status quo, and Wal-Mart sold it’s soul.

Whoever’s fault it is, we’re screwed. Plain and simple.

Here's the video footage from CNN. It is incredibly humanizing to see this family on tape, and incredibly sad too.

CNN has more coverage of the incredibly sad healthcare case today. Here's the article:

JACKSON, Missouri (CNN) -- Debbie Shank breaks down in tears every time she's told that her 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in Iraq.

Even though the 52-year-old mother of three attended her son's funeral -- she continues to ask how he's doing. When her family reminds her that he's dead -- she weeps as if hearing the news for the first time.

Shank suffered severe brain damage after a traffic accident nearly eight years ago that robbed her of much of her short-term memory and left her in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home.

It was the beginning of a series of battles -- both personal and legal -- that loomed for Shank and her family. One of their biggest was with Wal-Mart's health plan.

Eight years ago, Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan.

Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank's long-term care.

Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank's medical expenses, but in 2005, Wal-Mart's health plan sued the Shanks for the same amount.

The Shanks didn't notice in the fine print of Wal-Mart's health plan policy that the company has the right to recoup medical expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit.

The family's attorney, Maurice Graham, said he informed Wal-Mart about the settlement and believed the Shanks would be allowed to keep the money.

"We assumed after three years, they [Wal-Mart] had made a decision to let Debbie Shank use this money for what it was intended to," Graham said.

The Shanks lost their suit to Wal-Mart. Last summer, the couple appealed the ruling -- but also lost it. One week later, their son was killed in Iraq.

"They are quite within their rights. But I just wonder if they need it that bad," Jim Shank said.

In 2007, the retail giant reported net sales in the third quarter of $90 billion.

Legal or not, CNN asked Wal-Mart why the company pursued the money.

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley, who called Debbie Shank's case "unbelievably sad," replied in a statement: "Wal-Mart's plan is bound by very specific rules. ... We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank's case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan."

Jim Shank said he believes Wal-Mart should make an exception.

"My idea of a win-win is -- you keep the paperwork that says you won and let us keep the money so I can take care of my wife," he said.

The family's situation is so dire that last year Jim Shank divorced Debbie, so she could receive more money from Medicaid.

Jim Shank, 54, is recovering from prostate cancer, works two jobs and struggles to pay the bills. He's afraid he won't be able to send their youngest son to college and pay for his and Debbie's care.

"Who needs the money more? A disabled lady in a wheelchair with no future, whatsoever, or does Wal-Mart need $90 billion, plus $200,000?" he asked.

The family's attorney agrees.

"The recovery that Debbie Shank made was recovery for future lost earnings, for her pain and suffering," Graham said.

"She'll never be able to work again. Never have a relationship with her husband or children again. The damage she recovered was for much more than just medical expenses."

Graham said he believes Wal-Mart should be entitled to only about $100,000. Right now, about $277,000 remains in the trust -- far short of the $470,000 Wal-Mart wants back.

Refusing to give up the fight, the Shanks appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But just last week, the high court said it would not hear the case.

Graham said the Shanks have exhausted all their resources and there's nothing more they can do but go on with their lives.

Jim Shank said he's disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case -- not for the sake of his family -- but for those who might face similar circumstances.

For now, he said the family will figure out a way to get by and "do the best we can for Debbie."

"Luckily, she's oblivious to everything," he said. "We don't tell her
what's going on because it will just upset her."

Here is a rather unbelievable story, or perhaps not considering how easy it is to get fired from Wal-Mart. It is disgraceful that Tom Hampton was fired for his disability. Wal-Mart should be ashamed at making such a poor choice, both ethically and from a business standpoint (after all, it sounds like Tom was a great employee, and could perform his job just as well, if not better in his wheelchair). Wal-Mart is apparently looking to rehire Tom once they find a suitable position for him. I'm not sure what is wrong with his old position, which he clearly enjoyed. What is most disturbing about this story, however, is not Tom's individual case but the trend of intolerance and the speed at which an associate can be fired.

Here's the full story from The Mansfield News Journal:

Tom Hampton wants to go back to work. A Wal-Mart official said the company wants to find him work.

But Hampton continues to sit at home.

The 48-year-old Lexington man, paralyzed on his left side since a 1986 motorcycle accident, said problems began in October when he filed a request to use his wheelchair at the Possum Run Road store.

"I knew the Christmas rush was coming and I was running out of energy in my left leg, so I asked if I could bring my wheelchair into work," he said. "They have a form you fill out, which is a request for a reasonable accommodation. I gave it to my store manager, but then I heard nothing back about it for a long time. For three months, they just kept saying that they hadn't heard anything. So one day I just showed up in my wheelchair."

Hampton said he worked 30 minutes before he was called into the office.

"They told me I either had to get up out of the chair or go home," he said. "It really surprised me. After working there for two years, I thought I'd proven myself. I never missed a day of work and I thought I was a pretty valued employee and they'd want to keep me -- but they didn't seem like they wanted to."

Hampton went home.

Nearly four months have passed, but Wal-Mart spokesperson Sharon Weber said the company is working to find Hampton a position.

"He's gotten a letter from us," Weber said. "We don't discuss personnel issues dealing with associates, but we always try to work closely with our associates to help them perform their jobs.

"We certainly want to help this individual. Each department has minimum job requirements that employees have to meet. We do allow people with wheelchairs to work, but right now we're working to help him find a position."

Hampton said he hasn't received a letter from Wal-Mart.

"When I went in for an interview, I went through the same hiring process like everyone else did. My disabilities were visible -- I had a cane and my left arm was in a sling. They did not question me at all on my condition."

Until recently, he was pleased with his experience at the store. That's a point of pride for the company, Weber said.

"We value all our associates and work so hard to be an employer of choice," Weber said. "We've received awards for our work with associates with disabilities."

Hampton said he worked as a sales associate in the electronics department, where he helped run the cash register and general customer service responsibilities.

"I was impressed that they'd given me a chance as a disabled person," he said. "They treated me really well until this past winter."

Hampton said he was asked to provide a doctor's release to add to his request for the wheelchair. Three weeks later he was told his request had been denied.

"I don't have any use of my left arm. I can walk fairly well, but it's not very smooth with my left leg," Hampton said.

Hampton said he experienced no problems in his chair.

"I didn't have any trouble maneuvering through the aisles," he said. "Actually, I could move faster in the wheelchair than I could walking. A lot of my customers know me by name and they didn't mind me in the chair, just the management did."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken Hampton's statement, but he said they haven't gotten back to him yet.

"They said it could take six months to a year to get me on their list," he said. "I'm holding my own for now, but it's not great. I was working for a reason. I needed the money."

Bill Hiser, of the Independent Living Center, said Hampton has been with the Mansfield agency for more than 12 years.

"He was on the board, he was treasurer and a friend, so he's been part of the Independent Living Center family for a long time," Hiser said. "We were just amazed that the whole thing happened -- amazed and a little horrified. He's had good reviews, he's very knowledgeable in the world of electronics and computers and worked there two years, so I don't think his disability is an issue. Tom has always strived to be as independent as he can, where most people in his situation would want to roll over and not work. He wants to work."

Hampton said he's amenable to shifting to a new position if necessary.

"I would be willing to work in another department, hopefully it would be one in which I could still use my knowledge and expertise," he said. "I just would really like to get back to work."

The U.S Supreme Court has refused to review the case of Debbie Shank, who worked for Wal-Mart as a stocker and was severely brain damaged in a car accident. The refusal means that the Shank family now owes Wal-Mart $470,000. Wal-Mart sued the family after paying their medical bills because the Shanks won a lawsuit against the trucking company that hit Debbie's car.

Wal-Mart says they sued "out of fairness to everyone who contributes" to the insurance plan, except, it seems, to the Shanks. The money they won from the trucking company was set aside to use for long term care because Debbie needs full time care. Instead, Wal-Mart will put this money back in to their insurance plan.

Here's the story from the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

WASHINGTON — The family of a Missouri woman must reimburse Wal-Mart for nearly a half-million dollars in medical expenses now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review her case.

The court on Monday let stand a ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis requiring Debbie Shank of Cape Girardeau County to pay nearly $470,000 to Wal-Mart.

The appeal was the last legal recourse for the family of the 52-year-old Shank, a mother of three who was critically injured in a car accident eight years ago. She suffered a brain injury that took her memory and left her with very little ability to move or communicate. She has lived in a nursing home since she was released from the hospital.

"It's been kind of hard on us," Nathan Shank, Debbie Shank's 17-year-old son, said Monday when told about the court's decision.

Nathan Shank said that with her case in limbo, his mother already had lost a private caregiver and might be moved out of her private room in the nursing home.

According to legal documents, Shank's medical bills — totaling $469,216 — were covered by a health insurance program at Wal-Mart, where Shank worked nights stocking shelves.

Her family later settled a lawsuit with the trucking company whose driver was involved in the accident. After attorneys' fees and expenses, $417,477 was put in a trust for Shank's care. That settlement money, plus $51,739 that Shank will have to pay out of pocket, must be paid to Wal-Mart.

As is common for employer-sponsored health plans, Shank's insurance required full repayment of medical expenses if she received money from a lawsuit.

Daphne Moore, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the company sued "out of fairness to everyone who contributes" to the plan.

"This is a tragic situation," Moore said. "The reality is that the health plan is required to protect its assets so that it can pay future claims for other associates and their family members."

The Supreme Court gave no explanation for its decision.

Imagine your spouse dying and their employer collecting thousands of dollars because of it. Wouldn't you be angry? Especially if you hadn't known their employer might benefit from their death? For many spouses of Wal-Mart employees, this happened. Recently a lawsuit against the company was thrown out of court because of a technicality, but Wal-Mart paid nearly $15 million because of the 350,000 secret claims they had.

Here's the story from the St. Petersburg Times:

A federal judge has dismissed a Hillsborough County man's lawsuit against Wal-Mart over a life insurance claim the company received when the man's wife died.

Friday, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. dismissed the suit filed by Richard Armatrout, because it failed to reach the $75,000 threshold for a civil complaint to go before a federal judge.

When Karen Armatrout, 50, died of cancer in 1997, Wal-Mart collected $72,820.30 from an insurance policy the retail giant had in her name. Armatrout's husband sued, saying the couple never knew about the policy and he received none of the payout.

Armatrout's attorney argued the lawsuit exceeded the $75,000 limit if punitive damages were included.

Karen Armatrout worked at a Wal-Mart pharmacy on Waters Avenue in Tampa and took a leave of absence when doctors diagnosed her with cancer.

Michael D. Myers, a Texas attorney representing Richard Armatrout, said Monday he anticipated the case would be thrown out because of the technicality. Before Moody's ruling, Myers filed Armatrout's lawsuit in Pasco County, along with a similar case for Pasco resident Wayne Atkinson. Myers said Wal-Mart also collected on a policy when Atkinson's wife, Rita, died.

Myers estimates Wal-Mart secretly insured about 350,000 employees for two years beginning in 1993. Wal-Mart officials said they dropped the policies by the start of 2000.

He has won settlements against Wal-Mart in Texas and Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, a judge approved a $5.1-million class-action settlement in a case brought by the estates of deceased Wal-Mart employees. A $10-million settlement was reached in Texas.

Myers is waiting to see if a Pasco County judge will grant his motion to give Armatrout's case class-action status for similar estate claims in Florida.

After the Consumerist published their story about a customer being held in a Wal-Mart because he didn't show his receipt, letters poured in of others who had similar experiences. Here's one they published that's particularly interesting. Perhaps this is why Wal-Mart ranks last in consumer satisfaction. Here's the letter from a customer who wasn't allowed to leave the store, even though a manager was there with him, holding his purchase:

Here's a basic run down of my WalMart experience from this past Saturday in Memphis, TN. I went there to buy 1)firearm, 2)ammunition for firearm, and 3)groceries. I knew the firearm would take the longest so I went to the sporting goods counter first with the intent of buying the firearm and ammunition back there and groceries up front ( I had produce). I was going to have my initial purchase in its own basket and flow through the self check out with my groceries. While waiting for the government approval to buy the firearm, I gathered my groceries and the ammunition. The cashier, who really was nice and pleasant, kept telling me it would be just another five minutes and to wait instead of going up front and buying my groceries. After an hour the approval came through so a manager was called to complete the sale. We waited 15 minutes for Assistant Manager Ladarrel to show up. He checks the paperwork then tells me he can't ring the ammunition up with the firearm. I would have to take them to the car and come back. Since I had already spent an hour waiting so far and no one in sporting goods bothered to point out that store policy, I decided I would just buy the ammunition at another time. I already had to wait in 2 separate lines. I didn't want to make it 3. Ladarrel sells me the firearm. I give him cash. He gives me a receipt. He then says it is store policy that he escorts the firearm out of the store. So he, holding the box with the firearm, follows me and my shopping cart to the front of the store. When I walk to a check out line he tells me he has to escort the firearm out of the store immediately and I would have to take the firearm to my car and come back to buy the groceries. I explained I could not secure or even hide the firearm in my car so once I put the box in my car I was leaving. He insisted I could not buy my groceries at that time. So, we abandoned the cart and went to the door. When he reaches the door checker, he, still holding my purchased firearm, stops and tells me to show them my receipt. I say that I don't do that. He says it's store policy. I explain that it's my policy not to show my receipts unless absolutely necessary. Soon another man who apparently is in charge of the front joins in and insists that unless I show my receipt I can't have my firearm. I try to explain that not only did I give cash to Assistant Manager Ladarrel AND he gave me a receipt of sale AND he has been in complete possession of the firearm since the sale; he escorted me from the back of the store to where we were standing. At no time had I been in possession of my merchandise. He knew he had sold me the merchandise and he knew I was the owner at that time. It was useless. We argued for about 10 minutes. It all came down to their saying that unless I showed proof of ownership the merchandise was not mine. I insisted that not only did Ladarrel know I owned the merchandise so he was illegally in retaining possession of it; the proof was located in the records they are required to keep for a firearm sale; records that Ladarrel had personally verified for accuracy. Finally, I said I wanted to return the item. They insisted that without a receipt I could only get store credit. I told them that I paid cash and I would get cash. We walked to the sporting goods counter and they easily printed a copy of the receipt from the register. I received my cash back and they kept the firearm. I left and went to a grocery store and a sporting goods store. All in all, I would have spent over $450 at WalMart but other companies received my business. Patrick

In January, an investigative reporter from St. Louis station KMOV went undercover and found that Wal-Mart was throwing away a huge amount of food that had reached its sell-by date, but was still perfectly safe to eat. The station recently learned that this is official Wal-Mart corporate policy. Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri and Representative Jo Ann Emerson have written letters to Lee Scott telling him to donate the food to pantries and soup kitchens. Check out the report!

Wal-Mare is being sued once again. This time, it's not for gender discrimination or forcing employees to work off the clock. This time it's for refusing to help a customer when his three year old daughter was molested in a Wal-Mart! Following is the full story from the OC Register:

A Stanton father is suing Wal-Mart alleging that store managers in the Westminster outlet failed to protect or help his then 3-year-old daughter when she was being inappropriately touched by another man.

Tom Flood said in his civil complaint that he had to follow John Anderson, whom police later arrested on suspicion of a lewd act with a minor in connection with the incident.

Anderson reportedly touched and rubbed the girl's lower back and caressed her hair even as her father was standing a few feet away picking out Cinderella towels for her bathroom, Flood said in the suit.

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said Thursday that he could not comment about pending litigation.

"But we try very hard to ensure a safe and secure environment for our customers and associates,'' he said.

Flood filed the complaint in Orange County Superior Court last month. Wal-Mart has not yet been served with the lawsuit.

Flood claims in the suit that during the May 19 incident he asked the store's manager to call the police, but the manager refused. The manager also told Flood that Anderson was the brother of an employee, the lawsuit states. Flood was forced to follow Anderson around the store with his daughter seated in the shopping cart, crying, until police arrived and arrested Anderson, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that Wal-Mart among other things, failed to: contact authorities; help a distraught customer; supervise Anderson despite knowledge of his conduct with Flood's daughter; and maintain a safe environment for its customers.

Anderson is awaiting trial and has also been named as a defendant in Flood's lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages in excess of $25,000.

Flood, a single father, said that his daughter has suffered emotionally because of this incident.

"She is scared every time we drive by Wal-Mart or go in there," he said. "She is afraid to hug other kids in pre-school. I just feel like she's lost her innocence because of what happened to her."
When his daughter gets scared, he tries to assure her that he would be there to protect her.

"But she tells me, 'But you didn't, daddy,'" he said. "And that's been really hard for me."

Flood's attorney, Philip Putman, said he has seen an increase in civil molestation cases over the last 20 years.

"There just seem to be more and more predators and it happens way too often," he said. "Parents and guardians must completely avoid contact with strangers and be very careful when they are in a public place."

When The Consumerist heard that there were shirts at Wal-Mart with a design that was an exact replica of a Nazi symbol, they started 'Wal-Mart Nazi T-Shirt Watch' and we're not on week 62. The design itself is certainly appalling, but the consumerist has a point: why can't Wal-Mart seem to get rid of these things? What else can't they get rid of? Here's the article:

Walmart Nazi Tshirt Watch: Week 62

When you thought all of the Walmart tshirts bearing the exact replica of an infamous Nazi symbol were recalled, or sold to a discount store and burned, a Walmart in Palmdale, California has them on sale for $3.00 a pop. 62 weeks after Walmart pledged to remove the shirts from its shelves, and 50 weeks after getting a letter from Congress demanding the shirts removal, they're still out there. If they can't get rid of a simple tshirt, how good are they at recalling toys, defective merchandise, and dangerous food?

An investigative report found that while other grocery stores were donating food they didn't sell to local food pantries, Wal-Mart has been throwing their unsold food in the trash. Watch the report here!

This year, we expect that millions of homes will be lit with Christmas lights, the perennial holiday favorite. Like most Americans, I can't help but to smile when I see families quadrupling their electricity bills just to spread a little bit of holiday cheer.

If your family purchased Christmas lights from Wal-Mart, you're in for even more surprises than the ones wrapped up under the tree. How about the risk of lead poisoning, for starters?

CNN just released an article about high lead content in several brands of Christmas lights. Topping the list of dangerous decorations, and hardly a surprise to us, is Wal-Mart's offering. Here the quote from CNN.com.

Wal-Mart brand lights had the highest levels of surface lead, with levels ranging from 86.6 to 132.7 micrograms. GE lights showed surface lead levels from 68 to 109.1 micrograms. Sylvania had surface lead levels from 59 to 70.3 micrograms. Levels of surface lead in the lights made by Philips ranged from a low of 3.2 -- well under the 15 microgram limit -- to 107.2 in another sample.

According to CNN, Wal-Mart's product contains about 9 times the 15 microgram limit for lead content. These Christmas lights are so dangerous, CNN reports, that gloves are required while handling them. Additionally, the lights should be kept out of the reach of children.

If you think something is wrong here, you're not alone. We have spent this holiday season campaigning for Wal-Mart to take responsibility for their their part in America's product safety crisis. Already, our supporters are well on their way toward 10,000 letters to the US Senate, all calling for hearings on Wal-Mart's negative effect on product safety in America.

Let's make stories like this one history. Hold Wal-Mart responsible for the unsafe products they sell by signing our letter to the US Senate.

The Holidays are here! Around the country, people are beginning to decorate their homes and trim the Christmas Tree. Many Americans have fond memories of trimming the tree with their families. No one would ever think this time-honored tradition could threaten their health.

Neither did Juanita Hargas, a Texas woman who recently purchased a Christmas Tree from Wal-Mart. While setting it up, she was shocked to find a warning label which stated that the product contains dangerous amounts of lead, which can cause cancer. Understandably, she was outraged and so are we. For more, check out this story from WJBF News

Open the box...and a Christmas surprise...a Texas woman finds a warning about cancer!

Juanita Hargas, "I was just angry, just angry, because cancer is an ugly thing."

Juanita Hirgas bought this pre-lit tree at Wal-Mart...she was putting it together...when she came across a tag she thought was just an electrical warning.

Hirgas, "But then I saw the word cancer...I thought, 'I better read this.'"

The warning reads: Caution...Cancer...lead...wash hands..."

The warning lets consumers know about hazardous chemicals...but businesses aren't required to put it on their labels.

We contacted Wal-Mart twice...and as of our deadline...we heard no response.

Hirgas, "I took it back, I did not want that tree in my house, and risk exposing my family and myself to lead."

Juanita, herself, is in remission from cancer. What's worse, she was putting up this tree with her 2-year-old granddaughter.

Hirgas, "To me, it's like putting a snake in the same room with you and saying, 'well, it may bite you, it may not.'"

The product is made in China...and with the several recent recalls of Chinese-made products containing lead...Juanita has made up her mind.

Hirgas, "I'm not going to buy anything made from China."

When Wal-Mart does business in Illinois, they ought to pay taxes in Illinois, right? In reality, through a convoluted arrangement, Wal-Marts in Illinois are actually owned by an Italian real estate company and thus pay no income tax in the state. The arrangement has slashed its Illinois tax bill by millions of dollars. Now the state is fighting back. For more, check out this article from The Wall Street Journal:

More than 4,500 miles separate a small Wal-Mart Stores Inc. office in Florence, Italy, from the company's dozens of Illinois retail outlets. But thanks to a convoluted tax arrangement, court records show, Wal-Mart's Italian operation has helped the giant retailer cut its state tax bill in Illinois by millions of dollars a year.

Wal-Mart set its affairs so that its Italian outpost is the only operating unit of a real-estate subsidiary that controls billions of dollars of the retailer's property in Illinois and other states. Because technically its only employees are based in Italy, the real-estate unit claims its operations are foreign, exempt from Illinois corporate income taxes.

Earlier this year, the Illinois Department of Revenue objected to the Italian tax maneuver, demanding $26.4 million in back taxes, interest and penalties. Wal-Mart paid the amount in dispute and then sued the state for a refund, according to a complaint filed in May in Illinois Circuit Court in Springfield, Ill.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to comment beyond a prepared statement: "We have a disagreement with the state of Illinois over our tax liability last year, and we've asked a judge to resolve that for us." He declined to explain why Italy was chosen as the home of this particular foreign operation or whether Wal-Mart has other such arrangements.

The dispute with Wal-Mart is part of a wider effort by some states to crack down on what they believe is abusive use of so-called 80/20 companies. These companies are domestic subsidiaries that conduct at least 80% of their business overseas. States typically don't tax income from outside the U.S., and many companies have used 80/20 subsidiaries to legitimately shield foreign operations from state taxation.

But authorities in several states have challenged a number of companies over the 80/20 units, claiming the structure was improperly used to shift income away from the purview of state taxing authorities.

The misuse of 80/20 companies is "shocking to the conscience," said Brian Hamer, director of the Illinois Department of Revenue. "These kinds of manipulations clearly were never contemplated by the state legislatures," added Mr. Hamer, who wouldn't comment on any single company or legal case. "It ought to have been clear to businesses that this was highly questionable conduct."

Illinois tax authorities are in a dispute with Mc Donald?'s Corp. over nearly $11 million stemming from its use of an 80/20 subsidiary. Details are sketchy, but Mc Donald?'s, based in Oak Brook, Ill., says in court papers that a Delaware financing unit that owns restaurants in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, conducts 80% or more of its business activity outside the U.S., exempting its operations from being included in Illinois tax calculations.

Minnesota, BNSF Wrangle

Meanwhile, Minnesota tax authorities are taking issue with interest payments made by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. to a pair of Delaware subsidiaries doing business in Canada. The railway company deducted the interest associated with the payments but didn't pay taxes on most of the income received by the subsidiaries. The state's revenue department says in an audit report that this was "done purely for tax avoidance purposes." The Fort Worth, Texas, company paid a disputed $4 million in back taxes and interest and sued the state in May for a refund.

A Mc Donald?'s spokeswoman said: "We believe the results of our business have been properly reported to the state of Illinois." A Burlington Northern spokesman declined to comment.
At the prodding of the Illinois revenue department, that state's legislature in 2004 passed a law essentially shutting down the abusive use of 80/20 units. The Minnesota state legislature enacted one change in 2005 and has considered several other bills since then to shut down alleged abuse of the structure.
States Crack Down

Wal-Mart's Italian tax-planning maneuver is the latest disclosure of a strategy by the firm to cut state taxes. A page-one article in The Wall Street Journal in February focused on how the Bentonville, Ark., retailer cut taxes in some states by paying rent to a real-estate investment trust it owned, even though the money never left the firm.
That REIT strategy has been challenged by tax authorities in several sates; some have enacted laws to close the REIT structure since the Journal article.

However, the REIT tax structure saved money only in some states -- those that tax income solely from operations within their borders. This taxation system, known as "separate reporting," can make it simpler for companies to shift income out of state to tax-friendly jurisdictions such as Delaware or Nevada.

But "combined reporting" states such as Illinois are much tougher. They add together all profits of a company's domestic operations, regardless of what state they are in, and then allocate a portion of those profits to their state. Theoretically, combined reporting makes it harder for companies to shift income to more advantageous locales.

Because Illinois rules apply only to domestic profits -- not world-wide income -- companies can get around the rules by figuring out ways to effectively shift income overseas.

Wal-Mart's 80/20 structure worked like this: The company first transferred its Illinois stores to its in-house REI Ts?, paid rent to the REI Ts? and then deducted those payments from its taxes. The REI Ts?, in turn, paid that money to their 99% owner, a Wal-Mart unit based in Delaware.

Ordinarily, Illinois's combined-reporting rules wouldn't permit a company to cut its taxes by shifting income to a Delaware unit. But in late 2001, Wal-Mart formed a Delaware subsidiary called WMGS Services LLC, records show. WMGS, with offices in Florence, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart Property Co., which also was 99% owner of Wal-Mart's main REIT.

In its filing, Wal-Mart contends that Property Co.'s ownership of the Italian unit converted Property Co. into an 80/20 company. In other words, at least 80% of its employees and its property were overseas, exempting its income from taxes.

Though Property Co. is the 99% owner of the REIT -- which owns dozens of stores in Illinois -- Wal-Mart says Property Co. owns no real estate itself. And although Wal-Mart has more than 48,000 employees in Illinois, the firm contends Property Co. has no employees in the state, either.

The only employees of Property Co. were in Italy, the company says. Property Co. was set up to own the majority of the shares of Wal-Mart's main REIT and has no employees anywhere, Wal-Mart has said in court records elsewhere. (In its court filing in Illinois, Wal-Mart says that WMGS's employees and property were in Turin, Italy; an official with the company in Florence and a Wal-Mart spokesman in the U.S. say the company doesn't have an office in Turin.)

WMGS employs 22 people at its office in central Florence, according to a company official who answered the door there on a recent weekday morning. The office is responsible for procuring merchandise from around Europe, he said. Wal-Mart has no stores in Italy.

Our latest press release:

Washington, DC - Wal-Mart, the #1 importer of Chinese products, today was forced to remove from its shelves a toy, Aqua Dots, that it had previously listed as one of its "Top 12 Toys of Christmas." Like 70 percent of products on Wal-Mart shelves, Aqua Dots were made in a Chinese factory. These toys were recalled because they contain a chemical that converts into the date rape drug GHB when ingested.

In an October 1, 2007 Wal-Mart press release touting Aqua Dots as a top buy for Christmas, a Wal-Mart spokesman said, "You really cant go wrong with any of these toys... Mom wants price, convenience and safety, and with our Toy Safety Net program underway, we feel confident delivering on all three this upcoming holiday season."

The Aqua Dots recall is just the latest in a series of more than 20 Chinese-made products, ranging from lead-laced toy cars to poisonous pet food - that were so dangerous they had to be pulled from Wal-Marts shelves. Of the other 11 toys on Wal-Marts Top Toys for Christmas list, all were made in communist China - a country that exploits workers, violates human rights, and fills American shelves with dangerous and deadly products.

"Today's recall reveals the huge holes in Wal-Mart's 'safety net' testing program. It also raises real concerns about the safety of the other 11 Chinese-made toys Wal-Mart is promoting this Christmas," said WakeUpWalMart.com spokeswoman Meghan Scott. "That one of Wal-Mart's top 12 toys slipped through the company's cracks is shocking. It suggests that Wal-Mart is still more concerned with public relations than public safety. As the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart must do better. It has the economic power and duty to protect American consumers and demand higher quality from its Chinese suppliers."

In Bentonville, Christmas apparently starts in October.

Yesterday, without a shred of irony, Wal-Mart announced the official commencement of the "Christmas season." Yes, on Halloween... the holiday with the least possible amount of Christmas spirit. I'm not sure Santa would approve of that.

Of course, Wal-Mart is desperate to get holiday shoppers into their stores a little early this year. But savvy consumers will want to think twice before shopping at a company that imports 70% of its merchandise from China. Check out this bit of news from our friends at the Consumerist:

Consumerist's ongoing lead recall tally has reached 14,431,550 products recalled just for lead in the first 10 months of 2007.

That's right, almost 14.5 million products have been recalled this year for lead alone, and you can expect more to come. When you think of lead poisoning and dangerous products, you may well think of Wal-Mart. Many of the recalled items are cheap, Chinese-made toys from Wal-Mart's shelves, like the recently recalled "sets of realistic-looking farm animals, jungle animals and dinosaurs."

So, there's a bit of food for thought for holiday shoppers. Unsafe products are never a good deal.

This one is truly hard to believe. According to this invoice, Wal-Mart paid over $2 million to Ernst & Young to develop an aggressive state-tax minimization strategy. These dodgy tactics have left up to $2.5 billion in unpaid taxes owed to state governments. Read the WSJ article to learn more, along with our related press release.

In May 2001, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. issued an appeal to big accounting firms: Find us creative new ways to cut our state tax bills.

Ernst & Young LLP swung into action. Senior tax experts at the big accounting firm swapped ideas via email and in a series of meetings. At least one gathering, according to an internal Ernst & Young calendar, took place in Wal-Mart's headquarters in the "Tax Shelter Room."

Wal-Mart decided to hire Ernst & Young to help devise complex tax strategies to use in at least four big states. The accounting firm, for example, helped Wal-Mart take tax deductions in California for dividends it never actually paid. And in Texas, Ernst & Young advised, the giant retailer could exploit a wrinkle in the tax law involving limited partners from out-of-state -- a maneuver subsequently shut down by the state's legislature.

Big companies hardly ever discuss how outside accountants, lawyers and investment bankers help them cut their tax bills. But Ernst & Young's contributions to Wal-Mart's state-tax minimization project are outlined in a raft of documents filed in recent months in North Carolina state court, where the state's attorney general is challenging a Wal-Mart tax-cutting structure involving real-estate investment trusts. The material, which includes company emails and memos, provides a rare window into accountants' role in generating tax-reduction ideas at one major company.

Companies often assert that tax savings are simply happy byproducts of transactions pursued for other business reasons. But documents from the North Carolina case indicate that Wal-Mart, from the outset, had one primary purpose: cutting its state income taxes. Ernst & Young worked to fulfill that goal. In 2002, for example, the accounting firm delivered a 37-page proposal laying out a smorgasbord of 27 potential tax strategies, most tailored to a particular state's tax code. It described one of them as "a very aggressive strategy with considerable risk."

Lawmakers and law-enforcement officials have taken a keen interest in tax advice provided by the Big Four accounting firms and other consultants. In August, U.S. Senate investigators sent letters to at least 30 companies asking for details of potentially aggressive tax arrangements, including the names of tax professionals and law firms that advised on the deals. In May, four current and former Ernst & Young partners were indicted for their tax-shelter work. Two years ago, KPMG LLP agreed to pay $456 million to settle government charges that it promoted abusive shelters to individual taxpayers.

Publicly traded companies reduced their federal income taxes by about $12 billion in 2004 through potentially abusive tax transactions, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Some experts say companies save far more than that each year through elaborate tax-cutting maneuvers.

A Wal-Mart spokesman, citing ongoing litigation, declined to comment on any of the tax work by Ernst & Young, which also set up the tax maneuver that North Carolina has challenged. In court papers, Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart has said that some transactions implemented by Ernst & Young were intended to cut taxes, but also to more efficiently manage its real estate and potentially help raise capital. A spokesman for Ernst & Young says the tax deals for Wal-Mart "occurred years ago when such tax structures were not uncommon."

Cookie-Cutter Shelters

Tax-enforcement authorities often regard complex corporate transactions that serve no business purpose other than to reduce taxes to be improper tax shelters. In recent years, authorities have cracked down on cookie-cutter tax shelters mass marketed by accounting and law firms. But these days, it is common for advisers to help large companies such as Wal-Mart to develop individually tailored tax-cutting strategies, according to people who work on such deals.

Wal-Mart's 2001 letter to accounting firms got right to the point. It began: "Wal-Mart is requesting your proposal(s) for professional tax advice and related implementation services in connection with minimization of state income taxes in the following states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania."

State income-tax rates for corporations average about 6.9%, and come on top of a federal statutory rate of 35%. Tax rates vary from state to state, and some states have no corporate tax at all on certain income. That provides ample opportunity for so-called tax arbitrage, in which companies allocate expenses and revenues between states in order to minimize taxes owed. That practice has been going on for decades. Some such strategies are perfectly legal. The government considers others to be abusive. States often try to crack down, but the tax-enforcement staffs of many states are smaller than the tax departments of some big companies.

Wal-Mart set aside about $526 million for state and local income taxes last year, not including its substantial property-tax bills, according to the company's financial reports. But its various state tax-cutting strategies seem to have had an impact. On average, Wal-Mart has paid taxes at a rate equal to about half of the average statutory state rate over the past decade, according to an analysis of the company's regulatory filings by Standard & Poor's Compustat.

Wal-Mart has switched state income-tax strategies several times over the past 15 years, coming up with new approaches as states attack existing ones, court records show. In the early 1990s, it employed an "intangibles holding company," a unit operating in tax-friendly Delaware into which it transferred ownership of its brand names such as Sam's Club. It then made payments to that unit for use of those brands, deducting them as expenses from its taxable income in other states, according to court records. That strategy fell out of favor after several states successfully challenged Wal-Mart and other companies in court over the maneuver.

About a decade ago, Wal-Mart adopted another approach, following advice from Ernst & Young. Wal-Mart transferred ownership of its stores to various in-house real-estate investment trusts. REITs pay no corporate income tax as long as they pay out at least 90% of their income to shareholders as dividends, which are usually taxed. Wal-Mart paid tax-deductible rent to those REITs. For one four-year period, the setup saved the retailer an estimated $230 million on its tax bill, even though the rent payments never left the company.

That strategy was the focus of a Wall Street Journal article in February. Since then, at least six states, including New York, Illinois, Maryland and Rhode Island, have passed laws attempting to prohibit the maneuver, which also has been used by banks and other retailers such as AutoZone Inc. The practice is being challenged by tax authorities in at least four other states, court records show.

After Wal-Mart hired the firm in 1996 to implement the REIT strategy, an Ernst & Young tax executive urged his team to be discreet, according to a staff memo included in North Carolina court records. "We don't think there is much the state taxing authorities can do to mitigate these savings to Wal-Mart, however some states might attempt something if they had advance notification," he wrote. "We think the best course of action is to keep the project relatively quiet....there just seems to be too many opportunities for it to get out to the press or financial community and we all know they are difficult to control, particularly when we are dealing with a client as well-known as Wal-Mart."

David Bullington, Wal-Mart's vice president for tax policy, said in a deposition that he began feeling pressure to lower the company's effective tax rate after the current chief financial officer, Thomas Schoewe, was hired in 2000. Mr. Schoewe was familiar with "some very sophisticated and aggressive tax planning," Mr. Bullington said, according to a transcript of the deposition, taken by the North Carolina attorney general's office in July. "And he ride herds [sic] on us all the time that we have the world's highest tax rate of any major company."

Compared with many other large multinational companies, Wal-Mart has a small presence in foreign countries with low tax rates, reducing opportunities to shift income overseas for tax purposes.

The May 2001 invitation to provide advice came from Wal-Mart's then senior director for income tax, Wyman Atwell. Most of the states he named in the letter had provisions in their tax codes that prevented the REIT strategy from easily providing tax benefits, according to several people familiar with the matter.

In addition to advising Wal-Mart on tax issues, Ernst & Young served as its outside auditor, which meant that its accountants had to pass judgment on advice rendered by colleagues who did the tax work. That's permissible for accounting firms, so long as tax-consulting fees aren't contingent on a client's tax savings. Rules instituted in 2005 prohibit accounting firms from pitching certain types of "aggressive" tax structures to audit clients. An Ernst & Young spokesman said the work for Wal-Mart "complied fully with the independence rules at the time regarding tax advice provided to audit clients."

'Domestic Restructuring'

As Ernst & Young worked on its proposals, one high-ranking tax partner sent an email to a colleague addressing a concern often faced by companies: how to describe a tax-driven transaction in a way that won't create problems later on with tax authorities. "You asked if we have a document that details how the tax savings will work, how much they will save....We really don't have anything like that except for the sales document, partly because we have avoided calling this a 'tax' project, to show that we did not have a tax savings motivation, rather it is a 'domestic restructuring' project," he wrote.

That November, Ernst & Young sent Wal-Mart an "engagement letter" to confirm the scope of its work to cut the company's state tax burden. The letter said the accounting firm's fees would be at least $2.5 million, with potential additional fees to be determined later.

California was a key state for Ernst & Young's project. Its tax system is among the most stringent in the country. Many states only tax income from operations within their own borders -- called the separate-reporting method -- which makes it easier for companies to shift taxable income out of reach of tax authorities in those states. But "combined reporting" states such as California total up all profits of a company's domestic or world-wide operations, regardless of what state they're in, then allocate a portion of those profits to their states.

Ernst & Young dreamed up a novel way to sidestep combined-reporting requirements in California. It used an unusual type of dividend to transfer income from one subsidiary to another in such a way that the second unit wouldn't be taxed.

Here's how it worked: When REITs pay dividends to their shareholders, they can deduct those payments from their taxable income. The federal government permits REITs to take deductions for dividends before they're actually paid -- a provision intended to give them extra time to make payments. Such dividends are called "consent dividends" because the recipients must consent to record the unpaid dividends as taxable income.

Ernst & Young argued that California law permitted REITs to deduct such consent dividends, but that the state law didn't also require recipients of the consent dividends to count them as taxable income, according to one person who worked on the transactions. The accounting firm proposed a strategy in which the Wal-Mart REIT would claim a tax deduction for paying consent dividends to its parent, but the unit receiving the dividends wouldn't record them as income for tax purposes. The bottom line: Wal-Mart could reduce its taxable income in California by an amount equal to the total consent dividend payments it recorded, thereby cutting its tax bill.

Two years later, California's Franchise Tax Board, the state's income-tax agency, put the strategy on its list of "Abusive Tax Shelters." Wal-Mart's Mr. Bullington said in his deposition that California tax authorities have protested various tax benefits taken by the retailer since 1998. California also is in litigation with a big bank, City National Corp., over a similar strategy.

Out-of-State Partner

In Texas, Ernst & Young helped Wal-Mart set up a somewhat more common tax-cutting vehicle. Under Texas law at the time, a limited partner from out of state was exempt from Texas's corporate franchise tax. As a result, scores of companies, including Wal-Mart, reorganized their Texas operations into limited partnerships. The general partner, which was subject to state taxation, was typically a subsidiary based in Texas. But the limited partner, often owning as much as 99.9% of the entity, would be based in Delaware or another tax-friendly state. The result: up to 99.9% of the profits of the Texas operation would flow to that out-of-state limited partner, making that income tax-free.

Texas's state legislature eliminated that option when it revamped its tax laws earlier this year.

Wal-Mart also agreed to buy other complex tax shelters from Ernst & Young to cut taxes in Arizona and Michigan, the court documents show. One Ernst & Young document said Wal-Mart would cut its state income taxes by about $18 million, although that document didn't make clear the time period or the states included in that figure.

In August 2002, Ernst & Young proffered the new list of 27 additional tax-cutting approaches. It isn't clear if Wal-Mart adopted any of them. One of the proposals was accompanied by the following warning: "Note that in a 'post-Enron' environment and amidst the focus on 'tax haven' operations, this strategy is expected to get more scrutiny by the IRS, as well as some states."

As for Wal-Mart's "Tax Shelter Room," North Carolina officials asked Mr. Bullington about the odd name. In his deposition, the Wal-Mart vice president said the moniker was "a bit of a pun," stemming from the conference room's use by tax-department employees to conduct safety drills for natural disasters such as tornadoes.

Wal-Mart, he said, no longer has a room by that name.

The recent Good Jobs First study on Wal-Mart's systematic property tax appeals has caused quite a stir in the media. Al Norman picked up the issue for the Huffington Post, sharing some of his insights on Wal-Mart's dubious tax appeal strategy. Here are a few of the highlights.

Property assessment disputes pit Wal-Mart's legal team against local assessors. Such battles are an intimidating financial club wielded by Wal-Mart to lower its cost of doing business. If local assessors balk at giving relief, Wal-Mart just takes their case to a state appellate board, tying up local staff and resources.

A colleague of mine says that all major corporations try to push down their property tax costs. "I sit on a tax board of review in small town," he writes. "The Wal-Mart landlord came in last year to appeal their assessment. Long story short -- he is 'connected' to local family of businessmen who presented us with an appeal 'we can't refuse.' Wal-Mart never stepped foot inside that meeting. They came in without an appointment and walked out as the only business to get their assessment lowered. They presented no evidence other than they just wanted to have it lowered. It came down to my vote to break the tie. I voted for it because the assessor recommended we do so. It came down to a matter of $20,000 of tax breaks a year for Wal-Mart. It would cost $20,000 of village funds to fight them in an appeal. We all knew that voting no could mean a world of hurt for us personally. It makes it so someone doesn't even want to serve on these boards."

This coming year, as many as several hundred communities will receive such a visit from Wal-Mart's lawyers regarding a tax abatement. But enthusiasm for Wal-Mart at the local level continues unabated. Four weeks ago, when Wal-Mart opened up its new supercenter in the small southern Oregon community of Eagle Point, Mayor Leon Sherman was front and center at the ribbon cutting. "We've been working for three or four years to get this supercenter," the Mayor said, "and we're really happy that they're here. Not only will the store bring extra jobs, but it will also provide an additional tax base for the city as well as the school district."

Mayor Sherman is in for a big, supercenter surprise.

Don't miss the rest of this article, you can read it in its entirety here.

In 2005, a pregnant Wal-Mart worker in Fayetteville, Arkansas was denied the use of a stool because, according to her manager, "“it did not look good.” She later quit, citing health risks to her and her child. She recently reached a settlement with Wal-Mart. For more, check out this artilce from The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A settlement has been reached in a federal lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. over claims that a female employee’s supervisors failed to meet her medical needs during a problematic pregnancy. Terms of the out-of-court agreement were not released in court documents Thursday. The sides signed a confidentiality agreement, said Judith Rebecca Hass, attorney for Maggie Collins, a former customer service manager at Wal-Mart Supercenter No. 144, 2875 W. Sixth St. in Fayetteville.

The lawsuit, filed in September 2006 in U. S. District Court in Fayetteville, claimed Collins’ former bosses told her she couldn’t use a stool at work because “it did not look good.”

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, didn’t dispute that Collins wasn’t allowed to sit on a stool to do her work. The retail giant instead argued that Collins stated no “cognizable legal claim under any theory, and she is unable to point to a disputed material fact such that a reasonable jury could find in her favor.”

Wal-Mart also argued that other pregnant employees were not treated more favorably, and that she was an at-will employee.

Collins, who had worked for the company since July 2004, suffered a miscarriage in 2005 and was having problems with a second pregnancy when she asked her supervisor if she could sit on a stool do to her work.
Collins quit her job in late 2005 “rather than endanger the health and life of her unborn child,” court records show.

Hardly! The new study by Good Jobs First shows how Wal-Mart Rolls Back Property Tax Payments by aggressively pursuing property tax reassessments. Here are a few excerpts today's press release:

The first-ever investigation of Wal-Mart's local property tax records finds that the retail giant systematically seeks to minimize its payment of taxes that support public schools and other vital government services. That is the key finding of Rolling Back Property Tax Payments, a report released today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center in Washington, DC. The full text is available at www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/walmartproptax.pdf

"Wal-Mart, a company with $350 billion in annual revenues and $11 billion in profits, drains vitally needed funds from communities by regularly challenging the valuation put on its properties by public officials," said Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First and principal author of the report. "When the company succeeds in one of these challenges, it diminishes the funds available to pay for education, police and fire protection, and other essential services provided by local governments."

In some cases, Wal-Mart has drained hundreds of thousands of dollars from local governments through aggressive tax appeals.

In 2004 Wal-Mart proposed that the assessment of its distribution center in Tomah, Wisconsin be lowered from $43.6 million to $23 million. The city resisted, but Wal-Mart persisted. This year the matter was finally settled, with the city agreeing to drop the assessment to $31.4 million and refund the company more than $300,000 for each of three years--a total of $949,000.

Wal-Mart has filed 11 separate challenges at its distribution center in the northern California city of Red Bluff. The company first appealed for the years 1994-1996 but got no change. It then appealed for the years 1997-2002 and reached agreement on changes for each year, achieving total savings of $644,000--a substantial amount but much less than what Wal-Mart was seeking. The company returned with appeals for 2005 and 2006 and recouped another $150,000.

In 2003 Wal-Mart succeeded in getting the real property assessment of its Supercenter on East Hampden Avenue in the Denver suburb of Aurora reduced from about $22 million to $9.6 million. This brought the company tax savings of $456,000.

Even when local governments defeat a Wal-Mart appeal entirely, there still may be substantial costs for the community. Assessors told us of major cases in which they had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on outside lawyers, appraisers and other consultants to prepare their defense.

Also, check out WalMartSubsidyWatch.com for a searchable database of Wal-Mart's tax appeals.

A mother in Utah was cooking lunch for her sons when she found a mouse head in her can of green beans. Where did she buy them? You guessed it, Wal-Mart. For more, check out this outrageous story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An Arkansas company is offering $100 to a Utah woman who found a severed mouse head in a can of green beans if she pledges not to take legal action, but she's not biting. The letter from Allens Inc. of Siloam Springs, Ark., describes it as a "gesture of goodwill." Marianne Watson isn't interested.

"I won't sign it under any circumstances," she said.

Watson, 49, said she never wanted to take legal action.

She said she wants to "put enough media attention on them that they either withdraw those cans or do something other than what they're trying to do, which is shut me up."

Watson was cooking lunch for two sons Sunday when she said she found a severed mouse head in a can of Allens Cut Green Beans, which had been purchased at a Wal-Mart store in American Fork. Nothing was eaten.

Allens spokesman James Phillips said the mouse probably was picked up during the harvest and did not originate in the canning factory. He called it an isolated incident.

"We apologize as much as we can, but we also do everything known from a technology standpoint and personnel standpoint to prevent it from happening," he said. "But inevitably, occasionally, things like this occur."

A recall is not necessary, Phillips said Thursday.

"This would not reach the level of exposing people to illness because the product is rendered commercially sterile," he said in a phone interview. "Every can is cooked to a predetermined temperature and time."

Watson said she may have the mouse remnants and green beans tested. She has refused to return them to the company.

"I was thankful I had a little soup earlier because I couldn't eat after seeing that," she said.

Clean Water Action found that many retailers, notably Wal-Mart, are still selling toys with dangerous lead levels. From CNNMoney:

Tests conducted on some toys and other children's products sold recently at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys "R" Us stores were found to contain dangerously high levels of lead, consumer interest groups said Thursday.

The CWA said 11 of those toys - some of which were made out of vinyl - contained lead, including two that contained "extremely high levels of lead."

Sadly, testing for lead content is not rocket science. It's no more complicated than a simple point and click. With all the warnings and recalls, what excuse can there be for leaving these dangerous products on the shelves?

Connor said she used the NITON XRF analyzers handheld lead detector for the toy tests. Thermo Fisher Scientific, which manufactures the device, says Panasonic is among some big manufacturers that have used it to test for hazardous substances in product components.

Yesterday, Wal-Mart pulled 331,582 pounds of unsafe hamburger patties from its shelves. That's a lot of bad beef. Unfortunately, the recall came too late for an 18-year-old girl from Florida, who was allegedly sicked with E. Coli by the recalled meat.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc faces a lawsuit filed on behalf of an 18-year-old Fort Lauderdale, Fla., girl after she contracted an E. coli infection, allegedly caused by eating hamburger patties purchased from a Wal-Mart store, attorneys with the law firm of Shelden J. Schlesinger PA said Wednesday.

Wal-Mart representatives didn't have any immediate comment.

According to the suit, which says damages exceed $15,000, Samantha Safranek was allegedly hospitalized for three weeks and suffered kidney failure after eating a meat from a package of beef patties manufactured by Topps Meat C. LLC of Elizabeth, N.J., and purchased at a Wal-Mart store, attorneys said.

The plaintiff's lawyers said Topps Meat announced a recall Tuesday of 331,582 pounds of frozen beef patties.

Also, Wal-Mart announced it would remove the Topps burger products from its stores, the law firm said.

You can learn more about Wal-Mart's product safety record by reading our new report, Wal-Mart and China: How America’s #1 Company is Putting America’s Safety Second

Wal-Mart fired a woman in Chesapeake, Virginia, with a "mandatory no rehire" finding, for making funny pictures of management on her computer. For more on this ludicrous story, check out this entry from huffingtonpost.com

At Wal-Mart, one of the key personnel mantras is "respect for the individual." One Wal-Mart worker once told me, "I'm sure Wal-Mart respects the individual -- I just never met that individual." Any manager will tell you that you can judge a company by how it treats its front line workers. Here is the story of one Wal-Mart worker who got no respect.

Christine Knowels was a loyal Wal-Mart worker who lost her job, and wanted it back. She was hired by Wal-Mart in August of 2000, and worked for roughly seven years---all at the Wal-Mart supercenter #1841 in Chesapeake, Virginia. She was abruptly fired for "gross misconduct", with a "mandatory no rehire" finding. According to her store manager, "Christine displayed 13 potentially offensive pictures of the management team in the back hallway while on the clock. Christine used/took company resources (digital media/or photo copies off of company property without permission."

When Knowels went to file for unemployment compensation, the Virginia Employment Commission wrote up her case as follows: "Christine was discharged from her position with Wal-Mart for displaying photos of the management team that were considered to be potentially offensive. Christine reported that she had been told by the employee who was taking down the photos that she could have them. Christine used a program on her computer to make funny pictures and brought the altered pictures back to work the following day. Christine said she had done such pictures in the past and co-workers thought it was good for morale. Christine said no one had complained about them in the past and while she was putting up the pictures on the board a co-manager saw them and laughed. When Christine was let go she was asked if she had permission to take the pictures and told [the store manager] who was removing the pictures had told her it was ok to do with them what she wanted.

Christine did not feel the pictures were offensive, and did not mean for them to be taken that way. Christine said she signed off on Wal-Mart's separation form as she was very upset and needed to get out of the office as she was sick when she heard the news of her discharge. Wal-Mart has said that Christine was discharged for putting up potentially offensive pictures of the management team on company time and for taking company property without permission. Wal-Mart has not provided any copy of the policy the claimant allegedly violated, or given any explanation on how the pictures were thought to be offensive.

Regarding claims of Christine taking the pictures without permission, she states that she had permission. The burden of proof lies with the employer to show evidence of misconduct. In this case, Wal-Mart has provided only a statement of why Christine was dischared. However, there is no documentation to show her actions were willful or deliberate, or amounted to the level of misconduct. The charge of misconduct in connection with employment is a matter to be taken very seriously in the instant case. While Christine may have shown poor judgment in what she did...such action cannot, in the opinion of the Deputy, be deemed misconduct. Accordingly, the claimant is Qualified for Benefits."

For her part, Knowels says her co-workers thought the pictures she created were a big hit. "I have done pictures of an associate, who works as ICS Lead and Truck Unload Leader. I have put lime green, bright yellow, hot pink, blue and purple different styled wigs on him in the pictures, they hung in grocery receiving for a few weeks. I also made him into Shrek by turning his skin all green, bulging out his eyes and elongating his ears. This picture hung at the time clock for at least a week. He wanted to take the pictures home for his kids."

On the day she was fired, Knowels says, "When I was called into the office, Mr. [E] was sitting there. He had already had the green sheet filled out and a copy of the surveillance CD, which was placed on top of his computer. Even after speaking with me about the pictures Mr.[E] just took the green sheet down off his computer top and asked me to sign it. He did not add any information I told him, or change anything to what I told him. He didn't correct what he wrote either. He had me fired before I got in the office."

Knowels says "the pictures in question were made to boost the moral of the store, make people laugh and have a good time, because several associates have been saying we are not allowed to have any fun anymore and the morale is gone. Let me just say that I have been making these type of pictures...for as long as I have been working for Wal-Mart and no one told me I couldn't do it or that it was harassment, nor did I think it to be as such. I have had several people ask me to make their pictures or their kids picture, which I have done also. If I felt it would of hurt anyone's feelings or was even considered harassment I never would of made the pictures. I would of taken the pictures down if anyone told me to, and I would have apologized."

Knowels admits she signed a "green sheet" on separation, stating that she did not have permission to have the photos, but she adds, "the moment [they] said I was fired my stomach turned and I felt I was going to regurgitate any minute and I just scribbled my name and got out of the office to get to the bathroom."

Looking back on her termination, Knowels says that her store manager lied about the photos, because she did have permission to use them. "So many associates have called me and emailed me saying how they thought it was wrong to fire me because they know I was just trying to raise the morale and have a good time."

Knowels says her loss is not just emotional, but economic as well. "To lose the Health Insurance on my husband and myself, my Accidental Death Insurance, Dental Insurance, Part of my 401k & Profit sharing (as I had 3 weeks to go before being fully invested) Life Insurance and Stock options, over something I have been doing for years and always got great response is just horrible."

Christine L. Knowels, loyal seven-year employee at Wal-Mart, had to turn in her badge and her discount card. But she also left something much more important on the table in that back office in supercenter #1841 in Chesapeake, Virginia: her pride and self-respect. And she's prepared to fight the world's largest retailer to get them back.
Alongside of Knowels' photos of employees wearing lime-colored wigs, is a grim snapshot of life inside the Wal-Mart corporation itself.

From KENS 5 News in San Antonio:

It's a David versus Goliath battle heating up in the Hill Country — a group of nuns from Boerne is taking a stand against Wal-Mart.

The corporate giant reportedly labeled the nuns a security threat after they raised questions about Wal-Mart's business practices.

Sister Susan Mika is part of the Benedectine Sisters, which is part of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. The center has been questioning Wal-Mart's business practices for years.

"We've been raising questions with them for about 17 years, so it's not like they don't know it," Sister Mika said.

Now, the sisters find themselves on Wal-Mart's security threat list. Sister Mika said the group has been wrongly labeled.

"In no way have we ever been a threat to the company in that sense. We might be a threat in the kind of question that we're asking, but not a security threat," Sister Mika said.

The sisters have raised questions on wages, human rights, health care and the pay disparity between CEOs and workers. They believe that's why Wal-Mart has launched a surveillance operation on the small church group.

"We wanted to find out more about what was actually happening, and did they do any surveillance on us, either personally or as a community, and to let us know what that would be, and to apologize to us," Sister Mika said.

Calls from KENS 5 to a Wal-Mart spokesperson went unreturned.

The nuns say they want an apology and will continue to raise concerns and issues until someone launches an investigation into thousands of allegations against Wal-Mart.

Watch the video here.

You won't believe this!

From KTVK in Phoenix, AZ:

Three shoppers say they used their camera phone to take a picture of a rodent in a doughnut case at the Wal-Mart near 16th Avenue and Bethany Home Road.

They say there were at least three rodents in the case.

"What I thought I was going to spend $200 in groceries, I ended up leaving with nothing other than pictures of rats and doughnuts," said one of the shoppers.

Photo from FOX 10:

It was Saturday night, at the Wal-Mart when the three shoppers with a sweet tooth hit a sour note.

"Like a big cinnamon bun looking thing, there's like chunks eaten out of it," said a shopper.

They ratted on what they believed to be rats in the doughnut case. But the Wal-Mart employees, they shoppers say, were rude.

"They said this is normal with construction," said a shopper. "We're like, 'normal?' You're just going to let a rat eat your food and leave it out for people to buy?"

David Ludwig is the Maricopa County Environmental Health Division Manager.

"I don't think anyone wants to have urine, mouse droppings or even rodent hair on their food," Ludwig said.
Ludwig's office is now investigating the case. He says this isn't the first time he's received complaints of rodents at this specific Wal-Mart.

"(This Wal-Mart location has the) highest number of complaints I've seen in one area," he said.

According to county records, someone said they saw a huge rat run from behind a partition and crawl into a display case in February. That complaint, however, wasn't verified. They found nothing.

Health inspectors didn't find anything in December of last year when someone called to say there was a severe problem with rats and mice.
And last June, health inspectors didn't find anything after someone saw a rat or mouse crawling from the cash register into a deli case.
"We can take five business days to follow up on a complaint," Ludwig said. "I made sure our inspectors will go out there later today to go verify and see this case."

In a statement to be released Monday, Wal-Mart contends, "We take this allegation quite seriously and are thoroughly investigating it. We have a consistent record of food safety in our Phoenix stores from the Department of Health and have pest-control services performed regularly."

The statement goes on to say, "In an abundance of caution we have sanitized and cleaned the bakery area and have scheduled additional pest control. We immediately discarded all bakery products in the case in question.

Brian White over at bloggingstocks posts some interesting questions about CEO Lee Scott's recent $22 million bonus.

If you're a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. shareholder who has watched WMT shares sit around for the past five years without much movement, you'll be interested to know that Wal-Mart has awarded CEO Lee Scott a stock bonus worth $22 million for reaching revenue targets.

That's all well and good -- but after glancing at the five-year stock performance chart [see chart here], Scott certainly has not had a positive effect on the price of WMT shares in that timeframe, even though Wal-Mart itself may have met revenue goals set by upper management or the board. In fact, who set those revenue goals? ...

The details: Scott's regular salary and bonus for 2006 was $5.23 million, and his total compensation was $15.7 million, not counting restricted stock awards for performance. The $22 million bonus was for Wal-Mart's 2007 fiscal year revenue targets being beat.

Workers, shoppers and all Americans concerned about out-of-control CEO compensation should be alarmed at Scott's recent bonus. Wal-Mart shareholders should be incensed.

UPDATE: This post on White's blog sums up what I said about the bonus yesterday:

Wow, As a Wal-Mart associate my wages got capped! No wonder Wal-Mart sales are lackluster. Associates just don't care anymore! We have lost the basic core values that built this company. It's a real shame.

From the AP:

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has awarded it chief executive officer a stock bonus worth $22 million for reaching revenue targets, the retail giant disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing.

The compensation committee of Wal-Mart's board voted Wednesday to make the award to Scott and also grant shares to other executives.

Scott's salary and bonus for 2006 was $5.23 million. His total compensation for that year was, excluding restricted stock awards, was $15.7 million. The $22 million bonus was for Wal-Mart's 2007 fiscal year.

The filing Friday says Scott was awarded 459,348 Wal-Mart shares, which will be fully vested in five years. The award brings Scott's total Wal-Mart holding to 1,185,002 shares, worth $56.8 million.

Let me get this straight. In 2006, Wal-Mart tallied its worst same-store sales growth in 27 years. The company's stock price has remained stagnant for years. And, public opinion has taken a serious turn for the worse.

The company has slashed labor costs by capping the salary if its employees, reduced the number of its employees receiving company health care and implemented a series of additional business practices to cut labor costs.

Given all that, the company's board rewards Scott with a $22 million bonus? Something is seriously wrong with this picture.

One of the greatest dangers we face in America is a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists being shipped through an American port. But, did you know, we only inspect about 5% of the cargo containers coming into America.

That is why the U.S. House of Representatives passed a 9/11 bill to strengthen America's port security by scanning 100% of the cargo containers being shipped into the U.S. from abroad.

But, yesterday, Wal-Mart's special interest lobbyists defeated the 100% scanning portion of the 9/11 bill in the U.S. Senate.

Why?

Because, even though 1 Wal-Mart container arrives at a U.S. port every 45 seconds, Wal-Mart fears that inspecting 100% of these containers might slow down its imports from countries like China which could hurt Wal-Mart's profits.

Are Wal-Mart's profits really worth the cost of leaving America vulnerable to another terrorist attack?

Please write your U.S. Senator today and tell him/her to put America's security first and support 100% scanning of all cargo containers as passed by the U.S. House.

If you really want to grasp how dangerous Wal-Mart's opposition to 100% scanning is for our country, think about it this way...

Would you get on an airplane where the airport security officials only screened 5% of the passengers?

Of course not, so why shouldn't we scan 100% of the cargo containers bound for the United States? There is only one reason - because big corporations like Wal-Mart will do anything, even lobby against protecting America, to protect their profits.

We must stop Wal-Mart now and make sure the U.S. Senate puts America's security first.

Please write your U.S. Senator now and tell him/her to put America's security first and support 100% scanning of all cargo containers as passed by the U.S. House.

From shipping good-paying American jobs overseas to opposing expanding health care for working families, Wal-Mart has a long record of lobbying against the best interests of America.

But, this time, Wal-Mart has totally crossed the line.

With 324,000 Americans in all 50 states, we have the power to change this company and this country for the better, but it is up to us to act.

Our newest press release on the Wal-Mart health care saga:

WAL-MART CONTRADICTS WAL-MART ON COMPANY’S LATEST HEALTH CARE FIGURES

WAL-MART IGNORES OWN STATEMENTS PROVING THE NUMBER OF WORKERS INSURED BY THE COMPANY DECLINED IN 2006/ ATTEMPTS TO BLAME MEDIA FOR “ERRONEOUSLY” REPORTING PAST HEALTH CARE DATA

WASHINGTON, DC - Yesterday, in an attempt to hide the shocking fact that Wal-Mart’s own health care figures prove that the actual number of Wal-Mart workers insured by the company declined in 2006 from 638,000 to 636,391, Wal-Mart argued that the national media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “erroneously” reported that Wal-Mart provided health care to 638,000 employees at the beginning of 2006.

According to an article yesterday by Reuters, “The Wal-Mart spokesman, Dan Fogleman said that the 638,000 figure was erroneously reported…”

However, the fact that Wal-Mart told the media that it provided health insurance to 638,000 employees was not erroneously reported. Both in December 2005 and in January 2006, Wal-Mart spokesman Nate Hurst confirmed, in separate interviews with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Harrisburg Patriot News, and other media outlets that 638,000 Wal-Mart workers were insured by the company.

The exact passages from the articles are provided below:

* “Wal-Mart, which is considering challenging the Maryland law, will fight such efforts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, spokesman Nate Hurst said Friday. Nationwide, 638,000 of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million workers have health insurance through the company, he said. The company expects support from other businesses that could be targeted next, Hurst said. [Harrisburg Patriot News, 1/19/06]

* Mr. Hurst said Wal-Mart provides health insurance coverage for 638,000 of its 1.3 million workers. Many of those not covered by Wal-Mart's health plans are young people covered by their parents' insurance or senior citizens covered by Medicare, he said. "We have made some significant changes in our plan to increase affordability and access," Mr. Hurst said. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/6/06]

Therefore, based on Wal-Mart’s own reported figures the number of Wal-Mart workers covered under the company health care plan actually decreased, not increased, in 2006 by nearly 2,000 employees. Wal-Mart’s claim that it increased enrollment by 8% year over year is false.

Based on the misleading statements made Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogelman, WakeUpWalMart.com released the following statement attributable to Chris Kofinis, communications director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

"To add insult to injury, Wal-Mart’s own spokespeople are now contradicting one another and are trying to blame the national media for their own deceptions. The reality is, Wal-Mart’s deception is either a desperate attempt to hide the fact that Wal-Mart now insures fewer workers than it did a year ago or Wal-Mart falsely inflated last year’s figures to try and avoid paying its fair share for health care. Either way, Wal-Mart should be ashamed.

We call on Wal-Mart to apologize to the national media and to own up to the fact that its own figures prove that the Wal-Mart health care crisis is worsening. Clearly, with well over half of its employees and families left uninsured by the company, it is more evident today than ever before that Wal-Mart’s health care is unaffordable and must be changed. We hope that Wal-Mart will face this simple and obvious truth and take steps to live up to its health care responsibilities.”

Our latest press release:

WAL-MART'S NEW HEALTH CARE FIGURES PROVE THAT WAL-MART’S HEALTH CARE CRISIS WORSENED IN 2006

WAL-MART’S FIGURES CONTRADICT EARLIER STATEMENTS AND SHOW THE NUMBER OF WAL-MART EMPLOYEES INSURED BY THE COMPANY ACTUALLY DECREASED IN 2006

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Wal-Mart falsely claimed that the number of Wal-Mart employees covered by the company health care plan increased in 2006. Wal-Mart’s latest health care numbers directly contradict Wal-Mart’s figures from last year and prove that the company’s health care crisis actually worsened. In fact, both in absolute numbers and on percentage basis, the number of Wal-Mart workers covered under the company health care plan actually decreased in 2006.

Last year, at the end of Wal-Mart’s health care enrollment period, Wal-Mart made public statements to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets claiming that "638,000 workers were now insured by the company.” Today, Wal-Mart said at the end of this year’s enrollment period it now insured only 636,391 workers. Therefore, Wal-Mart’s new health care enrollment decreased, not increased, by almost 2,000 workers compared to the same time last year.

Unfortunately, Wal-Mart wrongly claimed today, and several media outlets mistakenly reported on this wrong number, that Wal-Mart’s figure of 636,391 employees represents an 8% increase in enrollment.

It is impossible for Wal-Mart to have increased enrollment by 8% unless Wal-Mart lied to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and only insured 589,250 employees last year, not the 638,000 it claimed.

Even on a percentage basis, Wal-Mart’s figures are not accurate. This year, Wal-Mart claims it increased the percentage of workers covered under the company health care plan to an embarrassing 47.4%. But, at the end of last year, Wal-Mart told the Wall Street Journal that it provided company health care to 49% of its workers. Therefore, the 47.4% actually represents a decrease of 1.6%.

Based on the misleading statements made today by Wal-Mart, WakeUpWalMart.com released the following statement attributable to Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

"Incredibly, Wal-Mart's own health care numbers prove that the Wal-Mart health care crisis has worsened. The sad truth is that despite making $11 billion in annual profit, Wal-Mart still fails to provide company health care to over half of its employees.

Given the enormous cost American taxpayers must pay to subsidize Wal-Mart’s health care crisis, we call on Wal-Mart to stop misleading the American people and our elected leaders who expect, if nothing else, that America's largest private employer will live up to it's health care responsibilities.

At a minimum, Wal-Mart should have the decency to remember how many workers they actually provide health care to and stop changing the numbers in a deliberate and desperate attempt to mislead the public and the media as the company tries to repair its faltering public image.

In the end, we hope that Wal-Mart will wake up and realize that continuing to make misleading statements about its health care crisis will not only fail to improve its faltering public image, but will only further stoke the anger of the American people and our elected leaders who expect Wal-Mart to finally change for the better.”

#######

Click here to read the story in the Washington Post.

Today's Austin-American Statesman reports that Terry Nelson, president of Crosslink Strategy and a top consultant to Wal-Mart, was behind the racist TV ad attacking Tennessee U.S. Senate Candidate Harold Ford, Jr.

In response to this shocking development, we sent Wal-Mart’s CEO, Lee Scott, a personal letter calling on Wal-Mart to immediately condemn the ad and end its relationship with Republican operative and Wal-Mart consultant, Terry Nelson. Already, the racist television ad has been widely condemned by the NAACP and other civil rights leaders.

Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. also called on Wal-Mart to condemn the ad and dismiss Terry Nelson.

Reverend Jackson had this to say in response to the revelation today:

This is a reflection on Wal-Mart and the people that drive their right-wing, anti-worker family agenda. The same people that engage in race-baiting also support right to work laws that undermine working people...

In his role as a close and intimate advisor to Wal-Mart, Nelson created the strategy for Wal-Mart’s front group, Working Families for Wal-Mart, launched an unprecedented smear website, PaidCritics.com, to attack hard-working families, and directs Wal-Mart’s recently launched voter education program which targets any Democrat who calls on Wal-Mart to be a responsible corporation.

Read our entire press release, statements from Rev. Jess Jackson, Sr., Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., our letter to Lee Scott, and today’s article below the jump.

WAKEUPWALMART.COM CALLS ON WAL-MART TO DENOUNCE RACIST AD PRODUCED BY WAL-MART CONSULTANT TERRY NELSON

CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER REV. JESSE JACKSON SR. & REP. JESSE JACKSON JR. CALL ON WAL-MART TO CONDEMN AD AND DISMISS TERRY NELSON

GROUP SENDS LETTER TO WAL-MART CEO LEE SCOTT CALLING ON WAL-MART TO FIRE ITS REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE

Washington, D.C. - As reported today by the Austin-American Statesman, Terry Nelson, president of Crosslink Strategy and a consultant to Wal-Mart, was behind the racist TV ad attacking Tennessee U.S. Senate Candidate Harold Ford, Jr.

In response to this shocking development, WakeUpWalMart.com, America’s campaign to change Wal-Mart, sent Wal-Mart’s CEO, Lee Scott, a personal letter calling on Wal-Mart to immediately condemn the ad and end its relationship with Republican operative and Wal-Mart consultant, Terry Nelson, for his production of a racist TV ad. Already, the ad has been widely condemned by the NAACP and other civil rights leaders.

In his role as a close and intimate advisor to Wal-Mart, Nelson created the strategy for Wal-Mart’s front group, Working Families for Wal-Mart, launched an unprecedented smear website, PaidCritics.com, to attack Democrats and hard-working families, and directs Wal-Mart’s recently launched voter education program which targets any Democrat who calls on Wal-Mart to be a responsible corporation.

In the past, Nelson served as national political director for President Bush’s 2004 reelection and also runs the Republican National Committee’s independent expenditure unit which funded the racist ad.

The letter, which was faxed to Scott today, demands Scott “send a message to all Americans, especially African Americans, that Wal-Mart will not do business with consultants who use race as a political tool to divide our nation.” The letter goes on to ask Scott to end the company’s business relationship with Nelson and his firm, and to immediately undertake a review of the tactics and tools being employed by the many Republican operatives who work for Wal-Mart and its public relations firm Edelman.

Over the last few months, several high profile consultants and advisors to Wal-Mart, including former chairman to Working Families for Wal-Mart, Ambassador Andrew Young, have been condemned or forced to resign for racist and insensitive actions.

Statement by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr.:

This is a reflection on Wal-Mart and the people that drive their right-wing, anti-worker family agenda. The same people that engage in race-baiting also support right to work laws that undermine working people.

Wal-Mart has the responsibility to dismiss Terry Nelson, with explanation, and apologize to Harold Ford Jr. Even though the Republican Party pulled the ad, if you throw ink on a suit, you leave a stain. They threw ink on Harold Ford, Jr. and many people believed it to be true, resulting in a negative impact.

If he did it, he must go and Wal-Mart owes a huge apology to the American people and to Harold Ford, Jr. Wal-Mart will determine what it will do based on how they view the gravity of the situation. It will be a reflection of their values -- will they coddle him or dismiss him?

Statement by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.:

It has come to my attention that Terry Nelson is apparently the person behind the controversial Harold Ford, Jr., ad that has been running in the Tennessee senatorial race. In 2004, he was the political director for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and is now a key advisor to Senator John McCain. He also heads up the Wal-Mart front group "Working Families for Wal-Mart" and is in charge of their "Voter Education Program" for 1.3 million associates nation-wide. Currently he is leading the Republican National Committee's special unit responsible for independent campaign expenditures.

Nelson's work for Wal-Mart has included:
-Managing the company's astroturf operation that offered free coupons and a vacation to Atlanta Wal-Mart shoppers that signed his petition. [Cox News, 4/4/06]
-Pressuring Wal-Mart suppliers to contribute to "Working Families For Wal-Mart." [Retailing Today, Spring 2006]
-Designing Wal-Mart's controversial employee education campaign project. [Washington Post, 9/30/06]

I am calling on Wal-Mart and Senator John McCain to immediately end their relationship with Terry Nelson. The ad was so outrageous and offensive that it was even denounced by Rep. Ford's Republican opponent. Wal-Mart and Senator McCain should take a public position against the ad and severe their relationship with Terry Nelson.

Letter to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott from WakeUpWalMart.com:

Mr. Lee Scott
CEO
Wal-Mart, Inc.
Bentonville, AR

Dear Mr. Scott,

We are deeply shocked and outraged to learn that one of your key consultants, Terry Nelson, is the Republican operative behind the recently pulled racist ad which attacked Tennessee U.S. Senate Candidate Harold Ford, Jr.

In his role as a close and intimate advisor to Wal-Mart, you have paid Terry Nelson to use the same tactics he perfected under Karl Rove to defend Wal-Mart’s declining public image. For example, you have allowed Nelson to launch a smear website, paid for by Wal-Mart, which attacks Democrats (PaidCritics.com), create a controversial front group called Working Families for Wal-Mart, and formulate your recent voter education program.

In this day and age, it is disgusting that consultants like Terry Nelson still use race and racism to incite fears and hatred to divide voters. Even more disturbing, is the fact that you have entrusted Mr. Nelson to manage Wal-Mart’s own voter education program.

The truth is, the American people will not stomach such gutter-style politics and Wal-Mart will pay a price if it permits Mr. Nelson to continue on as a close advisor. If Wal-Mart is truly interested in changing for the better, we implore you to send a message to all Americans, especially African-Americans, that Wal-Mart will not do business with consultants who use race as a political tool to divide our nation.

Respectfully, we call on you and Wal-Mart to immediately end your business relationship with Terry Nelson and his firm, and to immediately undertake a review of the tactics and tools being employed by the many Republican operatives who work for Wal-Mart and its public relations firm Edelman.

In the end, we can only hope that Wal-Mart will send the right the message to all of America. That message should be that Wal-Mart will never, in any way, shape, or form, tolerate racism by one of its staff, consultants, or business partners.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Paul Blank, Campaign Director

CC: Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP

McCain Adviser Behind Anti-Ford Ad

By Julia Malone
Thursday, October 26, 2006

Terry Nelson, the political consultant responsible for a widely denounced TV ad against U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., also serves as a senior adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain.

Nelson, who served as political director for President Bush’s 2004 re-election, runs the Republican National Committee’s independent expenditure unit, RNC spokesman Josh Holmes confirmed. The independent effort drew charges of racism with its ad featuring a bare-shouldered blond woman saying she had met Rep. Ford at a Playboy party.

Ford, a Tennessee Democrat, is running to become the first black senator elected from the South since Reconstruction. The ad drew fire from all sides, including from Ford’s Republican opponent, Bob Corker. RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, who denied that the TV spot was racist, said that he had no control over the independent expenditure unit.

The Republican chairman announced Wednesday that the controversial ad was being pulled off the air. Nelson, a former deputy chief of staff at the RNC, now heads Crosslink Strategy, a Washington consulting firm.

His Website lists among his clients Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse and Senator McCain’s Straight Talk America Political Action Committee.

McCain’s Senate spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield confirmed that Nelson was an adviser to the PAC but said she had no immediate comment on the Ford ad. Craig Goldman, executive director of Straight Talk America, said Nelson’s role for McCain has been to advise the Arizona Republican where he should go to campaign for GOP candidates this year.

Nelson did not return a reporter’s call for comments on the anti-Ford ad.

Statement by WakeUpWalMart.com on Wal-Mart's Exaggerations & Cozy Relationship with Republican Governor Jeb Bush:

As reported 2 weeks ago in the New York Times and USA Today, Wal-Mart continues to exaggerate the scope of its prescription drug plan initiative. Wal-Mart is now choosing to callously misstate the facts that "nearly 314 generic drugs" are included in this initiative, when, in truth, there are only 143 separate medicines on the list.

As the New York Times reported, "The plan, which is said to cover 314 drugs, includes only about 143 separate medicines in various dosages, like 12 versions of the popular antibiotic Amoxicillin. It leaves out some popular drugs altogether, like the generic version of the cholesterol-lowering treatment Zocor." In addition, with nearly 9,000 generic drugs available, Wal-Mart's drug plan represents less than 1.5 percent of all generics, and includes primarily older generic drugs which are already available at a low cost.

In addition, it is no surprise that Florida Governor Jeb Bush would decide to attend Wal-Mart's press conference given Wal-Mart’s cozy relationship with the Republican Governor. Since 2000, Wal-Mart has helped fund the Republican Party in Florida by donating at least $327,933 to state Republican candidates. In addition, Gov. Bush's administration has helped Wal-Mart, a company with $11.2 billion in annual profits, qualify for millions of dollars in tax breaks - including $2.88 million in tax breaks in 2003.

Most disturbing, despite making it harder for Floridians to qualify for Medicaid assistance, Governor Bush chose to do nothing to make it harder for Wal-Mart to shift its health care costs onto Florida’s taxpayers and opposed legislation that would have made large, profitable corporations like Wal-Mart provide affordable health care for their employees. As a result, over 12,000 Wal-Mart workers were forced onto taxpayer funded public health care assistance at a cost to Florida taxpayers estimated at $60 million every year. Nationally, the Wal-Mart health care crisis cost America’s taxpayers an estimated $1.39 billion.

A fact sheet with citations on the cozy Bush and Wal-Mart relationship is attached below.

The following statement is attributable to Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com:

"It is outrageous that Wal-Mart and Republican Gov. Jeb Bush would stand together and talk about health care when Wal-Mart fails to provide company health care to over half of its employees (750,000) and Gov. Bush opposes legislation requiring corporations to pay their fair share for health care.

But, given Wal-Mart’s ‘miscount’ or exaggeration on the number of generic drugs that are actually included, it seems fitting that Gov. Bush, the guy who helped his brother miscount the ballots in Florida, would be the one to praise Wal-Mart’s exaggerated drug plan.

Ironically, much like Jeb Bush, Wal-Mart seems to have a growing problem with reporting accurate numbers. Whether it’s overstating the number of generic drugs covered under the new initiative, misstating the number of Wal-Mart workers insured by the company, simply contradicting itself on the percentage of full-time workers it has, or even reporting its own same store sales, Wal-Mart seems to have a growing numbers problem.

While we reiterate our support for lowering prescription drug costs, we fear that Wal-Mart’s publicity stunts are only serving to play games with the American people and are a dangerous bait-and-switch on products that are so important to the health and welfare of our nation.

The people of Florida and the American public want and expect corporations like Wal-Mart to pay their fair share for health care. Unfortunately, the only thing the public got today was another right-wing publicity stunt by a Governor and company who support corporate welfare and oppose health care for hard working families.

Once again, we call on Wal-Mart to do the right thing, change, and offer real health care solutions for its employees, instead of the same old publicity stunts we have come to expect.”

####

Wal-Mart and Gov. Bush Fact Sheet

Bush Has Helped Wal-Mart Get Millions in Tax Breaks
• Jeb Bush has helped Wal-Mart qualify for millions in tax breaks, including $2.88 million for a 2003 project in Macclenny and $539,000 for a store in Florida City. Facing criticism over the tax-giveaways in 2006, Bush charged that tax breaks were given to companies moving to Florida that paid more than average. Bush also said, "We benefit as a state because we create higher wage jobs." [Associated Press, 2/14/06; St. Petersburg Times, 10/26/03]

Wal-Mart Gave Nearly $330,000 to Florida State Republicans
• Since the 2000 election cycle, Wal-Mart has given at least $327,933 to state Republican candidates through its PAC. . [National Institute on Money in State Politics, www.followthemoney.org ]

Bush Did Wal-Mart's Bidding and Opposed Fair Share Health Care
• Bush announced in February 2006 that he would oppose a measure requiring the largest companies in the state to provide a certain level of health care to their employees. [Associated Press, 2/14/06]

Ironically, Bush made it tougher for people to use Medicaid, but easier for Wal-Mart to force workers on it.

Bush Initiative Degraded Quality of Health Care for Medicaid Recipients
• A proposal that the Sun-Sentinel called "part of Gov. Jeb Bush's No. 1 legislative initiative to revamp" Medicaid included spending caps on coverage, limits on medications, and ending the ability of recipients to see the doctor of their choice. Bush stated his goal was to shift Florida's 2.2 million Medicaid recipients into private managed care. [Sun-Sentinel, 5/3/05]

Bush Ignores the Fact that Florida Taxpayers Subsidize over 12,000 Wal-Mart Workers
• An estimated 12,000 Wal-Mart employees and their dependents are forced onto public health care assistance in Florida. The cost to Florida’s taxpayers to subsidize Wal-Mart's health care costs is estimated at over $60 million. [St. Petersburg Times, March 25, 2005; Report: America Pays, Wal-Mart Saves, 2/06]

Our latest press release:

WAL-MART SHIFTS MORE HEALTH CARE COSTS ON TO WORKERS BY ELIMINATING LOW-DEDUCTIBLE PLANS, INCREASING PREMIUMS, AND INCREASING THE “SPOUSAL SURCHARGE” TO PUSH WORKERS OFF OF COMPANY HEALTH CARE PLAN

Washington DC – Today, WakeUpWalMart.com revealed new, internal Wal-Mart health care documents proving that Wal-Mart’s health care benefits are actually getting worse, not better as the company would have the American public and elected leaders believe.

The 2007 Wal-Mart Medical Benefits Booklet, which will be distributed to employees prior to the upcoming enrollment period, details Wal-Mart’s plans to eliminate a number of health care options, increase medical premiums, increase surcharges, and will, in total, place an even greater financial burden on Wal-Mart’s 1.39 million employees and their families.

In 2006, as documented in the report ‘America Pays, Wal-Mart Saves,’ available on WakeUpWalMart.com’s website, Wal-Mart failed to provide company health care to over 750,000 hard-working families, or 54 percent of Wal-Mart employees and their families, at a cost to American taxpayers of at least $1.39 billion annually.

According to the new documents, as of January 1st, 2007, Wal-Mart will only offer two health care options for new hires – catastrophic health care with multiple high deductibles (which Wal-Mart calls the “Value Plan”) and Health Savings Accounts, which new employees will not be immediately eligible for (which Wal-Mart has renamed the “Freedom Plan”). By making this change, Wal-Mart is eliminating the Network Saver plans and the Standard plans for new hires. The Network and Standard plans had health care plans with much lower deductibles for employees and their families.

In addition to eliminating all “low deductible” health care options for new hires, Wal-Mart is increasing premium costs by 8.3 percent for the Network Saver Plan, 7.6 percent for the Standard Plan, and 6.9 percent for the Freedom Plan (formerly the Health Savings Account Plan) and charging a whopping $1800 a year “spousal surcharge” to deter spouses from being insured by Wal-Mart. Despite Wal-Mart calling it a ‘Value’ plan, the plan includes multiple, expensive deductibles like a $300 pharmacy deductible and a $1,000 in-patient deductible on top of the $1,000 deductible the plan already has.

“By eliminating most of its health care plans and replacing them with a high-deductible, catastrophic plan, Wal-Mart is effectively out of the health care business. Despite an overwhelming majority of Americans calling on profitable companies like Wal-Mart to provide real health care coverage to their employees, Wal-Mart is cruelly hurting its employees, cutting health care options, and shifting costs on to the American taxpayer. This sends a terrible message to every responsible corporation that is trying to do the right thing for their employees,” said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

Despite the damage to Wal-Mart’s reputation caused by the Wal-Mart health care crisis, Wal-Mart remains unwilling to address its responsibility to lessen the burden on taxpayers, as well as provide affordable, comprehensive health care to its employees. In addition to Wal-Mart failing to provide company health care to 54% of its employees, in 18 out of 19 states where data is publicly available, Wal-Mart leads all employers with the greatest number of employees or dependents on taxpayer-funded public health care assistance. According to Wal-Mart’s own internal memo, 46 percent, or nearly 1 out of every 2 children of Wal-Mart workers is either uninsured or on public health care assistance. As a result, American taxpayers paid an estimated $1.39 billion in 2005 and will pay as much as $9.1 billion over the next 5 years to subsidize the health care costs of a company with over $11 billion in annual profit.

“These documents reveal the truth about Wal-Mart’s public relations game with the American people and its employees. Last week Wal-Mart touted a low cost generic drug plan in 1 city that includes 124 drugs that represent just 1 percent of all the generic drugs offered in America, while this week Wal-Mart eliminates health care plans for its workers and shifts billions of dollars of health care costs onto its employees and American taxpayers. As one of the richest companies in the world, Wal-Mart should be ashamed,” added Blank.

Among the most striking findings outlined in Wal-Mart’s 2007 benefits booklet is the substantial health care cost a low-paid Wal-Mart worker would be forced to pay under the so-called ‘Value’ plan. A typical individual Wal-Mart worker who enrolls in the Value Plan will face high upfront costs because of a series of high deductibles, including a minimum $1,000 deductible for individual coverage, a $1,000 in-patient deductible per visit, a $500 out-patient surgical deductible per visit, a $300 pharmacy deductible, and a maximum out of pocket expense of $5,000 for an individual per year.

In total, when factoring the maximum out-of-pocket expense and the cost of the yearly premium ($5,274 a year for an individual under the Value Plan), a typical full-time worker (defined by Wal-Mart as 34 hours) who earns 10.11 an hour or $17,874 a year, would have pay nearly 30 percent of their total income for health care costs alone.

Incredibly, the health care cost burden actually worsens should an uninsured Wal-Mart worker enroll their family under the Value Plan. Again, because of multiple deductibles for each family member, and when factoring in the cost of the medical premium ($780) and maximum out-of-pocket expense ($10,000), a Wal-Mart worker whose family is insured under the “Value Plan” could pay as much as 60 percent of their total income towards health care costs under Wal-Mart’s most “affordable “health care” plan.

####

Last year, Wal-Mart made $11 billion in profits but pushed $1.37 billion in health care costs onto American taxpayers. Now the company is trying to get out of paying property taxes, this time in a small town in New York state. But the community is demanding that Wal-Mart pay its fair share.

From the Star-Gazette (Elmira/Corning, NY):

WATKINS GLEN -- Schuyler County legislators have agreed to join the town of Dix, the village of Watkins Glen and the Watkins Glen school district in defense against Wal-Mart's legal attempt to have the store's property taxes lowered.

The four taxing bodies will hire the Davidson and O'Mara firm of Elmira.

The resolution passed unanimously Monday by lawmakers states that a reduction in the assessment of the Wal-Mart property on state Route 414 on the eastern edge of the village would have an adverse affect on the taxing jurisdictions.

The property is assessed at $12.5 million, and Wal-Mart has started the legal action in state Supreme Court to ask for an assessment reduction. It previously had asked for a reduction to $5.4 million, which was denied by the town.

The property is assessed at $12.5 million, and Wal-Mart has started the legal action in state Supreme Court to ask for an assessment reduction. It previously had asked for a reduction to $5.4 million, which was denied by the town.

Assessing also came up during the meeting when legislators approved an intermunicipal agreement that can be used with towns interested in having their property values set under the guidance of the county Real Property Tax Services Department.

With the agreement, towns would continue to appoint their own part-time assessors, who would become county employees. Fees for the services would be based on the number of parcels involved.

County Administrator Timothy O'Hearn said the town of Orange has already voted to join the program.

He said last week that he does not expect all towns to participate, but "the assessors, without exception, support this initiative," he said Monday.

From the Arizona Republic:

Wal-Mart has started the Hub, which bears some of the features of a My-Space-like social network, but appears to be essentially an advertising vehicle that encourages teens to create commercials for the retail chain and post them to the site. The Hub allows users to create pages and videos, somewhat like MySpace. It tells them to express "individuality," but screens their posts and doesn't allow them to e-mail each other. The site is running a contest for the best video submissions about how much the submitter likes Wal-Mart (schoolyourway.walmart.com).

The Hub is a big part of Wal-Mart's effort to appeal to fashion-conscious teens, but it's not clear how many "Hubsters" have joined. The pages and videos featured on the home page have a highly produced quality, leading one teenager to wonder on adage.com, "Are these real kids?"

What do you think? Is the Hub cool?

From the St. Petersburg Times:

During her lunch hour, Ellen Stanton walks stiffly back through aisles of discount clothes and frozen foods.

She wobbles into the employee break room on the artificial knee that makes her leg throb, on the foot rendered painful from diabetes.

She sits down and takes off her shoes. Hours on her feet greeting Wal-Mart shoppers take their toll.

Stanton worked almost her whole life, but she never thought she'd be working this long, at the age of 74.

She grew up one of 10 kids, the children of a coal miner in southwest Pennsylvania. They lived in the company town, slept across one bed in their two-bedroom company home, and shopped at the company store.

She married a steel mill worker and moved to Ohio. They lived in a house made of grape crates and tar paper until their 5-year-old son died of leukemia. The neighbors, to ease their sorrow, came over to build up the house in bricks.

She raised their four remaining children, babysitting and taking in laundry. After a divorce, she raised her children alone, working in grocery stores. One day she became manager, but managers of little grocery stores in Ohio steel mill towns don't get pension plans or 401(k) retirement accounts.

When she moved to Florida to follow her adult sons, she took a job slopping lunches at school cafeterias in Hillsborough County.

Then there was the 7-Eleven and, two years ago, the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Causeway Boulevard.

Stanton gets $1,100 a month from Social Security and $7.75 an hour at Wal-Mart, not enough to pay for rent, bills and all her prescription drugs, she says.

She moved in with her 44-year-old daughter, whose daughter Karla died several years ago from heart failure at the age of 21.

They share the $900 rent for the Valrico home, along with their sorrow. Many days, Stanton hides hers.

She's the one lifting her daughter out of depression, talking her out of panic attacks.

Her daughter worries about her mom's health, the frequent colds, the high blood-sugar levels, the fact that she doesn't have time to eat as often as she should on her occasional breaks.

That she sleeps so much.

Her daughter won't even go into her bedroom anymore to wake her up for work, afraid that Stanton haspassed away in her sleep.

At Wal-Mart, Stanton hides her frustration by heading to the restroom whenever she can, outside the gaze of the shoppers she must welcome.

She stands in front of strangers for hours repeating:

Hello.

Welcome to Wal-Mart.

Would you like a cart?

Why does Wal-Mart insist on lying to the American public? When Dow Jones Newswire called Wal-Mart today to question the company on speaking out of both sides of its mouth, Wal-Mart’s spokesperson John Simley said, “we agree with an awful lot of what ‘Working Families’ does and what they stand for and we support it. But it’s not a mouthpiece for Wal-Mart.”

But, that is exactly what Wal-Mart’s right-wing, sham front group is – a mouthpiece for Wal-Mart. The group is funded by Wal-Mart, run by Wal-Mart and we are told by a good source the decision to launch the attacks on Arizona Attorney General Goddard and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate John DeStefano were greenlighted directly by a key Wal-Mart executive.

Are you kidding me, Wal-Mart? Stop lying and tell the truth.

From the Dow Jones Newswire:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (WMT) growing public-relations machine has been sending a few mixed signals lately.

Earlier this month, Arizona's attorney general sued Wal-Mart for consumer fraud, accusing the world's largest retailer of consistently overcharging customers and failing to post prices on its shelves. Immediately after the lawsuit was filed July 6, Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley sounded a conciliatory note, saying the company was "committed to working with the attorney general to resolve this issue."

Last week, however, a Wal-Mart-funded group called "Working Families for Wal-Mart" took a distinctly different tone on its Web site, paidcritics.com.

In a blog entry, the group called Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard a "career politician and twice-failed candidate for governor," and quoted an editorial in a Phoenix-area newspaper that warned Goddard "better have his facts straight."

Looking to defend itself against union-backed critics that have attacked its labor practices, Wal-Mart is beefing up its public-relations efforts. The Bentonville, Ark., retailer isn't just hiring more corporate spokespeople. In addition to building a lobbying team in Washington, Wal-Mart over the past year has assembled a "war room" staffed with political campaign veterans. This week, the company hired a former nun who has helped mediate conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wal-Mart has strong incentives to boost its media savvy. A 2004 study for Wal-Mart by McKinsey & Co. found that as much as 8% of Wal-Mart customers no longer shopped there because of "negative press they have heard." But for all of its growing sophistication, Wal-Mart has made a few awkward stumbles in its recent communications, and some feel they've been getting conflicting messages from the different arms of Wal-Mart's growing apparatus.

"I did find it surprising," Arizona Attorney General Goddard told Dow Jones Newswires, having learned of the blog posting last week. Occasionally in the past, Goddard said he has been hit with candid barbs from criminal defendants amid the genteel protests of their attorneys. But Goddard said he's never seen such a mixed public message from a corporate defendant.

It's not the only recent example of Wal-Mart getting its signals crossed. Last October, President and Chief Executive Lee Scott said in a speech to Wal-Mart executives and directors that Congress should "take a look at" increasing the federal minimum wage. Since then Wal-Mart, which employs more than 1.3 million people in the U.S., hasn't lobbied for an increase. When asked why late last month, Lee Culpepper, Wal-Mart's chief lobbyist in Washington, was quoted as saying that Scott was actually neutral on the minimum-wage issue.
"He said Congress should take a look at it," Culpepper told the Washington-based publication Roll Call. "If reporters want to report differently from that, I can't speak to that."

Shortly thereafter, however, Wal-Mart issued a written statement by Scott that the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour was indeed "out of date with the times."

Wal-Mart's multi-pronged strategy for public relations increasingly is beginning to resemble past efforts by other notably embattled corporations, said Adam Hanft, chief executive of Hanft Unlimited, a New York branding and marketing agency. Before many big oil companies "flipped and embraced that global warming was a threat," they had funded plenty of third-party "research" to the contrary. In addition to formidable lobbying efforts in Washington, Big Tobacco funded "free speech" organizations as it fought legal curbs on its advertising.

"All of these companies have tried to insulate themselves from criticism by creating third-party entities that have the appearance of independence," Hanft said. "But they're so transparent they come off as desperate. Anything that a proxy group is saying, you should be saying yourself."

Nu Wexler, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch - a gadfly group whose backers include the Sierra Club and the Service Employees International Union - said that while the group "Working Families for Wal-Mart" calls itself a "grassroots" organization, it's operated by executives from Edelman, a global public-relations firm hired by Wal-Mart last year.

"They're just outsourcing their mudslinging," Wexler said. Kevin Sheridan, a spokesman for Working Families For Wal-Mart, deferred to the company for a response.

Simley, the Wal-Mart spokesman, said that "we agree with an awful lot of what 'Working Families' does and what they stand for, and we support it. But it's not a mouthpiece for Wal-Mart."

He added that the company has "no position" on possible motivations behind the Arizona Attorney General's lawsuit. Likewise, Wal-Mart has no position on the group's recent blog entry that questioned the Attorney General's motivations, he said.

"We've had some discussion on it, but I can't say that anybody has any response at all," Simley said. "It is what it is."

The following statement is attributable to Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com:

“While deeply disappointed by the District Court’s decision, this decision does not change the fact that Wal-Mart doesn’t provide company health care to over half of its workers. The District Court’s decision, unfortunately, ignores the strong public support for requiring large, profitable corporations to pay their fair share for health care. Whether by legislation or by public pressure on Wal-Mart, the fight to provide better health care and to reduce Wal-Mart’s tax burden on American taxpayers will continue until the day Wal-Mart becomes a responsible employer.”

Our latest press release:

WAKEUPWALMART.COM LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE & CAMPAIGN AGAINST WAL-MART’S RIGHT WING ATTACK MACHINE

SENDS LETTER TO DEMOCRATIC MEMBERS OF CONGRESS ABOUT WAL-MART’S “SWIFT BOAT” STYLE ATTACKS

Washington D.C. - Today, WakeUpWalMart.com, America’s campaign to change Wal-Mart, launched a new website and political outreach campaign in response to Wal-Mart’s vicious “swift-boat” style attack website, paidcritics.com. WakeUpWalMart.com’s new website, www.ABunchOfGreedyRightWingLiarsWhoWorkForWalMart.com, outlines the deep and disturbing right-wing connections behind Wal-Mart’s attack machine and links some of Wal-Mart’s newly hired right-wing operatives to some of the most vicious political smear campaigns in American political history, including attacks on John Kerry in the 2004 election, CBS News, and attacks on Democrats in the 2000 Florida Recount.

Wal-Mart’s attack website, paidcritics.com, is an unprecedented and dangerous decision by a $300 billion dollar corporation. It is the first time in history that a corporation has set up, directly funded and openly managed a website whose sole purpose is to attack Democrats, WakeUpWalMart.com staff personally, and all parties who want Wal-Mart to become a better employer.

“Wal-Mart’s decision to spend millions of dollars hiring right-wing political operatives to attack Democrats and personally smear people who want health care for its workers is a shameful act of desperation. At the same time Wal-Mart is publicly trying to put a smiley face on its company, Wal-Mart has decided to unleash a ‘swift boat’ style attack on all of those people who want Wal-Mart to change for the better,” stated Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

The website, www.ABunchOfGreedyRightWingLiarsWhoWorkForWalMart.com will provide a detailed account of Wal-Mart’s right-wing conspiracy including ties to the most extreme element of the Republican Party, Tom Delay, George W. Bush, Karl Rove and John Ashcroft, a biographic summary of the key right-wing operatives involved in the Wal-Mart war room, and an accounting of Wal-Mart’s extensive political contributions to Republicans. In addition, the website will give the American people the opportunity to vote for their favorite Wal-Mart right-wing liar and view our latest TV ads on “Right Wing” TV - a new channel dedicated to exposing Wal-Mart’s right wing connections.

“If Wal-Mart thinks they can intimidate us with right-wing operatives who are willing to defend child labor abuses and oppose universal health care, Wal-Mart is sorely mistaken. We are not critics. We are a movement of Americans who are fighting for living wages, affordable health care, protecting U.S. jobs and holding corporations accountable for their behavior,” added Blank.

As part of the new counteroffensive, WakeUpWalMart.com also sent all of the Democratic Members of Congress a personal letter outlining Wal-Mart’s vicious attack campaign being run by the public relations firm Edelman. The letter highlights just how desperate Wal-Mart has become to attack Democrats, our campaign staff, progressive groups, and all those who strive to make Wal-Mart a more responsible company.

Click here to read a copy of the letter.

From the Chronicle Herald:

CONSUMER pull has not been sufficient to get Wal-Mart into as many communities across North America as the retail giant would like. So, enter Plan B, a plan that Wal-Mart likes to consider a "good neighbour" plan.

In response to growing community unrest regarding the huge retailer and its potential harm to smaller, local businesses, many communities are saying Wal-Mart is not welcome. But money talks. So Wal-Mart’s new buy-in strategy just might lead to more opportunities.

Their strategy is quite simple. They plan to give money — a lot of money — to the local business community. First off, there is a $50,000 donation to the local chamber of commerce. That is nothing to sneeze at. Such business organizations are seldom well-funded, and there is much to be done on a shoestring. So it is hard to turn your nose up at such a fine, community-oriented incentive.

But that’s not all. Like an excited game show host, Wal-Mart is giving out even more money. They are offering up $1.5 million in grants to local businesses. These grants will include monies for financial assistance, advertising support and even training. But that’s not all. Even competing retailers will have access to these funds.

Clearly, Wal-Mart is giving a lot of money to the community; $1.5 million is nothing to scoff at, especially for small business. Just think what such an incentive could mean to the businesses in the community, especially those that exist in smaller municipalities without the resources to compete?

While Wal-Mart suddenly looks like a hero offering a helping hand to the businesses that are threatened by its arrival in town, the retail giant is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Stores that cannot compete with Wal-Mart will still not be competitive a year later, with or without all that money.

And Wal-Mart is not really giving all that much — at least not from Wal-Mart’s perspective. The largest retailer in North America celebrated more than $300 billion in sales last year, so $1.5 million is only about an average week’s sales to most stores.

But money does grease business wheels, and surely it will in this case. This campaign, which is more of a bribe to local business than a good-neighbour policy, is likely to bring more success to Wal-Mart expansion than several times that much money invested in consumer-based advertising. But the key to retail success for local competitors is not a grant program that throws money at smaller firms; it is finding a way to make such firms more competitive. Easy money tends to blind such firms who let greed overcome their common sense.

Some retail experts argue that Wal-Mart brings a lot of consumer traffic into an area, which affects the community by creating spinoff revenues for local businesses. If that was a common outcome, surely there would be communities lobbying Wal-Mart to bring its big-box style of retailing to their town, and the giant wouldn’t have to resort to paying its way into new communities.

There is a fundamental difference between retailers who can survive Wal-Mart’s competition and those which cannot. First of all, be realistic about competing on price. You can’t beat Wal-Mart’s prices on flagship items.

It is common knowledge that not all prices for all products are lower in a Wal-Mart store. But they don’t have to be. Consumers will seek out the flagship items at Wal-Mart, then buy other items there because it’s convenient for them to do so. Wal-Mart is also excellent at putting impulse items where they need to be, maximizing sales of products that were not planned purchases.

It you can’t compete on price, you can still compete in other areas of the marketing mix such as product quality and location. If you are already in business and have a sizable market in the local community, with high-quality products, you will not stand to lose as many customers as a store that doesn’t have that reputation.

Location is a plus for many local businesses, which are handier to the customer than travelling to another community, or a centralized retail centre, to go to Wal-Mart. But lower price can still be a critical draw.

Your market segment is the key to success. You need loyal customers, with loyalty programs to keep them coming back. You can spice up this approach with generous helpings of high-end customer service.
Perhaps you think that your particular service is immune to Wal-Mart’s attraction. Think again. If you are selling travel or photography services, eyeglasses, or hairstyling services, you will still face the retail giant in a competitive market. And if I were you, I would think very carefully before taking handouts from predators who really want my customers.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A group primarily funded by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has gone on the offensive against the giant retailer's critics.

Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group that Wal-Mart formed in December to counter a barrage of criticism generated by union-backed groups, silently launched a Web site this month with the unusual aim of discrediting those critics. The site, paidcritics.com, was formally announced on the Working Families's Web site this afternoon following inquiries from The Wall Street Journal.

Paidcritics.com levels most of its criticism at WakeUpWalMart.com, an anti-Wal-Mart group backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. It is one of two groups launched last year -- the other being Wal-Mart Watch, backed by the Service Employees International Union -- to criticize Wal-Mart's labor practices, among other things.

The new website points out "hypocrisy" in the union group's public criticisms of Wal-Mart, "heavy-handed tactics" that unions use in politics and other arenas and their "extreme, not mainstream" political leanings. The site also features a "paid critic of the week," an apparent answer to the Wal-Mart Watch Person of the Week on that group's Web site routinely highlighting a Wal-Mart critic in the news.

Kevin Sheridan, spokesman for Working Families for Wal-Mart, said paidcritics.com was started "to let people know about the real motives of the union leaders behind the campaign against Wal-Mart."

Mr. Sheridan added that the union-backed groups "are attacking the wrong company… Union leaders should focus on standing up for working families rather than attacking a company that serves working families in this country and around the world."

WakeUpWalMart.com spokesman Chris Kofinis, the subject of two postings on paidcritics.com, said his group soon will counter with its own website outlining the Republican strategists working on political and media issues for Wal-Mart.

"It's so sad that to see Wal-Mart, a $300 billion dollar company with [slowing sales growth] and a terrible public image, fund another in-the-gutter publicity stunt to attack the very people who want to change Wal-Mart and America for the better," Mr. Kofinis said.

From the New York Times:

Wal-Mart refuses to carry smutty magazines. It will not sell compact discs with obscene lyrics. And when it catches customers shoplifting - even a pair of socks or a pack of cigarettes - it prosecutes them.

But now, in a rare display of limited permissiveness, Wal-Mart is letting thieves off the hook - at least in cases involving $25 or less.

According to internal documents, the company, the nation’s largest retailer and leading destination for shoplifting, will no longer prosecute first-time thieves unless they are between 18 and 65 and steal merchandise worth at least $25, putting the chain in line with the policies of many other
retailers.

Under the new policy, a shoplifter caught trying to swipe, say, a DVD of the movie “Basic Instinct 2” ($16.87) would receive a warning, but one caught walking out of the store with “E.R. - The Complete Fifth Season” ($32.87) would face arrest.

Wal-Mart said the change would allow it to focus on theft by professional shoplifters and its own employees, who together steal the bulk of merchandise from the chain every year, rather than the teenager who occasionally takes a candy bar from the checkout counter.

It may also serve to placate small-town police departments across the country who have protested what the company has called its zero-tolerance policy on shoplifting. Employees summoned officers whether a customer stole a $5 toy or a $5,000 television set - anything over $3, the company said.

At some of the chain’s giant 24-hour stores, the police make up to six arrests a day prompting a handful of departments to hire an additional officer just to deal with the extra workload.

“I had one guy tied up at Wal-Mart every day,” said Don Zofchak, chief of police in South Strabane Township, Pa., which has 9,000 residents and 16 officers. He said the higher threshold for prosecution “would help every community to deal with this.”

J. P. Suarez, who is in charge of asset protection at Wal-Mart, said it was no longer efficient to prosecute petty shoplifters. “If I have somebody being paid $12 an hour processing a $5 theft, I have just lost money,” he said. “I have also lost the time to catch somebody stealing $100 or an organized group stealing $3,000.”

The changes in Wal-Mart’s theft policy are described in 30 pages of documents that were provided to The New York Times by WakeUpWalMart.com, a group backed by unions that have tried to organize Wal-Mart workers in the United States.

The group said it received the document from a former employee at the chain who is unhappy with the new policy.

In interviews, several current and former Wal-Mart employees said the new shoplifting policy undermines their work and would, over time, encourage more shoplifting at the chain.

But Wal-Mart said it would closely track shoplifters it did not have arrested, and would ask that they be prosecuted after a second incident. (Under the new policy, it will also seek the prosecution of all suspected shoplifters who threaten violence or fail to produce identification, no matter how much they are trying to steal. Not carrying identification is a popular tactic among professional shoplifters to avoid arrest.)

“There is not a lot of margin for success for those intent on making a living stealing from us,” Mr. Suarez said. “We will put them in jail just as we always have.”

Still, the new policy, which became effective in March, is in many ways a striking departure from Wal-Mart traditions. In the past, the company has proudly defended its aggressive prosecution of shoplifters, saying it helps hold down prices.

“Other retailers might offset the cost of shoplifting with higher prices,” a spokeswoman said in a 2004 interview. “But we don’t do that.”

Indeed, Wal-Mart’s zero-tolerance policy can be traced to its founder, Sam Walton, who tied employee bonuses to low theft rates at stores. Stolen merchandise, he wrote in his autobiography published in 1992, the year he died, “is one of the biggest enemies of profitability in the retail business.”

Over all, American retailers lose more than $30 billion a year to theft, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group.

In the book, “Sam Walton: Made in America,” Mr. Walton boasted that the amount of merchandise lost to theft at Wal-Mart was half that of the retailing industry’s average.

With the new policy, though, employees “are confused,” said a former
Wal-Mart employee who worked in the loss prevention department at a store outside San Jose, Calif..

“They want to stop shoplifters,” she said. “They want to do what they are trained to do.”

But if the shoplifter is under 18 or steals less than $25 worth of products, “they can’t do anything,” said the former employee, who left the company shortly after the new shoplifting policy was put into effect and spoke on condition of anonymity because she said she feared retribution.

Chris Kofinis, director of communications at WakeUpWalMart.com, said the policy “is a head-in-the-sand strategy that is far different than what Sam Walton would ever have wanted, and it’s not clear this is the best strategy for Wal-Mart workers.”

Mr. Suarez, the Wal-Mart executive, said there was “overwhelming” employee support for the new policy because it would more effectively deter theft.

Wal-Mart is not alone in giving shoplifters some leeway. Its new policy “is consistent with guidelines many retailers use,” said Joseph J. LaRocca, vice president for loss prevention at the National Retail Federation.

Retailers, he said, have learned that prosecuting small shoplifting cases “does not warrant the store resources or the judicial resources required, given the dollar amount that was stolen.”

In some cases, loss prevention executives said, retailers will prosecute only shoplifters who steal at least $50 or $100 worth of merchandise. The legal costs required for prosecution, they said, are simply too high. Stores must hire a lawyer for employees who become witnesses in a trial, for example, and pay workers overtime to appear in court.

Until now, they said, Wal-Mart was the exception. “They would arrest
somebody for stealing a pair of socks,” said Chief Zofchak in South Strabane Township. “I felt we were spending an inordinate amount of time just dealing with Wal-Mart.”

Since Wal-Mart enforced its new shoplifting policy, arrests have fallen at the store in Harrisville, Utah, according to authorities there. But the town’s chief of police, Maxwell Jackson, still prefers the original zero-tolerance rule.

“Once the word goes out that there is a dollar limit,” he said, “there will be more stealing.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Wal-Mart's chief executive, Lee Scott, made news last October when he announced that Wal-Mart would support a minimum wage hike. Scott, who earned $18 million last year — or about $8,700 an hour — seemed to understand that working families living on the minimum wage won't be able to spend enough at Wal-Mart to sustain the company's recording-breaking profits.

The minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for nine years. It buys less today — less gas, less food, less medicine, less child care — than it has in 50 years. The federal minimum wage is so out of date that 21 states, including Wal-Mart's home state of Arkansas, have raised it rather than wait for Congress to act.

Supporters of a higher minimum wage cheered Wal-Mart's announcement. Some assumed that Wal-Mart would tap its team of top Washington lobbyists to help push through a modest raise for millions of working families. Given Wal-Mart's deep ties to the Bush administration and the steady streams of cash that Wal-Mart has pumped to Republican members of Congress, a higher minimum wage seemed imminent.

A new Economic Policy Institute study shows Wal-Mart could raise wages by $2,100 a year for its own workers and still make billions of dollars a year in profits.

But when it came to the recent effort to raise the minimum wage, leaders on Capitol Hill report that Wal-Mart was nowhere to be found.

The truth is that Wal-Mart had no intention of working to raise the minimum wage.

How about Wal-Mart's promise to join the debate to transform health care in the United States? Wal-Mart has rolled out its "new" health care plan several times in the last year to great fanfare. But faced with $1,000 deductibles and strict limits on coverage, half of Wal-Mart workers still have to rely on Medicaid or go elsewhere when they need to see a doctor. A Wal-Mart memo leaked to the press last year revealed that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart employees are uninsured or depend on taxpayer-funded health care programs.

The real Wal-Mart is the one that pays poverty wages to hundreds of thousands of its own workers and backs groups like the Retail Industry Leaders Association and American Legislative Exchange Council, which work day and night in Washington and in state Capitols around the country to keep wages down.

A hike in the minimum wage isn't something our families should have to dream about. But in the Wal-Mart economy, where employees of America's biggest company live just one paycheck or another illness away from disaster, it's still the stuff of dreams.

Wal-Mart's size and power bring with them a unique moral responsibility for the livelihoods of millions of workers and the needs of billions of consumers. We call on Wal-Mart to drop its public relations ploys and to make good on its promise to help raise the minimum wage.

From the Fort Pierce Tribune (FL):

PORT ST. LUCIE — Wal-Mart has refused to pay for a new ladder truck as one of the conditions it must satisfy to build its SuperCenter at Gatlin Commons, fire officials said.

St. Lucie County Fire District officials said the specialized truck is needed to properly cover all areas of the 207,000-square-foot building in a fire, but Wal-Mart attorney Susan Motley argued in a letter the building has "an abundance" of sprinklers and built-in safety measures that exceed National Fire Protection Association standards.

But if it doesn't get money for a new truck, the district doesn't have to approve the building's certificate of occupancy, Battalion Chief Buddy Emerson wrote in a letter to the city.

The district also asked the city on Monday for help persuading Wal-Mart to follow through on its end of the deal.

The Wal-Mart SuperCenter is the largest business planned for Gatlin Commons, a 400,000-square-foot commercial project on Gatlin and Rosser boulevards, which also will include a 134,000-square-foot Sam's Club and other retailers and restaurants.

As a condition of plan approval, Wal-Mart agreed to provide evidence that the Fire District could provide aerial service to the project, Emerson wrote. But the district didn't specify a ladder truck because Wal-Mart agreed to meet the district's needs at the Site Plan Review meeting, he continued.

Although there is no ordinance requiring developers to pay for ladder trucks, the district's requirement was consistent with the city's planning process, wrote Emerson, who could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Wal-Mart officials maintained their stance.

"We should be able to move forward because we met the (fire) standards," said Eric Brewer, spokesman for Wal-Mart. "Our current position is we don't feel the contribution is needed by law."

He said the requested contribution was $900,000.

Councilman Christopher Cooper, a firefighter in Palm Beach County, said Wal-Mart should pay for at least part of a new ladder truck.

"I think it's a justified fee for a new business which is impacting the level of service from the norm," he said.

Wal-Mart is not the first company to face requirements for new fire equipment. The district has gotten money for half a ladder truck — $350,000 — from The Ginn Co. in March as a precondition for allowing high-rise buildings at Tesoro.

Developer Wayne Huizenga is contributing the other $350,000 for the truck.

THE COST OF FIRE PROTECTION

• Wal-Mart, which is building a SuperCenter at Gatlin and Rosser boulevards, might not get final approval of the project from the St. Lucie County Fire District.

• The district says it can't adequately protect the large building without a new ladder truck and asked Wal-Mart to buy it.

• Wal-Mart has refused, saying it has enough fire protection in the building.

WakeUpWalMart supporters, you are amazing. Yesterday, we asked you to email members of Congress and tell them to raise the minimum wage. And, in less than one day, you've sent over 25,000 emails!

Yet, despite the fact that 84% of Americans support raising the minimum wage, corporate lobbyists and their right-wing politicians in the U.S. Senate just killed an amendment which would have raised the minimum wage to a mere $7.25 per hour. In fact, over the last ten years, Wal-Mart has given political contributions to 90% of the senators who opposed the minimum wage.

Corporate America's victory is the American people's defeat. Here's the simple truth: We can't have real change in America when big corporations, like Wal-Mart, are able to use our government to work against the best interests of the American people.

If you want real change in America, and I know you do, the only way to do it is to take our country back from the big corporate special interests like Wal-Mart. And, while we are off to an amazing start with over 241,000 supporters, we need at least 1 million people to really change America.

Help us take back America today. Click here to get 5 more friends to sign our petition to take back America.

The American people are hungry for change, but Wal-Mart and big corporations are taking America in the wrong direction.

Just look at Wal-Mart's right-wing agenda:

Ship U.S. jobs overseas
Oppose expanding health care to working families
Oppose a living wage
Endanger national security by weakening port security

We will not sit back and let Wal-Mart destroy America's jobs and health care. It's time to take back America and put people first.

Help us take back America today. Click here to get 5 more friends to sign our petition to take back America.

You might ask, why is signing up five more friends the most critical thing I can do to change America?

Here's the reason. We can't take back America alone. Everyone must join together and fight for what kind of America we want to live in. Remember, the faster we grow, the faster we change America. Eventually our 240,000 supporters will become one million, an unstoppable force for change.

Together, we have the power to change Wal-Mart, change America for the better and improve the lives of millions of people.

Our latest press release:

NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS WAL-MART WORKING CLOSELY WITH RIGHT WING ATTACK GROUP

SENIOR WAL-MART OFFICIALS, BOB MCADAM AND LEE CULPEPPER, CONNECTED TO RIGHT-WING ATTACK DOG - RICK BERMAN, HEAD OF THE CENTER FOR UNION FACTS

GROUP CALLS ON WAL-MART TO FIRE BOB MCADAM AND LEE CULPEPPER AND END RELATIONSHIP WITH RIGHT WING ATTACK DOG, RICK BERMAN

Washington, D.C. - WakeUpWalMart.com, America’s campaign to change Wal-Mart, has uncovered a close and working relationship between high-ranking senior Wal-Mart executives, Bob McAdam and Lee Culpepper, and right-wing radical Rick Berman.

Earlier this year, Rick Berman, a well-known right-wing radical and defender of mercury poisoning, drunk driving and Big Tobacco, launched a campaign attacking hard-working union members. At the time of Berman’s launch, Wal-Mart spokesman, Sarah Clark, publicly denied any involvement or connection between Wal-Mart and Berman’s group, the Center for Union Facts. According to the Los Angeles Times, Clark said Wal-Mart had "never heard" of Berman.

Now, Wal-Mart publicly admits it has not only heard of Berman, but has been working with him. The Detroit Free Press reports, “Wal-Mart said it has a relationship in which it exchanges union information with Berman, the group's head." [Detroit Free Press, 5/24/06]

In addition, an investigation by WakeUpWalMart.com confirms that two senior Wal-Mart officials, Bob McAdam and Lee Culpepper, have worked closely with Berman on “special projects” that have related to defending Big Tobacco, defending mercury poisoning, and other right-wing causes.

For example, Bob McAdam worked with Phillip Morris at the Tobacco Institute during the same period of time that Phillip Morris contributed $900,000 to Berman's pro-tobacco campaign. Lee Culpepper worked at the National Restaurant Association. The NRA’s members contributed to Berman's pro-mercury poisoning campaign. In fact, Lee Culpepper, while working at the National Restaurant Association described his relationship with Berman in these glowing terms, “I’ve worked with Rick for years, and indeed he is a lightning rod. People have strong feelings about him, but he helps the industry.”

"Under the leadership of two new senior officials, Wal-Mart has turned to the radical right-wing to try and salvage its declining public image,” said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

Blank continued, “The American people will be deeply disturbed to learn Wal-Mart has developed such a close relationship with a right-wing fanatic like Rick Berman.

It appears Bob McAdam, best known as Big Tobacco’s liar-in-chief, has created a culture of lies and deception at Wal-Mart that threatens the company's credibility with the media, consumers and the American people. Since Bob McAdam joined the company, Wal-Mart has misled the public on its health care statistics, lied on its banking application, and falsely claimed it didn't know it was hiring illegal workers. Lee Culpepper’s relationship with Berman is equally reprehensible.

America must wonder why Wal-Mart wants to be associated with three individuals who have spent their careers lobbying against the public interest including defending mercury poisoning, drunk driving, and big tobacco.

Unless Wal-Mart wants to be forever associated with these abhorrent causes, Wal-Mart needs to immediately fire its right-wing attack dogs Bob McAdam and Lee Culpepper, end its disgusting association with Rick Berman’s group, and issue an apology to all of the hard-working families demonized by Mr. Berman.”

Our latest press release:

Today, Bob McAdam, Wal-Mart's spokesperson and the former political director of the Tobacco Institute, denied WakeUpWalMart.com personally handed Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott a letter outlining our principles for change on February 8, 2006.

According to the Associated Press, "McAdam denies Scott was given the letter as he entered a Washington D.C. meeting with Hispanic congressional leaders."

WakeUpWalMart.com issued the following statement in response. The statement is attributable to Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

"What is Bob McAdam smoking? In front of several Congressional staff, Lee Culpepper and 3 staffers of WakeUpWalMart.com, including myself, our communications director, Chris Kofinis, and our political director, Buffy Wicks, Lee Scott personally accepted our principles for change letter in early February of this year. In fact, Mr. Scott personally thanked Ms. Wicks for the letter.

Following in Big Tobacco’s long tradition of half-truths and lies, it appears Bob McAdam is now advising Wal-Mart to adopt the same failed strategy. Since McAdam’s started at Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart has misled the public on its health care statistics, lied on its banking application, and falsely claimed it didn't know it was hiring illegal workers.

But, no matter how desperate Wal-Mart gets to try and salvage its declining public image, if Wal-Mart wants any credibility with the media, our political leaders or the American public, Wal-Mart will simply tell the truth.

Wal-Mart cannot become a better company by listening to the same man who made a career selling Big Tobacco’s “Big Lies.” If Lee Scott is truly serious about change, he should start by firing Bob McAdam.

As Mr. McAdam learned the hard way, the American people will not tolerate another corporation lying to cover up the truth."

Click here to read the press release put out by WakeUpWalMart.com on the day the Lee Scott encounter happened.

Today, the New Mexico Business Weekly has this breaking story.

The New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department has upheld an $11.6 million corporate income tax assessment against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., saying the company cannot shield its New Mexico earnings by transferring them to an out-of-state holding company.

Wal-Mart improperly shifted earnings to a Deleware holding company for the "sole purpose of reducing income it reported in New Mexico for its in-state stores."

Why?

Delaware does not assess corporate income tax on its companies, so company earnings that can be attributed to a holding company there are not subject to state corporate income taxes.

Wal-Mart has been avoiding paying New Mexico millions of dollars in taxes, and the Taxation and Revenue department says Wal-Mart abused the loophole and owes the state money.

Read the entire article here.

Only Wal-Mart would be arrogant enough to lie to federal regulators and think it could get away with it. Whether the issue is lack of affordable health care, crime, or shipping our jobs overseas, Wal-Mart plays fast and loose with the truth and the American people pay the price. It is time for Wal-Mart to stop its pattern of deception, come clean with the American people and take responsibility for its actions.

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - Wal-Mart gave inaccurate testimony to U.S. regulators considering its application to open a bank, wrongly describing a provision of some leases signed by banks in its stores, according to leases obtained by Reuters.

The inaccuracy involves testimony Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) gave to support its statement that it has no plans to replace community banks now in its stores with bank branches of its own.

Read the entire article

Our latest press release:

WAKEUPWALMART.COM RELEASES FIRST NATIONAL WAL-MART CRIME STUDY - “IS WAL-MART SAFE?”

ESTIMATES NATIONALLY POLICE MAY HAVE RESPONDED TO NEARLY 1 MILLION POLICE INCIDENTS AT WAL-MART IN 2004

57 COMMUNITY GROUPS SIGN JOINT LETTER CALLING ON WAL-MART TO IMPROVE SECURITY BY MOTHER’S DAY

Washington, DC - Today, WakeUpWalMart.com, America’s campaign to change Wal-Mart, released the first national study on Wal-Mart and crime. The study, entitled “Is Wal-Mart Safe?” analyzed the official 2004 police incident reports (i.e. calls for police service) at 551 Wal-Mart store locations. The key findings of the study include:

• In 2004, police received 148,331 calls for service for the 551 Wal-Mart stores analyzed, averaging 269 reported police incidents per store.

• For just the 551 stores sampled, there were 2,909 reported police calls for “violent or serious crimes,” including 4 homicides, 9 rapes or attempts, 23 kidnappings or attempts, 154 sex crimes, 550 robberies or attempts and 1,024 auto thefts.

• Based on the number of reported police incidents for the sample, it is estimated police responded to nearly 1 million police incidents at Wal-Mart in 2004 costing taxpayers $77 million annually.

• Wal-Mart stores have a significantly higher number of reported police incidents than nearby Target stores. For the sample, the average rate of reported police incidents at Wal-Mart stores was 400% higher than the average rate of incidents at nearby Target stores.

The full study “Is Wal-Mart Safe?” and the official police incident reports are available for download and review here

“The high number of reported police incidents at Wal-Mart stores is shocking and outrageous. Wal-Mart’s customers and the community have a right to know whether or not their Wal-Mart is safe. Wal-Mart should immediately fund an independent study to explore the issue of crime at Wal-Mart stores nationwide and immediately take the necessary steps, including putting in roving security patrols and staffing security cameras, to ensure the safety of its customers at every Wal-Mart store,” said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

WakeUpWalMart.com released its study, “Is Wal-Mart Safe?” as part of a nationwide initiative called “Help Make Wal-Mart Safe by Mother’s Day.” As part of the initiative, WakeUpWalMart.com and 57 community groups released a joint letter calling on Wal-Mart’s management to immediately address the public safety issues and concerns of its consumers - 70 percent of whom are women shoppers - by taking all of the necessary steps to improve security at all of its stores by Mother’s Day.

“Public safety and crime are serious issues. Despite internal warnings about crime at some of Wal-Mart’s stores, it is clear Wal-Mart still has a high number of reported police incidents at too many stores. As our nation’s largest retailer, Americans deserve to know the truth about whether or not Wal-Mart is safe,” added Blank.

As a service to the general public, WakeUpWalMart.com also launched a new website, WalMartCrimeReport.com. WalMartCrimeReport.com will collect and disseminate Wal-Mart crime data to the general public. The website allows customers and the general public to download copies of the official police incident reports sent to us by local police departments. The WalMartCrimeReport.com website will also provide a variety of documents that chronicle statements by Wal-Mart officials on public safety, including internal Wal-Mart memos on public safety issues.

WakeUpWalMart.com is a national movement of 225,000 Americans in all 50 states who have joined together to change Wal-Mart into a responsible and moral corporation.

At the 33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in Hollywood today, Sam’s Club is “helping celebrities celebrate in style” by providing a “luxury gift package” to select presenters and nominees at an exclusive backstage gift lounge. The packages are valued at more than $750 each and include lavish gifts including: two dozen long-stem roses, a Magnavox portable DVD player, a Kodak V530 Digital Camera, a Channelock Mechanics’s tool set, and, of course, a one-year Sam’s Club membership.

The celebrities might enjoy the Dom Perignon Champagne … but what would $750 mean to the average Wal-Mart worker?

For the average full-time associate who works 34 hours per week and supposedly earns $10.11 per hour (according to Wal-Mart’s spin machine), $750 is approximately 2.18 weeks of work. For part-timers who work about 24 hours per week and earn roughly $8 per hour, $750 is closer to a month’s salary.

For the 775,000 Wal-Mart workers and their families without company health care, $750 could provide access to urgently-needed medical attention, or simply a visit to the doctor for the first time in years.

Cynthia Murray, for example, might use $750 towards rehabilitation for injuries related to a car accident years ago. Because Cynthia cannot afford Wal-Mart’s health care plan, she has gone without medical treatment to heal her injuries. Like many other Wal-Mart associates and their children, Cynthia must often forgo medical care and simply hope she doesn’t get sick.

Wal-Mart has backed out of a plan to move into a vacant retail space in Flushing, Queens. A recent report said the plan for the new store was in its final stages. But yesterday, Wal-Mart representatives blatantly lied to the senior staff of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn when they said they had "no serious plans" for the Flushing site.

From the New York Sun:

Yesterday, representatives from Wal-Mart met with the senior staff of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at City Hall. According to a spokeswoman for Ms. Quinn, Maria Alvarado, Wal-Mart representatives were asked "point blank" about the Flushing site and said they had no serious plans for it.

When Ms. Quinn later yesterday learned about the Dodge Report on the Flushing project, she asked the Wal-Mart representatives to return to her office with more information.

Ms. Alvarado said Ms. Quinn judged Wal-Mart's nondisclosure of its interest in the Flushing site to be "disingenuous at best," and at worst, "lying."

Ms. Alvarado said Ms. Quinn believes it is "absolutely unacceptable" for Wal-Mart to build a store anywhere in the five boroughs without consulting with the City Council first, even it is not legally required to do so.

Ms. Quinn has expressed concerns about Wal-Mart's purchasing and employment practices and questioned whether the retailer should ever be permitted to open a New York store.

From Media Matters:

On the March 21 broadcast of NBC's Today, co-host Katie Couric introduced a report on Wal-Mart's expansion of its retail business in China by telling viewers: "It's a company that is as American as mom and apple pie." Couric did not say whether the following practices are also "as American as mom and apple pie":

Child labor violations
Illegal immigration settlement
Unpaid work
Nighttime employee lock-ins
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From the Lake County Leader:

Is the issue over the proposed Wal-Mart supercenter a "political" one?

That was the question facing Polson school board officials Monday night after a school district employee filed a grievance, challenging a reprimand she received last November for forwarding an e-mail about the supercenter to other school district employees.

Lynn Witts is the president of the Polson Classified Employees Association, one of two unions that represent school district employees, and the contract the PCEA has with the school district says that the district's e-mail system can be used for union-related business.

Witts claimed that the Wal-Mart-related e-mail she forwarded, which originated with Montana Education Association-Montana Federation of Teachers (MEA-MFT) state union president Eric Feaver, fell under union-related business. But school district employees, including Witts, all received an e-mail from superintendent Sue McCormick in October telling them that the use of the district's e-mail system for "personal-political statements or initiatives" is prohibited after a district employee sent an anti-Wal-Mart e-mail earlier that month following the announcement of the proposed supercenter.

The MEA-MFT is the union that represents most teachers and school district employees around the state, including Polson teachers and staff.

In the e-mail Witts forwarded to several dozen school district employees, most of whom appear to be PCEA staff, Feaver writes "Want to read about Wal-Mart attempting to grow yet another Super Store in Montana? Want more information about how everyone pays more for social services when Wal-Mart comes to town?" it reads.

Feaver's e-mail then includes a link to a Nov. 11 article in the Missoula Independent that discusses the proposed supercenter, including interviews with Moody's Market president Greg Hertz, who is identified as helping to lead the effort against the supercenter, and Wal-Mart manager Dave Tolley. In the article, Hertz and the anti-Wal-Mart group Lake County First are given extensively more coverage than Tolley, leading many of the board members to conclude that the article -- and thus, Witts' e-mail -- was political in nature, not "union business," as Witts and MEA-MFT union representative Tom Gigstad claimed.

Gigstad, who was at the meeting to argue on Witts' behalf, said forwarding an e-mail from the state union president falls well within the agreement between the union and the school district that allows employees to use e-mail for union-related business. Gigstad acknowledged that the school district's personnel policy outlines inappropriate political use of e-mail, including soliciting funds, campaigning for or against a ballot issue such as a mil levy, or endorsing or opposing candidates, but said forwarding a newspaper article on an admittedly contentious topic doesn't fall under any of those restrictions.

"He [Feaver] sent this out to [local] MEA presidents around the state, including Lynn. She received this from the state MEA president, as the local MEA president ... and forwarded it simply for informational purposes," Gigstad said. "There's nothing in here that requires a person to support or oppose ... any ballot issue. There's no solicitation to support or be against anything."

But some board members and McCormick disagreed.

"I think the documentation speaks for itself. The definition of 'political' ... policy, and law are open to interpretation. The article was insightful, [but] it was clear that Lynn and I disagreed about what constitutes 'political,'" McCormick said.

McCormick and some board members argued that the Wal-Mart supercenter issue is political if only because it has to be approved by a political body - the Polson City Council - before it can proceed. Coupled with the earlier warning sent out to district employees based on the first anti-Wal-Mart e-mail, McCormick said Witts should have known better.

But Gigstad said an article about Wal-Mart can be related to employee and teachers unions because Wal-Mart's anti-union stance and low rate of health insurance impacts school district employees and others with health insurance, who end up helping to pay the costs of uninsured residents, such as Wal-Mart employees who don't have health insurance.

"I don't know that it has to do with school issues, per se, but it has to do with union business," Gigstad said.

Gigstad said because he lives in Missoula, his coverage of the supercenter has been limited to articles in the Missoulian, which he acknowledged has also made the subject appear to be political given that the Polson City Council is heavily involved.

But a "Missoulian reporter's choice of words doesn't make it political" even if the Missoulian refers to it as a political issue, Gigstad said.

But board members pointed out that even the Missoula Independent article refers to the issue as "political." The last line of the article says, "Which argument Polson will eventually buy could become one of the more interesting political battles of the year."

Board members also weren't convinced that the e-mail or article qualified as "union business," and would therefore be protected under the district's contract with the teachers and other district employees.

"I don't understand what this has to do with the union," board member Kim Maloney said of the article.

Gigstad said it's not for the board to decide what is union business -- the e-mail was forwarded by the state union president to a local union president, and doesn't fall under the prohibited categories of soliciting funds or trying to impact a ballot issue, for example.

"I'm amazed at your narrow view of what's 'political,'" said trustee Bob Hanson, who characterized the Missoula Independent article as politically slanted.

"This doesn't have a damn thing to do with the school system," Hanson said.

Trustee John Laimbeer said Feaver's anti-Wal-Mart statements in the e-mail Witts forwarded made it a political issue -- not the article's slant.

"I don't think the article has to do with the grievance. I think the statement by Eric Feaver has everything to do with it," he said.

Gigstad noted they weren't claiming Witts' e-mail had anything "to do with kids or the educational system," but reiterated his position that it fell under union business.

Witts, a substitute bus driver and special education paraprofessional at the high school, filed a number of grievances against the district last year, including one last summer in which she claimed she and other bus drivers with seniority were being passed over for out-of-town trips in violation of the contract with district employees. Witts has filed nine grievances against the district in the past two years, she said.

Although this one was done on her behalf only, most of them were filed on behalf of other PCEA employees as the union president. Witts was given the option to have her grievance hearing held behind closed doors, but said she was fine with it being open to the public.

She acknowledged seeing McCormick's October e-mail warning employees not to use the district's e-mail system for personal causes after the first anti-Wal-Mart e-mail was sent, but said she thought McCormick was being extra sensitive to the fact that negotiations between the board and teachers over their contract were still ongoing at the time -- a sensitive issue in and of itself.

She also said the employee who sent the first anti-Wal-Mart e-mail also cautioned her after seeing the one Witts forwarded, telling her, "Hey Lynn, I got in trouble for this."

But Witts said she forwards Feaver's e-mails regularly in an effort to keep her fellow PCEA coworkers informed of issues affecting them, and that she didn't see anything wrong with forwarding the Missoula Independent article, with Feaver's comments included. She said she forwarded several other articles along with the Wal-Mart one.

Board member Vernon Finley asked Witts if she thought it was her responsibility to verify whether something was appropriate or legal before forwarding it.

"I do not endorse this -- I just pass it on. I didn't find it [the Wal-Mart article] political," Witts said, noting that she's forwarded dozens of other union-related e-mails she's received as part of the e-mail list she's on.

Gigstad and Witts were essentially asking that a copy of the reprimand be deleted from Witts' personnel file. The board will have 14 working days to act on her request, and if no action is taken, the reprimand will stand.

In a speech on Tuesday, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi used Wal-Mart as an example in describing the income of corporate American CEOs as "immoral."

"I was told that an entry level person at Wal-Mart, who works his or her entire career at Wal-Mart, would make as much as the CEO makes in two weeks. A lifetime of work versus two weeks in the executive suite -- this is not America, this is not fairness, this is not the basis of a strong middle class that is essential for our democracy. We must change that in our country," she said.

A recent study done by The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), details how Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott's compensation is 871 times as high as U.S. Wal-Mart workers. Scott made about $46,575 per day in 2005. That is about three times what the average Wal-Mart worker makes per year.

In Forbes magazine's latest ranking of American billionaires (by state):

Arkansas
17. Jim Walton, 58, $15.9, Wal-Mart
19. S. Robson Walton, 62, $15.8, Wal-Mart
21. Helen Walton, 86, $15.6, Wal-Mart

Missouri
278. Ann Walton Kroenke, 56, $2.6, Wal-Mart
350. Nancy Walton Laurie, 54, $2.2, Wal-Mart

Texas
20. Alice Walton, 56, $15.7, Wal-Mart

Wyoming
17. Christy Walton, 51, $15.9, Wal-Mart inheritance

Click here for the full list.

Yesterday, Wal-Mart gave wealthy shareholders a raise of $291 million dollars. The same day, Wal-Mart in Battle Creek, Michigan announced plans to decrease wages for 26 hourly employees.

From the Battle Creek Enquirer:

Wal-Mart in Battle Creek is decreasing wages for 26 of its hourly employees, according to company spokesman Dan Fogleman.

The retail giant, based in Bentonville, Ark., conducts occasional internal audits of each of its locations, according to Fogleman. It was during a recent audit at the Battle Creek store that a discrepancy was found in some workers' pay scales, he said.

The following is a statement by Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com, regarding Wal-Mart's announcement to raise its dividend to shareholders.

"Wal-Mart's hypocrisy is simply out of control. To give wealthy shareholders a $291 million raise, while arguing you can't offer better wages or health benefits to your employees is hypocritical and morally outrageous. For the Walton family, already worth $70 billion, to get an additional $118 million per year raise, while workers suffer is borderline obscene.

Does Lee Scott have no shame? How does Wal-Mart and Lee Scott justify a $291 million bonus to wealthy shareholders at the same time Wal-Mart cuts health care spending per employee and now has over 775,000 of its employees without company health care.

The American people are growing tired of Wal-Mart's empty promises and meaningless excuses. For more than a year now, Lee Scott has said Wal-Mart pays poverty level wages and provides unaffordable health care because his company supposedly has 'thin profit margins.' The real truth is Wal-Mart's low wages and poor benefits aren't about margins, it's about profits and the cruel financial reward that comes from exploiting 1.3 million Wal-Mart employees and American taxpayers.

Just think, in our new report, the estimated cost to taxpayers of the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis was $1.4 billion for 2005. Yet, Wal-Mart would rather beg governors for help, shift their costs onto the American taxpayer, and give shareholders a $291 million dollar bonus than pay its fair share for health care.

Apparently, Wal-Mart's "thin profit margins" argument only applies to the working class, not the investor class. The American people, taxpayers, its employees, and communities are growing tired of Wal-Mart's empty excuses and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart has the ability to do the right thing, but it simply chooses not to.

On behalf of the American people, we call on Wal-Mart choose a better road, to start reflecting the best of American values, to work together with us, and to come up with real solutions that improve the lives of their workers and make Wal-Mart a more responsible and better company."

Our newest press release:

WHAT IS THE TRUTH? WAKEUPWALMART.COM CALLS ON WAL-MART TO COME CLEAN WITH ITS HEALTH CARE FACTS

WAL-MART REMOVES DOCUMENT FROM ITS WEBSITE AND CONTRADICTS ITSELF ON HOW MANY EMPLOYEES ARE RECEIVING HEALTH CARE COVERAGE AS OF JANUARY 2006

Washington, DC. - WakeUpWalMart.com calls on Wal-Mart and CEO Lee Scott to explain to the American public why Wal-Mart deleted a company document published on Walmartfacts.com stating Wal-Mart only covered 43% of its employees under its health care plan. The document, published January 2006, contradicts Wal-Mart’s public statement yesterday of 46% as of January 2006, and would indicate, contrary to Wal-Mart’s claims, their health care coverage has actually gotten worse, not better.

The group also calls on Wal-Mart and Scott to explain a series of conflicting statements by the company regarding just how many Wal-Mart workers actually receive company health care coverage.

“It’s time to hold Wal-Mart accountable. Wal-Mart is playing fast and loose with the facts to cover up its health care crisis. If Wal-Mart wants to earn customers trust, then they should come clean with the American people and disclose how many workers they have on their health care plan,” said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

Wal-Mart’s changing statements relate to three basic categories: (1) the percentage of employees insured by the company; (2) the total number of employees; and, (3) the total number of employees insured by the company. While these numbers are bound to fluctuate throughout the year, the pattern of Wal-Mart statements suggests deliberate misrepresentation for the purpose of public relations, rather than a desire to print the underlying facts.

Over the last ten months, as the document below shows, Wal-Mart spokespeople have given conflicting statements about the facts regarding each of these important areas. It is important for Wal-Mart to disclose the truth in order for the public and the press to evaluate the state of the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis.

Based on these conflicting statements, there is considerable doubt about the sincerity of health care reforms at Wal-Mart and whether or not they will actually raise the percentage of workers receiving company health care.

The internal document referenced (and deleted yesterday) was titled “health care backgrounder” and is attached or available by contacting WakeUpWalMart.com

WALMART’S CHANGING HEALTH CARE FACTS

How Many Wal-Mart Workers Work in the United States?

• January 2004
As of January 31, 2004, the Company employed approximately 1.5 million Associates worldwide, with approximately 1.2 million Associates in the United States
[Wal-Mart’s 10-K SEC Filing 2004]

• December 2004
Wal-Mart 5500 IRS Filing: 1,344,881 workers.
[www.freeerisa.org]

• January 2005
As of January 31, 2005, the Company employed approximately 1.7 million Associates worldwide, with approximately 1.3 million Associates in the United States.
[Wal-Mart’s 10-K SEC Filing 2005]

• October 2005
The world's biggest retailer employs 1.2 million people in the U.S. and 568,000 of them, or about 47 percent, have health insurance, the company said. [WAL-MART SETS NEW WORKERS' HEALTH PLAN. WWD October 25, 2005 ]

• February 2006
“Fact: 1.3 million Associates work at Wal-Mart in the U.S.”
[www.walmartfacts.com]

How Many Wal-Mart Workers Are Covered By Some Health Insurance?

• April 2005
“Currently, 86 percent of Wal-Mart hourly store associates surveyed have medical insurance.”
[Walmartfacts.com]

• November 2005
From Wal-Mart’s internal memo: only 81 percent of Wal-Mart workers have some form of insurance
[Supplemental Benefits Documentation: Board of Directors Retreat FY06]

• January 2006
“We estimate that more than three-fourths of Wal-Mart associates have some health insurance, through either a company plan, a spouse’s plan, or Medicare.”
[Wal-Mart: http://www.walmartfacts.com/docs/1625_jan2006healthcarebackgrounders_576890240.pdf]

What percentage of Wal-Mart Workers are Covered By the Wal-Mart Plan?

• April 2005
Wal-Mart: “Currently, 86 percent of Wal-Mart hourly store associates surveyed have medical insurance - 56 percent of those with coverage received health care insurance from Wal-Mart.” Therefore, 48% of Wal-Mart associates were covered by the company plan (Multiplying 56 percent of 86 percent would equal a total of 48% of Wal-Mart associates).
[Walmartfacts.com - April 2005]

• May 2005
“The company, based in Bentonville, Ark., says it covers health care for more than half its employees, and opens a route off state Medicaid rolls.”
[“PA to Wal-Mart: Pay Up for Health Care,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/16/05]

• October 2005
“The world's biggest retailer employs 1.2 million people in the U.S. and 568,000 of them, or about 47 percent, have health insurance, the company said.”
[“Wal-Mart Sets New Workers’ Health Plan,” Women’s Wear Daily, 10/25/05]

• January 2006
“On average in 2005, 73% of all associates were eligible for Wal-Mart plans and 43% of all associates chose to enroll”
[http://www.walmartfacts.com/docs/1625_jan2006healthcarebackgrounders_576890240.pdf]

• February 2006
“Wal-Mart's ranks of company-insured now stand at 47 percent, [Company Spokesman] Fogleman said.”
[“Utahns foot insurance bill” Salt Lake City Tribune, 2/5/06]

How Many Wal-Mart Workers Are Covered by the Wal-Mart Health Plan?

• February, 24, 2006
Wal-Mart has said its new Value Plan has encouraged more workers to sign up for health care. But its records show that the percentage of workers who have enrolled in a company health insurance plan has increased only slightly in the last year. As of January 2005, Wal-Mart insured 45.8 percent of its workers. Today, it insures 46.2 percent, or about 615,000 out of 1.3 million. (NY Times, Feb 24, 2006)

• January 1, 2006
“As a result, Wal-Mart said, 70,000 new employees signed up for insurance for 2006, bringing the number covered by the company's plan to 638,000.”
[New York Times, 1/5/06]

• January 19, 2006
“A statement distributed by the company said more than 615,000 of the company's 1.3 million workers are covered by Wal-Mart health plans.”
[AP, 1/19/06]

• January 19, 2006
Wal-Mart, which is considering challenging the Maryland law, will fight such efforts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, spokesman Nate Hurst said Friday. Nationwide, 638,000 of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million workers have health insurance through the company, he said. The company expects support from other businesses that could be targeted next, Hurst said. [Harrisburg Patriot News, 1/19/06]

• December 6, 2005
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has enrolled 70,000 additional workers in its health-care programs for next year at a time when its insurance offerings have come under harsh criticism. … Of Bentonville-based Wal-Mart's 1.2 million U.S. workers, about 568,000, or 47 percent, had health insurance this year. [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 12/6/05]

•December 3, 2005
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. added 70,000 U.S. workers to its health-care plans for next year, with roughly a third of those choosing the retailer's new low-cost plan. … At the beginning of this year, 568,000 of Wal-Mart's total 1.2 million U.S. employees were enrolled in its health-care plans, amounting to roughly 47% of the retailer's overall domestic work force. The national average for retailers is 46%, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research group. [WSJ, 12/3/05]

• October 25, 2005
The world's biggest retailer employs 1.2 million people in the U.S. and 568,000 of them, or about 47 percent, have health insurance, the company said. In its attempt to increase the ranks of insured, Wal-Mart is bucking a national trend among corporations looking to curtail spiraling health care costs. [Women’s Wear Daily, 10/25/05]

• June 23, 2005
Of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million full- and part-time employers, the lawmakers estimate that more than 600,000 do not have company insurance. Company critics say Wal-Mart wages are so low and the health premiums charged to employees so high, even some full-time employees qualify for government-funded health care. [Washington Post, 23 June 2005 ]

Our latest press release:

NEW WALMART DOCUMENT REVEALS A 5% DECREASE IN THE PERCENTAGE OF WORKERS COVERED BY THE COMPANY

NEW REPORT ESTIMATES WAL-MART HEALTH CARE CRISIS COST TAXPAYERS NEARLY $1.4 BILLION IN 2005/ PROJECTS COST OF $9.1 BILLION OVER THE NEXT 5 YEARS

Washington, DC – Today, WakeUpWalMart.com, America’s leading campaign to change Wal-Mart, released a new report detailing the “Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis.” “The Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis” is the result of Wal-Mart’s failure to provide affordable health care to over half of its workforce which forces, according to estimates, several hundred thousand Wal-Mart workers and their families onto taxpayer-funded public health care.

In fact, based on Wal-Mart’s own documents, published on WalMartfacts.com in January 2006, the percentage of Wal-Mart workers with company health care decreased by 5% - from 48 percent to 43 percent. Therefore, in 2005, Wal-Mart admits it failed to provide company health care to 57% of its workforce, leaving over 775,000 Wal-Mart workers and their families without company health care. The new number is far worse than has been previously reported and is contrary to recent public statements by the company.

WakeUpWalMart.com issued a new report today after conducting a full analysis of all reported data on Wal-Mart’s health care spending. The report, titled “America Pays, Wal-Mart Saves: The Growing Cost of the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis,” estimates that, in 2005, nearly 300,000 Wal-Mart workers and their family members depended on taxpayer-funded public health care at a total cost to American taxpayers of $1.37 billion.

The most striking finding in the report is the projected cost to American taxpayers of the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis if Wal-Mart successfully completes its publicly stated goal of building 1,500 additional stores. Based on the current cost and the future store growth, the report projects the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis will cost American taxpayers approximately $9.1 billion over the next 5 years, 2006-2010.

“The Wal-Mart health care crisis is real, it’s growing, and the cost to taxpayers is enormous. Wal-Mart’s dirty little secret is to force taxpayers to pay nearly $1.4 billion in their health care costs, while Wal-Mart pockets $11 billion in profits. Wal-Mart will cost American taxpayers more than $9 billion over the next five years in health care costs alone” said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.

Another startling finding in the report is the fact that Wal-Mart’s health care spending per worker actually declined by 3.5% during the period of 2003-2004, according to Wal-Mart’s latest filing with the Internal Revenue Service. This is notable for two reasons: 1) national health care spending per worker for the rest of America rose by 7.6% during this period, and 2) Wal-Mart’s repeated public statements about its health care spending and health care coverage do not reflect the reality of Wal-Mart’s own data submitted to the IRS. More detailed figures for Wal-Mart’s health care spending will be released when Wal-Mart files its Form 5500 for 2005.

“Wal-Mart ought to be ashamed. While health care costs and the number of uninsured are rising, Wal-Mart feeds America’s health care crisis by actually cutting back on its health care spending. It’s outrageous and the American people and their lawmakers will not tolerate such irresponsibility in corporate America,” added Paul Blank.

The report paints a disturbing picture of the scope and cost America bears because of the Wal-Mart health care crisis. Among the findings:

Of a total workforce in the Unites States of 1.39 million in October 2005, 57 percent or 775,000 Wal-Mart workers, had no company health care. The actual percentage of Wal-Mart workers without company health care increased by 5 percent in 2005.

The cost of the Wal-Mart health care crisis for 2005 is estimated at $1.37 billion. A previous study, by Professor Michael Hicks from the Air Force institute, estimated that each Wal-Mart employee increased Medicaid expenditures by $898. For Wal-Mart’s 2005 work force, this would cost taxpayers $1.24 billion.

Wal-Mart’s health care expenditures per worker actually declined by 3.5% during the period of 2003-2004, according to Wal-Mart’s latest filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Based on Wal-Mart’s growth projections for 2006-2010, the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis will cost taxpayers an estimated $9.1 billion over the next five years.

Despite Wal-Mart claiming only 5% of its workforce is on public health care assistance, based on the available data, it is estimated Wal-Mart averages 13 percent of its workforce on public health care assistance. The 13 percent figure is 3.25 times higher than the national average of 4 percent for all employers and 2.6 times higher than the 5 percent average Wal-Mart states publicly.

Based on the data from the states who have released dependent care numbers, it is estimated that for every 12 Wal-Mart workers, one dependent of a Wal-Mart employee is on a taxpayer-funded public health care program. According to Wal-Mart’s own internal health care memo, Wal-Mart believes 27 percent of its employees’ children are using state Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Programs. In Georgia, for example, nearly 10,000 children of Wal-Mart workers are enrolled in the state PeachCare program – nearly 14 times more than any other employer.

Nationwide, it is estimated that 183,382 Wal-Mart workers and 112,768 family members of Wal-Mart workers are forced onto taxpayer-funded public health care assistance. The total number of Wal-Mart workers and family members who are part of the Wal-Mart health care crisis is 296,150.

For 2005, ending the Wal-Mart Health Care crisis would provide an extra $1.37 billion in additional funding for national and state health care programs. In terms of programs, the $1.37 billion in federal and state tax dollars currently going to subsidize Wal-Mart could be used to reinstate proposed funding cuts in the 2007 federal budget of over $1 billion in health care grants to states.

The complete report, “America Pays, Wal-Mart Saves” is being released as part of an upcoming national health care campaign initiative called “Stop the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis.” The latest campaign initiative by WakeUpWalMart.com will officially launch nationwide with events in 12 states on February 28th. Additional state-by-state estimates of the cost of the Wal-Mart Health Care Crisis will be released on February 28th. The complete “America Pays, Wal-Mart Saves” health care memo is available for download at WakeUpWalMart.com.

WakeUpWalMart.com is America’s leading campaign to change Wal-Mart. With over 182,600 supporters in all 50 states, WakeUpWalMart.com is building the largest grassroots movement to change a corporation in history.

At the same time Wal-Mart uses "thin profit margins" to justify why it can't be more responsible and provide better health care and wages to its workers, Wal-Mart wants to spend hundreds of millions on a "face lift" - talk about the wrong priorities.

See article here

From NBC 10 news:

Mom Gets Porn Pictures From Wal-Mart

Gauntt Says Store Manager Admitted Mistake

CHERRY HILL, N.J. -- A local mother got the shock of her life when she picked up her prints from the local Wal-Mart.

Lisa Gauntt said she took many pictures at a baby shower, and subsequently dropped off the film at the store.

While the prints came out fine, the photo CD came back with pornographic pictures. With her family gathered around the computer to see the baby shower photos, Gauntt said she was shocked at what appeared on her laptop's screen instead.

"We clicked on the first one, and that is what we saw," she said. "The naked spread-eagled woman on a chair. That is what my family got to see."

"My children saw it," Gauntt said. "Wal-Mart exposed my children to pornography."

Gauntt said the store manager admitted it was a mistake and apologized, but she was still upset and wanted to make sure it doesn't happen again to someone else. Gauntt said she would take her pictures to Target in the future.

Click here for the full story and slideshow.

The following comments can be attributed to Mona Williams, Vice President Corporate Communications:

Bentonville, Ark. - January 5, 2006 - We are heartsick that this happened and are currently doing everything possible to correct the problem. The offensive combinations that have been identified will be removed from the site by 5:30 CT today. However, with thousands of movie items available, there is an almost endless number of possible combinations. Because of that, we will be shutting down our entire movie cross-selling system until the problem is resolved.

Our system, like those of most other on-line buying sites, refers buyers interested in a particular movie to other movies through a technical process known as "mapping."

Walmart.com's item mapping process does not work correctly and at this point is mapping seemingly random combinations of titles. We were horrified to discover that some hurtful and offensive combinations are being mapped together.

To further illustrate the bizarre nature of this technical issue, the site is also mapping movies such as Home Alone and Power Puff Girls to African American-themed DVDs.

We are deeply sorry that this happened.

Is someone at Wal-Mart playing some racist joke or is this just a glitch? Check out what some of our supporters emailed us about today. You won’t believe it. When you type in “Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV series,” Wal-Mart actually recommends a movie about ‘Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream’ and 'Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.’

Remember Wal-Mart’s recent past. Last year, Wal-Mart used a Nazi image in an ad, called the police on an African-American executive who wanted to purchase gift cards, and was sued by an African-American truck driver for racial discrimination.

And, now, we just found out, after several press inquiries about this situation, Wal-Mart has suddenly switched its web page.

Does Wal-Mart have a racial problem?

CLICK "CONTINUE READING..." TO SEE THE BEFORE AND AFTER SCREENSHOTS

Before:

After:

From USA Today:

Federal agents arrested more than 120 workers on immigration violations Thursday at the construction site of a Wal-Mart distribution center, the latest in a string of labor problems for the discount retailer.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the site in Butler Township, Pa., in the early morning. The workers were nearing completion of a million-square-foot distribution center.

Wal-Mart officials say those arrested were employees of a subcontractor and that Wal-Mart has contracts with subcontractors requiring that they follow all federal, state and local laws.

"We will cooperate fully with ICE and the U.S. attorney's office in this matter," Wal-Mart said in a statement.

Wal-Mart critics say the raid will tarnish the store's public image and is a further example that the retailer violates labor laws.

"They're trying to improve their public image ... but they're undermining their own attempts," says Paul Blank, campaign director of Washington, D.C.-based WakeUpWalMart.com, a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. "There's clearly a pattern where they're violating the law."

From the News Telegraph:

Wal-Mart is inviting religious leaders to visit its headquarters and to serve on a national steering committee.

[...]

The Rev. Clarence Pemberton Jr, of New Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, said a company representative attended a meeting of about 75 Baptist ministers. He told the Los Angeles Times: "It appeared that what he was trying to do was to influence us or put us in opposition to this film that is coming out and will be in the churches.

"It was implied very strongly that it was about some sort of cash rewards for people who would become partners with Wal-Mart and what they were trying to do."

Wal-Mart did not return calls seeking comment.

As you have proven (here and here for example), Wal-Mart's big money PR spin machine is no match for a coordinated group of concerned citizens. Let's make sure this is no different. Visit our Download Central to find all the materials you'll need to talk to your friends, neighbors, priests, etc. about why Wal-Mart must change:

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/downloads/

From Cinematical:

Have Wal-Mart employees been barred from seeing Robert Greenwald's documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, by their corporate overlords? That's the gist of an email meme going around this afternoon. We have no idea whether or not this is true, but the rumor going around is that a member of a lefty group on the University of Wyoming campus attempted to give a flyer for the film to a Wal-Mart employee. The employee responded that she couldn't attend the screening, because representatives from Wal-Mart management would be there, and "if any Wal-Mart employee is seen by them attending any screening, we've been told that we will be fired." Has anyone else heard tell of anything like this, either on a blog or from an actual human being? Let us know.

Statement by former congressman and author of the Americans with Disabilities Act Tony Coelho:

As the author of the American’s with Disabilities Act and long-time advocate for people with disabilities, I am deeply troubled by Wal-Mart’s internal memo exposed by the New York Times this morning.

This is one of the most profitable companies in the world and this memo shows that in their pursuit for greed and power, they have chosen to cut costs even at the price of human dignity. Wal-Mart’s desire to “dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart” is chilling and unconscionable. No company or organization should be able to discriminate against an employee on the basis of age, level of fitness, disability status or potential cost to the company.

It is a sad day when American’s largest employer callously treats its employees as products in its stores. Wal-Mart has a moral responsibility to immediately disavow itself of this memo and not selectively hire Americans on the basis of their potential cost to the company.

Last week, Republican Congressman, and former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tom DeLay was arrested and booked on state conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

As if corruption at the highest level of our government isn’t bad enough, it turns out Wal-Mart actually gave Tom Delay money 2 days after he was indicted. That’s right. Wal-Mart made a $5,000 contribution to support Tom Delay’s corruption 2 days after his indictment.

For a long time, we have known Wal-Mart’s policies are morally corrupt, but now we know Wal-Mart’s politics are politically corrupt too. But, this time, we are going to do something about it. Wal-Mart should ask Tom Delay for its contribution to be returned immediately.

Sign the online petition calling on Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to insist Tom Delay return Wal-Mart’s politically corrupt contribution today.

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/feature/delay/

Wal-Mart has recently become a key player in "pay-to-play" politics. Wal-Mart’s corporate PAC donated more than $2.7 million to federal and state candidates in 2004, with nearly 80% of Wal-Mart’s campaign contributions going to Republican candidates.

Wal-Mart's radical right wing agenda hurts America. Only a corrupt, right-wing politician like Tom Delay could support Wal-Mart’s political agenda of poverty-level wages, poor health care, weaker child labor protections and an acceleration of shipping good-paying U.S. jobs overseas.

Don’t let Wal-Mart’s morally corrupt political agenda corrupt our Congress. Tell Wal-Mart to stop supporting corrupt politicians like Tom Delay today.

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/feature/delay/

Our country deserves better than morally corrupt companies like Wal-Mart supporting politically corrupt politicians like Tom Delay.

In an article in the Manteca Bulletin, we learn that one out of every 4 residents of Ripon, CA have signed a petition opposing the building of a Wal-Mart in their town. Hundreds of these residents showed up at a Ripon City Council meeting Tuesday night to protest a possible Wal-Mart.

Kevin Loscotoff, Wal-Mart’s Regional Manager of Community Affairs, was also in attendance. He translated this growing petition into the following:

"And it’s amazing the overwhelming support that is pouring out of residents of the community."

Wal-Mart has certainly been known to spin the facts to appear in the favor, but this one is quite a stretch. Here are some quotes from Ripon residents, pouring out their, um, "overwhelming support" for Wal-Mart:

“They mow over small towns like it’s nothing — it’s a disgrace. Wal-Mart represents low-wages, low-benefits, and shifting a huge burden onto taxpayers.”

“Just like a situation we had with homes looking down on a tow-yard, the people of Ripon didn’t buy homes to look across the street at a Wal-Mart. I suggest you find ways to stop this.”

“That feeling is what Ripon was built on — it’s a small family community. If you drop a SuperStore in this community, I believe it will decimate Ripon.”

From Forbes:

Wal-Mart Stores fended off a racketeering charge on Friday, but a U.S. judge decided that a lawsuit brought against the behemoth retailer by the undocumented workers who once buffed its superstore floors can proceed. Wal-Mart will have to answer to charges of not paying these workers fair wages and overtime, and that its store managers locked the doors on overnight cleaning crews, keeping them prisoner until the doors were opened the next morning to let in bargain-hunting shoppers.

New York City labor lawyer James Linsey, who represents several hundred illegal workers in their lawsuit against Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ), promises to resubmit the racketeering allegations. But he says he is pleased that the heart of his complaint--that the workers were underpaid and mistreated--withstood Wal-Mart's motion to dismiss.

From Reuters comes the latest in their series on Wal-Mart. In this edition, we learn that Wal-Mart has a new "secret spin strategy" to counter our campaign. As Chris pointed out in the article, if Wal-Mart did the right thing every day, they wouldn't need a super secret PR strategy to cover up their problems. Here is an excerpt from the article:

And now, Scott has started to drop hints about a secret spin strategy to counter a union-backed, anti-Wal-Mart media blitz that he says is not going to go away.

Scott -- who says his job is to defend Wal-Mart's reputation from those who contend the world's No. 1 retailer pays poverty-level wages and drives competitors out of business -- wouldn't divulge details of the new public relations plan, but he has stressed its importance.

"It is not a matter of Wal-Mart just needing to hire public relations people," Scott said in a recent speech. "This is a significant issue that we face and has to be dealt with ... internally, in the company, without allowing our plans to be public."

From a Dallas Morning News article today comes this from Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, speaking of Wal-Mart's response to Hurricane Katrina:

"Our associates needed it, and many of them feel good for the first time in a long time." Scott said he's received thousands of supportive employee e-mails. He tells them in his replies, "It has not converted our critics, but it has shut them up for a while."

As we have stated, we applaud Wal-Mart's response to Hurricane Katrina. But we have a message for Mr. Scott: "We will not shut up until Wal-Mart changes not just one day, but every day."

Sign on to our “six demands for change” today and help us extend the first offer to build a true working partnership between WakeUpWalMart.com and Wal-Mart, in order to better the lives of Wal-Mart workers, their families, and millions of Americans - every day:

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/feature/benton/

Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart and ASDA, its British subsidiary, achieved a new level of global irony this weekend calling for a government investigation into the market dominance of one of its foreign competitors, TESCO. As reported by The Sunday Times, Scott demanded that the British Government investigate its chief grocery rival TESCO because of what Scott sees as the company’s growing market dominance in Britain. Scott stated that “as you get to over 30 percent and higher, I am sure there is a point where government is compelled to intervene….at some point the Government has to look at it.”

“Scott criticizing TESCO for its market dominance is like Enron criticizing Arthur Anderson for its accounting practices. Wal-Mart is using its immoral business practices as a competitive advantage over responsible corporations. The question for Wal-Mart should be when will Wal-Mart demand an investigation of itself?” said, Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com

Lee Scott’s statement is especially ironic in light of the facts about Wal-Mart’s market share here in the United States.

Here are the facts.

1. Wal-Mart accounts for 60% of the sales for the $379 billion market called Discount Department and General Merchandise stores.
   
2. Wal-Mart’s general merchandise dominance means it has sales nearly 5 times more than their next closest competitor and double the sales of their next 3 closest competitors (Costco, Target and Kmart) combined.
   
3. Wal-Mart controls approximately 24% of grocery sales in the United States (more than double its next closest competitor), very similar to TESCO’s position in the United Kingdom.
   
4. Wal-Mart sells more groceries than their top 3 competitors combined.
   
5. Wal-Mart sells 30% of household staples bought in the United States, including items such as toothpaste, shampoo, and paper towels, according to Business Week.
   
6. A report prepared by Retail Forward in 2003 forecasted that Wal-Mart’s domestic supermarket-type sales could go from an estimated $82 billion to $162 billion by 2007. In the process, Wal-Mart will consume almost a third of the expected growth in US spending on grocery and drug products during 2003-2007. Growth of this magnitude would give Wal-Mart control of 35% of food store industry sales and 25% of the drug store industry – and put many entrenched players in jeopardy.
   
7. Grocery Industry statistics Ranked by Percentage:
   

   
   24% Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club
   10% Kroger
   7% Albertson’s
   6% Safeway
   

   
   Discount department & General Merchandise stores ($379 billion) Ranked by sales
   

   
   Wal-Mart & Sam’s Club $229 bill
   Costco $47 bill
   Target $47 bill
   Kmart $20 bill

According to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, the government should investigate when a company gets too big, because it becomes too hard for other companies to compete. Care to repeat that Mr. Scott?

LONDON (AFX) - Tesco PLC's growing dominance of the UK grocery market should be investigated by competition watchdogs, according to Lee Scott, chief executive of US retail giant Wal-Mart, which owns UK supermarket group Asda.

'I am sure there is a point where the government is compelled to intervene, particularly in the UK, where you have the planning laws that make it more difficult to compete,' Scott told the Sunday Times. 'At some point the government has got to look at it.'

Scott's comments came after market researchers TNS said last week that Tesco's share of the UK market rose to a record 30.5 pct over the last three months. That put Tesco at the top of the UK supermarket league, with Asda in second place with 16.7 pct.

Tesco said there was no justification for a competition probe.

'Previous Competition Commission inquiries have found that the market - and Tesco - operates in the consumer interest. It is a competitive market. The consumer is the winner,' Tesco corporate and legal affairs director Lucy Neville-Rolfe told the Sunday Times.

Thanks to JR for bringing this one to my attention. Wal-Mart is trying to recover insurance money from a brain damaged accident victim, who, if Wal-Mart wins the money, would "likely lose the caretaker who "stays with her and works with her and helps her and tries to keep her in good spirits."

Here are some excerpts:

Debbie Shank stocked shelves at a Wal-Mart store in Cape Girardeau, Mo., until five years ago, when her minivan was hit by a tractor-trailer. Her Wal-Mart health insurance paid the medical bills. Proceeds from a lawsuit helped finance her care in a nursing home.

Brain damage forces her to use a wheelchair and limits her upper body movement to one arm and two fingers. It stole her memory and her ability to talk to her husband and three sons.

"She'll ask about the boys, she'll ask about the cat," said her husband, Jim Shank. "Whenever I'm there, she thinks it must be a mealtime. We don't really hold a conversation."

Now the Shanks face a new obstacle. Her Wal-Mart health insurance plan wants the lawsuit money to repay its costs.

To read the rest of the article from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, click here.

It was shocking when Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott admitted that "In some of our states, the public program may actually be a better value [than Wal-Mart's health care options]..."

It is also stunning to know that Wal-Mart’s health care plan fails to cover over 600,000 employees.

But in an article in Sunday's Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Wal-Mart vice president for federal and international public affairs Ray Bracy was quoted as saying: "Yeah, we have a lot of people on state rolls. We wish it wasn’t so."

Wal-Mart, a company with $10 billion in profits, doesn't have to wish it wasn't so. They can make it so.

Make Wal-Mart care about health care. Sign up today to be a citizen co-sponsor of Fair Share for Health Care legislation by clicking here.

In a bizarre story today, we learn that citizens of Yelm, Washington have been banned for the past five months from mentioning big-box retailers (especially Wal-Mart) at town council meetings:

A speak-no-Wal-Mart policy in town council meetings is getting a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Aaron H. Caplan, an ACLU lawyer in Seattle, has written Yelm Mayor Adam Rivas and council members that the group believes it is unconstitutional to prohibit any mention of Wal-Mart or big-box stores in general at council meetings.

The policy has been increasingly restrictive over the past five months. No one who signs up to talk about big-box stores, much less Wal-Mart, at a council meeting is allowed to talk, anyone who mentions either is told to sit down.

One can only guess the motivation behind the stifling of citizens from airing their views, but considering Wal-Mart has applied for a building permit in Yelm, I can only guess that the Wal-Mart war chest has been opened once again and is being used to silence Wal-Mart critics.

From CNN/Money:

The Supreme Court's decision Thursday clarified that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses -- even against their will -- for private and public economic development.
[...]
"Wal-Mart and Target have both been criticized for their eminent domain use," said Burt Flickinger, a consultant with the Strategic Resources Group.

Meanwhile, eminent domain opponents called the high court ruling a "big blow for small businesses."

While companies like Wal-Mart have been using eminent domain to seize private land in the past, this is a big step in the wrong direction, and means that nobody is safe from Wal-Mart anymore.

If your town wants a Wal-Mart and your house is in the way, you better start looking for a new house or better start working to keep Wal-Mart out.

This disturbing story is from the Charleston Gazette (WV):

Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they’re asked, even if they’ve built up years of seniority and can’t arrange child care.

Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

“We have many people with set schedules who aren’t here when we need them for our customers,” said John Knuckles, a manager at the store, which is located in the Nitro Marketplace shopping center and employs more than 400.

“It is to take care of the customers, that’s the only reason,” he said.

Workers who have had regular shifts at the store for years now have to commit to being available for any shift from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. If they can’t make the commitment by the end of this week, they’ll be fired.

Chris Kofinis, our Communications Director here, issued the following statement:

“This is a chilling new direction for Wal-Mart. It shows that when you work at Wal-Mart, you can neither afford a decent standard of life or even have a life.”

To continue reading this article, click here.

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) recently put out a report titled "Wal-Mart's Pay Gap," detailing how Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott's Compensation is 871 times as high as U.S. Wal-Mart Workers, and 50,000 times as much as Chinese Workers.

To read the full report click here.

The AFL-CIO just released its annual survey of CEO pay, http://www.paywatch.org, and here is what they had to say about Wal-Mart:

"At Wal-Mart, for example, President and CEO H. Lee Scott raked in nearly $23 million in total compensation in 2004. Most of that compensation was in the form of fixed price stock options and time-vesting restricted stock. At the company's annual meeting in June, shareholders will be asked to vote on a proposal urging the Board of Directors to grant Wal-Mart executives performance shares instead of stock options or restricted stock."

Just think about how many Wal-Mart workers' children could get healthcare with Scott's $23 million. Any guesses?