Boycott Walmart!'s topics - tribe.net

Dreaming the NEW American Dream

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:08:51 GMT

California poets Ava Bird & Rex Butters, and....

Santa Cruz artist Russell Brutsche - Karen Kwiatkowski of Virginia

Protests to stop immigration raids ... and more.
____________________

http://www.newamericandream.net

The New American Dream

What's New?

* Karen Kwiatkowski column
* Ava Bird poetry
* Rex Butters poetry
* Gary Mennie poetry

Columns:
Sherwood Ross — why not shut down a few prisons in the United States as well?
Mickey Z — Americans are cowards, too comfortable, will never-ever-not-in-one-million-years revolt-or-even-bother-to-stand-up — no matter what the rich folks do to them.
Lydia Sems — It's The American Dream that is the problem.

and more from Jack Saunders ...

Resistance:
* Planned civil disobedience in Minnesota to stop raids against immigrants
* Protests at Creech AFB against U.S. drone terroristic activity
*100 days of protest against Guantanamo to culminate

All this, Northern Exposure, The Big Lebowski, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights ... a certificate for free toast ... and more.

Join us.

The New American Dream
Dude.
... because ... Sister Mary Anne told us, "There are no wrong questions, if you don't know the answers."

... from the Dream Team

http://www.newamericandream.net

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Walgreens

svnisus — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:57:05 GMT

Is there any connection between Walgreens and Walmart?

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Effectiveness of Demonstrating at Walmart

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:35:17 GMT

Hi-

I live in Portland and there is one walmart in the portland area. Like other walmarts, the parking lot is so huge that staging a demo against walmart would seem ineffective because we would have to be so far away from the store. Has anyone had any experience with successful demos at walmart?

Blessings,
Michael

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Corporate citizenship

mike — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:20:17 GMT

Always a dictator, ALWAYS! They move into a new town, first stripping it from quality small businesses and sending manufacturing jobs overseas. On top of that they refuse to properly train their workers so that they don't have to pay a living wage.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 3 replies

walmart sues disabled employee for 470,000

Dustin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:02:35 GMT

walmart is suing a disabled former employee for 470,000 in medical benifits because she has recently won a lawsuit against the trucking company that caused her car wreck. she now has brain damage and lives in a nursing home her husband works 2 jobs to pay the bills and their son died in iraq last year the amount walmart wants is even more than she got from the lawsuit. I say that everone should write letters and emails to walmart and let them know they cannot treat people this way and know that we know how heartless they can be there should be a nationwide boycott of walmart untill they leave this poor woman alone. in every town there are plenty of other stores we can shop at and if they get enough sales then they might be able to lower their prices to match walmarts.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 6 replies

What do you think about...

rebhel — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 03:40:49 GMT

Walmart dropping their Lay-away program ? Their story is that they are proud to be getting rid of a service that mainly is utilized by lower income consumers.

I think it is more like, they don't want to have to hire extra help nor do they wish to focus so many of their workers efforts to that area of customer service at Christmas time.

Another cheap cut to the customer.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 3 replies

Target!

Logan — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:38:10 GMT

Launching a Boycott Wal-Mart campaign will work better if we have an alternative to give people. How 'bout Target? Is it worthy of our recommendation?

Any flyers we have might list alternative places to shop. Retail, and mail order.

Logan

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

A flyer to print and distribute

lionjill — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:59:40 GMT

to give to people when they ask - why not Walmart?

http://www.organicconsumers.org/btc/WhyNotWalMart.pdf

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

Walmart Bans Woman for Reporting Possible Child Abuse

lionjill — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:47:19 GMT

In the same town where no one stops to help a woman dying in a convenience store, Walmart decides to ban a women for trying to do the right thing.

To passer-by, crying child's ear-piercing rings of abuse
BY SUZANNE PEREZ TOBIAS
The Wichita Eagle
Could piercing a child's ears be child abuse?

Marilyn Johnson thought so when she heard a girl's screams in a Wichita Wal-Mart on Sunday -- and she reported it to police.

She said a child was having her ears pierced "against her will" at the store's jewelry counter, and the girl's cries were ignored by her mother and the store employee doing the piercing.

"This little girl was about 5 years old and was crying her eyes out," Johnson said. "Her face was beet red, and she was screaming and coughing and saying things like, 'I don't want this! It hurts! Please stop!' She was grabbing her ears so the adults couldn't touch them."

Johnson says she approached the girl's mother and the store employee and said, "Is this really necessary?"

Both women said nothing but continued trying to pierce the girl's ears, Johnson said.

So Johnson called 911 from her cell phone.

"We're forever being told we should report any suspected child abuse," said Johnson, 53, a Wichita landlord who founded Heart Bandits American Eskimo Dog Rescue.

"I saw a child crying and screaming and pleading for someone not to do something to her," she said. "And if that's not child abuse, I don't know what is."

When police arrived at the store at Pawnee and Broadway, they spoke with Johnson and the girl's mother, "then informed me that I was out of line," Johnson said. "The officers took my personal information and offered to walk with me to purchase my... items."

Johnson said she left the store without buying anything.

Wichita police spokesman Gordon Bassham said no law was being broken by the girl's mother or the employee doing the piercing.

At the request of a Wal-Mart official, the officers issued Johnson a warning for trespassing and escorted her from the store, Bassham said.

Store officials referred calls about the incident to corporate headquarters. Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman issued this written response:

"Ear piercing is a service that Wal-Mart offers to our customers of all ages. A parent or legal guardian's signature is required if the person having their ears pierced is under 18 years old, which was the case in this instance," Fogleman said.

"The child's mother indicated more than once through the ear-piercing process that she wanted her daughter's ears pierced."

Asked how the store handles incidents of children who oppose piercings, Fogleman said: "Local management has discretion based on the individual circumstance."

Ear piercing has long been the subject of controversy among parents. For some, piercing an infant or young child's ears has deep-rooted cultural or religious meaning. Others pierce babies' ears because of family traditions, or simply because they like the look or want to more easily identify the baby as a girl.

Several popular online parenting forums have featured lengthy discussions on the topic. A question posted to BabyCenter.com in October 2003 prompted more than 830 comments, ranging from outrage to agreement over piercing young children's ears.

"I had my daughter's ears done when she was 6 months old. She did cry, but just for about 10 seconds," said a mom named Jennie. "It was much easier than getting shots. Her ears have healed perfectly and she looks absolutely beautiful."

Other parents recalled children begging to have their ears pierced, then screaming or crying during the procedure.

Kansas law requires written and notarized consent from a parent or legal guardian before performing body piercing or tattooing on someone under 18. The law does not spell out whether piercings or tattoos can be forcibly administered.

"The parent was not, in the eyes of the officers, doing anything illegal," said Bassham, the police spokesman. "This could have been a cultural thing for the mother, or a religious thing. There are so many factors at work.

"For us as law enforcement to try and predict the reasons and the motivations behind this is not possible, and that's not our area."

The mother was not identified by police or store officials.

Johnson says she's glad she reported the incident to police, even though a Wal-Mart manager said she would no longer be allowed in the store.

She plans to talk to local legislators about the possibility of changing state law to spell out more clearly when piercings or tattoos become possible abuse.

"I can't understand doing that to a child who's screaming and crying and clearly didn't want this done," Johnson said.

"If I'm the crazy one for calling the police, then maybe I'm crazy. But I don't think so."

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 4 replies

Wal-Mart rolling out new company slogan

Michael — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:52:00 GMT

http://biz.yahoo. com/rb/070912/ walmart_advertis ing.html? .v=7

Wal-Mart rolling out new company slogan

Wednesday September 12, 11:27 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT - News) said on Wednesday that it is rolling out a new advertising campaign with the slogan, "Save Money. Live Better," replacing the motto "Always low prices" after 19 years.

The new slogan comes as Wal-Mart is incorporating more of an emotional tone into its advertising as it tries to boost sales at its U.S. stores. (or in other words to counteract the anti-global comments of activists like us)

Its back-to-school ads showed actors posing as customers, talking about how Wal-Mart helped them save money amid high gasoline prices, a contrast to its previous ads featuring a smiley face character zooming around stores, slashing prices.

Wal-Mart said it will begin running TV ads on Wednesday illustrating "how saving money on the little things adds up and helps families live better."

The discount retailer is trying to revive its U.S. sales after its same-store sales rose at their slowest pace on record last fiscal year. Its back-to-school advertising campaign was accompanied by price cuts of as much as 50 percent on 16,000 items like backpacks and school supplies.

The results produced a higher-than- expected 3.1 percent rise in August sales at its U.S. stores open at least a year -- its biggest same-store sales gain since March.

The new ad campaign also highlights the results of new research it commissioned from Global Insight. The report said that as of 2006, the retailer saves American families $2,500 each year, up 7.3 percent from $2,329 in 2004.

Global Insight said it found that the expansion of Wal-Mart from 1985 to 2006 led to a 3.0 percent decline in overall consumer prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index for all items, which includes prices for goods and services.

The research firm said its updated study concludes that the reduction in price levels due to Wal-Mart translated into savings for consumers of $287 billion in 2006, which is $957 per person or $2,500 per household. (and what about associated job loss?)

Wal-Mart shares were up 2 cents to $42.96 in late morning New York Stock Exchange trading.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Gender Bias?

Zulu — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 13:51:54 GMT

Wal-Mart faces huge gender bias case
Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:21 http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0207/wallmart.html

According to court documents, Wal-Mart employs more than 1.2 million employees in the US. Two-thirds of them are women.

AdvertisementThe women claim Walmart pays female staff up to 15% less than then men, while women make up only one third of those prompted to management.

... Only one part of why this wonderful place can offer you such great discounts..

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

its about the money.......duh!!

jakeob — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:20:01 GMT

I havent been reading any other the posts on here as of today but I will........
I just want to say something...Its all about the money. If anyone wants to stop the corperate money chain, you'll have to cut the chain. Or choke it. Anyway.
LOL
How can we stop what is clearly in my opinion out of control?

STOP BUYING!!!! STUPID SHIT!!!!!!

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 23 replies

organic? ha!

missaugustwest — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:55:23 GMT

www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/0...erings/

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 9 replies

Wal-Mart and the Bill of Rights

Logan — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:42:05 GMT

Separation of church and state. Good idea. Thanks, Thomas Jefferson.

Now, corporations may do as they please. But, we don't have to shop at 'em when they alienate atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, pagans, Jews, Muslums, etc. Did y'all hear, Wal-Mart greeters used to say "Happy Holidays", but this year will be allowed to say, "Merry Christmas"? I hope I heard wrong. But if not,

Target!

Logan

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 16 replies

Just found you

Will The Dancer — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 03:52:46 GMT

Have not set foot in Wal Mart, and might even choose to die rather than do it even once!

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Wal-Mart moving employees to new schedule system

Michael — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:21:12 GMT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is moving workers to a new advanced scheduling system, building on a pilot program it tested last year that schedules hourly employees based on the number of shoppers in a store.

"This is exactly what we were piloting before, and it has been introduced to cashiers and customer service positions," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Wal-Mart will start moving many of its 1.3 million workers from predictable shifts to a system based on how many customers are in stores at a given time.

Wal-Mart said last year that it was testing the system as it looks to cut labor costs. Clark said Wal-Mart plans to move all hourly workers to the new system this year.

Critics contend the advanced system takes hours away from full-time employees and demands more flexibility from workers.

"You are saying to workers who are already getting paid poorly ... if you want any hours, you have to agree to work when we want you to work and to agree to a schedule that changes," said Chris Kofinis, spokesman for WakeUpWalMart.com, which has pressured Wal-Mart to improve pay and benefits.

But Clark said the retailer does not have "open availability," meaning workers are available to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She said no hours have been cut or reduced as part of the new scheduling system.

Wal-Mart said the new system ensures that stores are fully staffed at peak shopping times and it takes into account the hours employees prefer to work.

"It is much friendlier and more predictable than the previous system in that it actually asks for our associates preferences of when they prefer to work," Clark said.

She said under the old system, store managers drew up schedules based on the level of sales in a store. Now, increased staffing will coincide with times when customer traffic surges, she said.

Clark said employee schedules are now available three weeks in advance, while under old system, schedules were posted two to three weeks in advance.

Clark said the size of the pilot program was "significant," but she did not have numbers on how many employees were included in the pilot.

The Journal report said other retailers such as Payless ShoeSource Inc. and RadioShack Corp. are also using advanced scheduling systems.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Tomatoes Pulled From Wal-Mart Shelves

Michael — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:18:07 GMT

Tomatoes Pulled From Wal-Mart Shelves

The retailers Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club are pulling Santa Sweet brand grape tomatoes from store shelves as a result of pesticides investigations in Florida and North Carolina.

The tomatoes are not harmful to the consumer.

The investigations are looking into pesticides violations of the grower, Ag-Mart Produce, and whether produce field workers are at risk.

Wal-Mart officials say the product will remain off the shelves until the investigation is resolved.

The safety of Santa Sweet tomatoes is not in question.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Ohio Wal-Mart closes because of methane gas fumes

Michael — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:41:38 GMT

Ohio Wal-Mart closes because of methane gas fumes
GARFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio — A Wal-Mart store built atop a landfill closed during the busiest shopping time of the year because of a methane gas leak.

Employees at the store in suburban Cleveland reported a bad smell, evacuated customers and shut the doors Tuesday night.

Wal-Mart says it doesn't know when the store will reopen, and fire officials say the methane fumes are not enough to be dangerous.

The retailer is part of the new City View shopping center, which is built on top of an old landfill.

Developer John McGill said faulty floor drains installed by Wal-Mart's engineer had been emitting sewer gas, which typically includes mixtures of methane and rotten egg-scented hydrogen sulfide. He said the problem would be corrected.

"It's a minimal issue," McGill said. Wal-Mart "acted on the side of safety."

Wal-Mart officials and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the source of the methane had not been identified.

Mia Masten, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart's Midwest division, said she did not know how long the store would be closed and that employees will continue to be paid.

"Trust me, it's the holiday season, and we want to reopen as soon as possible," she said.

Ohio EPA spokesman Mike Settles said an enforcement action is pending against McGill because regulators say he has not corrected seeping water from a hill on which the development sits.

Bill Skowronski, the EPA's district chief for Northeast Ohio, said methane is not toxic but can cause an explosion.

___

Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

___

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Wal-Mart failing to attract customers in Germany.

Don — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:41:53 GMT

Hmm....are German smarter than the average American who has been bought and sold by Walmart's low prices at the expense of US jobs and industry?

Wal-Mart Germany mulls closing a few of its 85 stores
06.18.2006, 01:56 PM

FRANKFURT (AFX) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc is now in the process of considering whether it would close a few of its 85 stores in Germany, head of Wal-Mart Germany David Wild said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

'We are currently examining all unprofitable locations,' he said.

He said if the company arrives at the conclusion that the stores would not be profitable in the long-term, 'then we will close them'.

He said there are some stores which are performing excellently and there are others which are 'losing a lot of money'.

Last Wednesday, Wal-Mart closed stores in Sigmaringen and Duesseldorf, the report said.

marilyn.gerlach@afxnews.com

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 10 replies

Is it possible to make money and really make a difference?

MyBodyIsATemple — Thu, 11 May 2006 16:34:46 GMT

The New Capitalists
Is it possible to make money and really make a difference?
—By Joseph Hart, Utne magazine
May / June 2006 Issue

If you are one of the 8 percent of American consumers who refuse to shop at Wal-Mart for ethical reasons, you might want to pop some valerian tablets before you read on.

Ready?

Wal-Mart: ethical leader. Wal-Mart: environmental steward. Wal-Mart: socially responsible corporation.

If you didn't hurl the magazine across the room, consider the following: In 2004 Wal-Mart established a "global ethics office" to enforce 10 principles, including to "never manipulate, misrepresent, abuse, or conceal information" and "never act unethically -- even if someone else instructs you to do so." Employees have access to a confidential hotline to report abuses.

In October 2005 CEO Lee Scott announced a long-range plan to use 100 percent renewable energy at the company. For starters, Wal-Mart is working on a new store design that will reduce energy use by 30 percent in the next three years and plans to double the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet -- one of the largest in the world -- by 2015.

Earlier this year, the company rolled out expanded benefits for its workforce, which management claims are among the best in the retail sector.

If you can't keep your cynical side from making you squirm, maybe it's because you can't forget the New York Times story in October 2005 that revealed that 46 percent of the chain's employees' children are uninsured or on Medicaid. The company has been fined repeatedly for violating the Clean Water Act, including $3.1 million in 2004 for failing to contain runoff at construction sites. Wal-Mart hired Eugene Scalia, former solicitor of the Department of Labor and son of U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Antonin Scalia, to defend the corporation against three whistle-blower lawsuits, and federal prosecutors just recently nailed vice chairman Tom Coughlin for embezzling $500,000 to buy, among other things, supplies for his hunting dogs and a couple cases of Smirnoff. (When he was accused, Coughlin claimed he used the money for union busting, a response that can be filed under cold comfort.)

So which is the real face of Wal-Mart? The easy-being-green family-owned company that donated nearly $1 million to make Sesame Street episodes that help military kids cope with the Iraq war? Or the I-love-trash megachain that, according to a study conducted at Penn State, actually ends up reinforcing, not improving, countywide poverty rates when it plops down a store?

The plain fact is that in today's business world, as companies of all sizes embrace "corporate social responsibility," or CSR, villains can be heroes and the Man often acts like a gentleman. The simple principle of CSR is that companies should enhance the public good. As a result, a growing number of giant international corporations are appointing CSR vice presidents, launching environmental programs, scrutinizing suppliers' human rights records, and adopting ethical guidelines to govern corporate behavior.

Critics of CSR say it's a sop to special interest groups and unions, a ploy to promote deregulation, or a "greenwash" to cover up malfeasance (many companies, like Wal-Mart, have websites peppered with heartwarming facts and stories). But there's no denying that CSR initiatives have genuine value. If every corporation adopted Wal-Mart's pledge to reduce energy use by 30 percent in the next three years, for example, the effect would be profound.

more...

http://www.utne.com/pub/2006_135/promo/12081-1.html

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Hey guys join my new tribe "VENTITNOW

Abe — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:47:53 GMT

Hey guys, I've just started a new tribe called "Vent it Now" Here's the
URL: http://tribes.tribe.net/ventitnow?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Bd91cfd23-1187-498c-ab9c-1621ea84dc62%5D

You guys can post whatever you want and your views on the world. I want to hear your controversial topics and foster debate.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

When to Stop?

Belenus — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:52:07 GMT

Not that we are anywhere near there, but in theory, someday, Wal-Mart could become a good corporate citizen.

If they did, the proper action would be to stop boycotting.

What would they have to do to get to that point?

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 6 replies

The day I cursed Wal-Mart

Logan — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 19:07:03 GMT

I was in a Wal-Mart one day, and I had made the mistake of not getting a cart. I grew tired of lugging around this and that. And, I'd gone there reluctantly, for the cheap laundry soap. I was feelin guilty just being there.

Then I dropped a protein bar! That was it! I let it all drop.

I said loudly, "Fuck Wal-Mart!"

People turned and looked.

Then, I left.

Logan

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 3 replies

Walmart New Late Rule--Demerits--What the Fu**

Abe — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:19:04 GMT

I saw a news feed from ABC reporting on a new Walmart 10 min late rule, which states that an employee gets a "Demerit" if they are 10 min late for work. Several of these occurances and you could get fired. I can't believe it, who needs this?? I used to work in that type of environment and it's absolutely demeaning to single mothers, bus riders or other people who just have a hard time getting to work sometimes.--Gimmie a break. Anyone else agree?

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

Handicapped persons; helped or exploited?

Logan — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 19:02:41 GMT

It's nice that many Wal-Mart employees are handicapped. Developmentally.

But, is this, plus the fact that many are retirees who have their basic needs met already, as in houses already paid for and kids grown, and medicaide to pay for pills, evidence that Wal-Mart wanted a workforce a bit more passive?

It wouldnt want a workforce of 18-30 year olds with kids to support, and houses to purchase. And I doubt Wal-Mart wants people with liberal arts degrees to be the bulk of their workforce. Those types know how to write letters and cause trouble.

I'm not anti-capitalism, but at times it does look inhuman. And anti-family. (Which might be why they always harp about family values.)

Logan

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

A vile product found at Wal-Mart

Logan — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 01:51:20 GMT

Hello everyone,

I just started a new tribe, and it's my very first! I titled it, "Ban Mouse Glue Traps". Glue traps are usually sold alongside traditional spring-type mouse traps. They hold the mouse by the feet and skin for days, allowing it to slowly die. I want to stir up interest in this topic, and have the phones at some retailers ringing with people asking that they be discontinued.

Come check it out. Let's reduce the amount of cruelty in the world.

Thanks.

Logan
posted by:
Logan

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Thanks for this group.

Abe — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:23:53 GMT

Thanks guys for starting this group. I hate Walmart and everything about it. I used to work with accounts for Walmart-and let me tell you they are the most red-tape-littered network there is. I refuse to shop there and encourage all my friends to refuse not only because of local implications to our economy but also because of worldwide implications this franchise has caused!! It has ruined suppliers overseas. HATE THEM.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Important Group Notice

Michael — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:31:11 GMT

Group Notice:

Some of you may have noticed that I have been posting much less frequently lately than I was in the past. I am running for the office of PA State Representative in the Philadelphia suburbs (Delco). My campaign is likely to take up most of my time between now and November. I will try to leave a few posts when I can during the election season. I encourage members to post Wal-Mart related articles when you come across them. I will be back and active again after the election, no matter what.

-michael

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 4 replies

Wal-Mart struggles to regain ground

Michael — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:22:11 GMT

Wal-Mart struggles to regain ground
As sales dip, store weighs growth plans

BY MARCUS KABEL | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is fighting battles on multiple fronts after posting its first quarterly profit decline in 10 years, and analysts question whether the world's largest retailer can regain the feverish growth rates of its past.

Wal-Mart's woes range from high energy prices, which hit its lower-income customer base and its own costs, to setbacks in its international strategy, to public relations stumbles like this week's sudden resignation of civil rights icon Andrew Young as its public ambassador.

Young quit as head of a pro-Wal-Mart advocacy group after he was quoted in the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper as saying inner-city stores that overcharged black customers were run by "Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs." Wal-Mart, which has made repeated public commitments this year to diversity, said Young's comments did not reflect its views.

On the plus side, analysts say, Wal-Mart has ambitious programs to stock trendier products, remodel most of its more than 2,000 Supercenter stores and tighten its grip on the costs of inventory, labor and energy.

Combined with an ongoing public relations offensive to counter critics who claim its pay and benefits are skimpy, Wal-Mart is juggling a lot of balls at once and analysts say the outcome is still up in the air.

"I think they're in so much transition right now that it's hard to measure whether or not they're making progress," said Patricia Edwards, portfolio manager and retail analyst at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, which manages $8.2 billion in assets and holds 51,000 Wal-Mart shares. "It is a lot to handle."

George Whalen of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif., said Wal-Mart has a track record of handling multiple tasks: "When you get to be the biggest in the world, you fight battles on every front sometimes."

Second-quarter results showed the first profit decline in a decade on the cost of selling its loss-making business in Germany. It quit another loss-maker, South Korea, in May but still operates in 13 countries in Asia, Latin America and Britain and intends to keep expanding, especially in China.

But the quarter's sales and profit growth also slowed at Wal-Mart's U.S. stores, its biggest division, as high fuel prices kept customers away, cut their spending power and drove up Wal-Mart's own costs for a fleet of 7,000 trucks.

Some analysts question whether Wal-Mart can regain growth rates that made it a darling of Wall Street in the 1990s.

After precipitous gains in the 1980s and 1990s, the stock peaked around $70 in January 2000 before losing steam to linger mainly in the $50-$60 range. It lost another 3 percent this year to current levels around $45.

Wal-Mart's earnings per share rose more than 16 percent per year on average over the past 10 years and sales grew by annual rates between 12 percent and 20 percent. But all that has slowed, with earnings per share up about 11 percent last year and sales up just 9.5 percent.

Edwards said that with nearly 4,000 stores in the U.S., Wal-Mart can only maintain past growth rates by acquiring more companies overseas or "building a Wal-Mart on every other street corner in China."

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Young resigns from Wal-Mart committee amid criticism of remarks

Michael — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:20:27 GMT

Young resigns from Wal-Mart committee amid criticism of remarks

By Bernard McGhee
Associated Press
Published August 19, 2006

ATLANTA -- Civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired to help Wal-Mart Stores Inc. improve its public image, said Friday he was stepping down from his position as head of an outside support group amid criticism for remarks seen as racially offensive.

Young, a former Atlanta mayor and UN ambassador, was hired by Working Families for Wal-Mart in February.

"I think I was on the verge of becoming part of the controversy, and I didn't want to become a distraction from the main issues, so I thought I ought to step down," Young said.

He said his decision to step down followed a report in the weekly Los Angeles Sentinel that he said was misread and misinterpreted.

In the Sentinel interview, Young was asked whether he was concerned Wal-Mart causes smaller, mom-and-pop stores to close.

"Well, I think they should; they ran the `mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood," the paper quoted Young as saying. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

Young, who has apologized for the remarks, said he decided to end his involvement with Working Families for Wal-Mart after he started getting calls about the story.

"Things that are matter-of-fact in Atlanta, in the New York and Los Angeles environment tend to be a lot more volatile," he said.

He also said working with the group "was also taking more of my time than I thought."

Reading from a statement, Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said Friday the company supported Young's decision to resign and that Young's comments do not reflect Wal-Mart's views.

"We are appalled by those comments," Simley said.

The remarks surprised Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who referred to Young's civil rights work.

"If anyone should know that these are the words of bigotry, anti-Semitism and prejudice, it's him," Hier said.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

5th Wal-Mart Union Set Up in China

Michael — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:46:54 GMT

Wal-Mart has fought union organizing all around the world. Wal-Mart has even closed stores in the past to prevent union organizing. However, not so in communist China. Wal-Mart has not only allowed unions to form in their new China stores, but they (Wal-Mart) have shown little resistance to the new unions despite what the chinese unions say.

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5th Wal-Mart Union Set Up in China

Tuesday August 8, 8:36 am ET
By Joe Mcdonald, AP Business Writer
Reports: Fifth Wal-Mart Union Set Up in China Amid Campaign to Unionize Country's 60 Stores

BEIJING (AP) -- Employees at a Wal-Mart store in southern China on Tuesday set up the retailer's fifth Chinese union in two weeks, amid a quickening official campaign to unionize the country's 60 Wal-Mart outlets, news reports said.

The latest union is in Shenzhen, the city where Wal-Mart opened its first mainland Chinese outlet in 1996, the official Xinhua News Agency and the Workers Daily newspaper said. Employees at two other Shenzhen Wal-Marts, as well as in the eastern city of Nanjing and Quanzhou in the southeast, also have set up unions.

The rapid series of votes are a victory for the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the umbrella group for unions permitted by the communist government. The ACFTU spent two years lobbying for the creation of Wal-Mart unions and accused the company of blocking its efforts.

Xinhua on Tuesday quoted an unnamed ACFTU official who complained that the latest organizing effort at the Shenzhen store faced "repeated and various obstacles," though it gave no details.

Phone calls to Wal-Mart's China headquarters, also in Shenzhen, weren't answered.

Wal-Mart Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., employs 28,000 people in China. It has few unions in the rest of its worldwide operations.

China doesn't allow independent unions, and activists are frequently jailed and harassed.

The ACFTU says expanding its presence in private and foreign companies is one of its key goals. The group often is regarded not as an advocate for better pay and working conditions for employees but as an intermediary that represents employers to workers.

Liang Yaofa, deputy chairman of the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions, said he hoped the new Shenzhen union would "explore a brand new way for developing union activities in big transnational companies in China," Xinhua reported.

Labor officials hope Wal-Mart "would respect their employees' wishes to join trade unions" and provide "essential conditions" for them to operate, Liang said.

The newest Wal-Mart union in Shenzhen has 28 members, the Workers Daily said.

The newspaper, published by the ACFTU, quoted the group's vice president on Monday as expressing hope the votes would help its campaign to expand its presence to other Wal-Mart outlets.

"This experience will have great significance to our doing better at building grassroots unions, including in foreign-invested enterprises," Xu Deming was quoted as saying.

About 26 percent of China's 150,000 foreign-financed companies have official labor unions, according to the ACFTU. It says it hopes to raise that to 50 percent this year.

The president of the ACFTU, Wang Zhaoguo, who also is a member of China's parliament, reportedly said last month that he would propose a law making unions mandatory for foreign companies.

Current Chinese law gives employees the right to form unions but doesn't say what companies are required to do.

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Norway to Wal-Mart: We don't want your shares

Michael — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:58:38 GMT

Norway to Wal-Mart: We don't want your shares

Pension-fund investing with a social consciousness.
By Vivienne Walt, Fortune Magazine
July 24 2006: 11:56 AM EDT

Fortune International -- Imagine this for a government conundrum: revenues so high it's hard to know how to spend them. No wonder Norway, flush from oil exports, is picky about where it invests its $236 billion government pension fund - the third largest on the planet.

In June it divested about $430 million worth of shares from Wal-Mart Stores (Charts) and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (Charts), after savaging Wal-Mart for "serious and systematic" labor violations in several countries and Freeport for dumping copper tailings in a New Guinea river.

Now officials say their cleanup campaign is just getting started. "We are working on how to act as shareholders in different companies," says Kristin Halvorsen, the leader of Norway's Socialist Left Party, who was appointed Finance Minister last October. "That is quite new for us."

The fund's portfolio includes holdings in 3,500 foreign companies, and Halvorsen says the list is being scrutinized for possible human-rights and environmental abusers.

"The idea is to avoid complicity in the worst cases," says Henrik Syse, a philosopher recruited from a peace organization to head the team within Norway's central bank that administers the fund. Halvorsen admits the list of potential culprits could be long, but she says that no country is disfavored and that her June decision had "nothing to do with Wal-Mart being American."

Earlier this year the fund sold off its holdings in companies involved with nuclear weapons and land mines, including Boeing (Charts), Honeywell International (Charts), and Northrop Grumman. About 40% of the remaining holdings - some $96 billion - is currently in U.S. shares and bonds, and investors who might otherwise ignore Norway are taking notice.

Both Wal-Mart and Freeport stocks fell on news of Norway's divestment. "Their public characterizations of us don't appear to be based on complete information," says Wal-Mart spokeswoman Beth Keck, adding, "We don't comment on investors' decisions." No such promises from Norway, from which there's likely to be plenty more comment. Stay tuned.

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All-Natural Healthy Environmentally Friendly Products for your Family & your Home!

Jordan — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:07:31 GMT

Re-direct your spending from Wal-Mart & shop online for all-natural, healthy products for your home! International Wellness company, 20 years in business. Wide variety of products: i.e. non-toxic cleaning supplies, vitamins, bath/body line, make up, nutrition/diet aides & much more! Become a customer or it's a great Work at Home opportunity for anyone interested in learning the business! Call or email for more information! jordangenas@msn.com or: 505.450.9850

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$172 Million Wal-Mart Battle Returns To Bay Area Court

Michael — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:09:37 GMT

POSTED: 12:15 pm PDT June 26, 2006
UPDATED: 12:23 pm PDT June 26, 2006

Attorneys for plaintiffs who won a $172 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart for not providing paid meal and rest breaks for its California employees are back in court seeking an injunction that would force the retail giant to change its practices.

San Francisco attorney Fred Furth represents 116,000 current and former hourly workers at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in California who won their trial last Dec. 22 on their claim that Wal-Mart violated their rights under state labor laws by denying them their meal and rest breaks and by secretly deleting hours worked from their paychecks.

Following a three-month trial and two-and-a-half days of deliberations, an Alameda County Superior Court jury awarded the plaintiffs $57.3 million in compensatory damages and $115 million in punitive damages.

The lawsuit was filed in February 2001 and took more than four years to go to trial.

Furth and Wal-Mart attorneys are back before Judge Ronald Sabraw Monday for a non-jury hearing that's expected to take at least a week. Furth wants Sabraw to issue an injunction ordering Wal-Mart to have all its employees punch in and punch out for their paid rest breaks.

Following the jury verdict, Wal-Mart attorney Neal Manne said the company admits that it initially violated California law but he said the company has been in compliance with the law since the end of 2003.

In a recent court brief, Manne said "the alleged need to impose the extraordinary remedy of a meal period injunction is moot" because Wal-Mart employees have been able to take their breaks more than 99 percent of the time since mid-2003.

Manne said Sabraw himself has found that there is no evidence that Wal-Mart had an express policy of discouraging rest breaks.

Manne said wage costs as a percentage of sales at Wal-Mart have increased and "turnover is low and associate morale is high, results that could not have occurred in a fictional world of uniform understaffing."

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Wal-Mart to spread out to a neighborhood near you

Michael — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:07:47 GMT

Monday, June 26, 2006
Jeffrey Sheban
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Do you live within a few miles of a Wal-Mart Supercenter? Be patient. The world’s largest retailer is mapping out ambitious growth plans nationally that call for 1,500 new stores in the next five years.
Almost two-thirds will be Supercenters, a format that combines groceries, general merchandise, banking, auto service, drive-up pharmacy and gasoline.

The company also will remodel 1,800 others over the next 18 months, converting many older and smaller stores into Supercenters.

In central Ohio, the result could be 10 or more new Supercenters, each the size of four football fields, over the next five years. Currently, 11 of Wal-Mart’s 15 stores in Franklin and adjacent counties are Supercenters.

"There’s no question we’re going to see more Wal-Mart Supercenters," said Sandy Skrovan, a vice president of the Columbus-based consulting firm Retail Forward. "It’s totally conceivable that we’ll see a doubling by 2010."

But where? That’s the 220,000-square-foot question.

In Franklin County, all seven Wal-Mart stores are clustered on or near the Outerbelt. The first store square- ly inside I-270 will open next year at Bethel Road’s Carriage Place shopping center, followed by one on Main Street in Whitehall.

Ron Mosby, Wal-Mart’s spokesman in Ohio, would only say that the central Ohio region, with four Supercenters under construction, continues to be ripe for growth.

"Would we like to have a greater presence in the city? Absolutely," he said. "We know that in order to grow we’re going to have to have more of a presence in urban areas."

But that doesn’t mean Wal-Mart is done growing in suburban markets.

Two of four confirmed projects in central Ohio — in Delaware and Heath — are well outside I-270, while the future Whitehall store is between Bexley and the Outerbelt.

In suburban areas, where most of the nation’s 2,022 Supercenters are located, Wal-Mart is building them closer together than ever.

In some markets, particularly Dallas, the large stores are two or three miles apart. That’s compared with the previous 15 to 20 miles apart Wal-Mart thought was appropriate when its stores were mostly in small towns and rural areas.

The new approach is a form of retail carpet-bombing, whereby the company steals customers from itself but suffocates the competition in a wider area.

"Dallas is certainly the heaviest-penetrated area and they’ve held it up as a standard," Skrovan said. "They’re just plopping these things (Supercenters) down in the center of very populated areas."

Skrovan said Wal-Mart’s Supercenter strategy is all about gaining market share in groceries. That’s because consumers are more likely to spend more on general merchandise when they return to the stores weekly for food.

On average, Supercenters generated sales of $464 per square foot in 2004 compared with $235 per square foot for conventional discount department stores, according to Retail Forward.

In Dallas, Wal-Mart has become No. 1 in groceries with a 19.4 percent share. Wal-Mart affiliate Sam’s Club takes in another 5.1 percent.

In Columbus, the company has a long way to go. Some surveys put Wal-Mart in second place, but Retail Forward figures show them battling Giant Eagle for the No. 3 spot with about 10 percent of the market. Kroger is the leader with 43 percent, and Meijer is next with 15.4 percent. Sam’s commands 4.2 percent.

Mosby called groceries a priority.

"Any time that you’re not No. 1 you see that as an opportunity to improve," he said. "We want to be the best that we can be. If that means being No. 1, we want to be No. 1."

In Columbus, as in other communities, the prospect of Supercenters all over town turns many people off.

As president of the Greenbrier Civic Association, Mary Woodring has been fighting a proposed store on the Far East Side of Columbus on E. Broad Street, near the former Lucent Technologies plant.

She said it’s not Wal-Mart specifically, but any of the so-called big-box stores that consume land and increase traffic.

"It makes the area look awful and traffic is a nightmare," Woodring said. "We don’t want our commercial district to look like Morse Road on steroids."

But Wal-Mart isn’t without supporters. Grove City has been home to a Supercenter for 2½ years, and Mayor Cheryl Grossman says the benefits far outweigh the costs.

"Wal-Mart has been a wonderful partner with our community; they’ve impressed me from Day One," she said, noting support for local charities and giving consumers value for their dollar.

Wal-Mart has not only created jobs but is drawing shoppers from out of town, she said, which in turn has attracted restaurants and other retailers, including Kohl’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

"When you add it all up, I would put it on the plus side," Grossman said.

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Walmart Ignores Its Shareholders

rebhel — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 22:55:19 GMT

According to this Reuters 6/2/06 article excerpt:

"But not all attendees were at the meeting to do the Wal-Mart cheer and be entertained by big production numbers.

Among the critics were shareholders bashing the company for what they called the out-sized disparity between the compensation of top executives and lower-level store employees, calling on the company to disclose its political contributions and advocating humane slaughter for chickens sold in the grocery aisles.

None of the shareholder proposals introduced at the meeting was approved."

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Wal-Mart Selling Stores and Leaving South Korea

Michael — Tue, 23 May 2006 11:14:36 GMT

By CHOE SANG-HUN, International Herald Tribune
Published: May 23, 2006

SEOUL, South Korea, May 22 — Wal-Mart Stores followed a French rival, Carrefour, in withdrawing from South Korea on Monday, becoming the latest global brand to flounder in an economy with some of the most demanding consumers.

Wal-Mart said that it had agreed to sell all 16 of its South Korean outlets to Shinsegae, a local retailer, for $882 million.

With the announcement, Wal-Mart added its name to a list of multinationals, like Nokia, Nestlé and Google, that have failed to adjust to the tastes of South Korean consumers.

"Wal-Mart is a typical example of a global giant who has failed to localize its operations in South Korea," Na Hong Seok, an analyst at Good Morning Shinhan Securities in Seoul, said. "It failed to read what South Korean housewives want when they go shopping."

In the deal announced on Monday, Shinsegae, a leading department store and hypermarket chain in South Korea, will operate the Wal-Mart stores under its E-Mart brand. E-Mart is the biggest discount store chain in South Korea, with 79 outlets.

The French retailer Carrefour, the second-largest retailer after Wal-Mart, sold its 32 South Korean stores to the local fashion retailer E-Land last month for $1.85 billion.

Analysts said both chains were slow in opening stores, failing not only to win more customers, but also to build the kind of market share that would allow them to press suppliers on pricing.

Before the acquisition Monday, the E-Mart chain of Shinsegae accounted for 30 percent of the local market, followed by Homeplus, which is owned by the British company Tesco, with 17 percent; and Lotte Mart, owned by Lotte Shopping of South Korea, with 12 percent. Carrefour and Wal-Mart trailed with smaller market shares.

"In contrast to Wal-Mart, the British retailer Tesco is a remarkable case of succeeding in localizing," Mr. Na said. Samsung Tesco is 89 percent owned by the British retail giant, but has relied heavily on local managers from Samsung. It is one of Tesco's biggest overseas success stories, generating a third of its overseas sales.

"Wal-Mart and Carrefour were not aggressive enough in expanding their networks in South Korea," said Koo Chang Gun at Korea Investment and Securities. "Once they lost the race, they could never catch up."

Wal-Mart and Carrefour said that leaving South Korea would allow them to focus on the retail industry in China.

Analysts estimated South Korea's discount store market at 24 trillion won, or $25.2 billion, last year.

The vice chairman of Wal-Mart, Michael Duke, said, "As we continue to focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact on our growth strategy, it became increasingly clear that in South Korea's current environment it would be difficult for us to reach the scale we desired."

Shinsegae's chief executive, Ku Hak Su, said that with its lead secured at home, the retailer could shift more resources to China, where it opened its seventh outlet this month.

E-Mart plans to have 34 stores in China by 2010.

Wal-Mart's arrival in South Korea in 1998 shocked domestic retailers, but its performance was lackluster. It posted a net loss of 9.9 billion won last year on revenue of 728.7 billion won.

Wal-Mart and Carrefour, which entered the country in 1996, put off South Korean consumers by sticking to Western marketing strategies that concentrated on dry goods, from electronics to clothing, while their local rivals focused on food and beverages, the segment that specialists say attracts South Koreans to hypermarkets.

The Wal-Mart and Carrefour outlets in South Korea are simpler in appearance than those of E-Mart and other competitors.

Wal-Mart and Carrefour sold products by the box, while E-Mart and Lotte built eye-catching displays and hired clerks who hawked their goods with megaphones and hand-clapping.

Over the years, South Korea has been a graveyard for some of the most competitive global brands. It is hard to find any Nokia cellphones in South Korea, for example.

Local giants Samsung and LG dominate, and Nokia, the world's primary cellphone maker, basically stopped promoting its cellphones here in 2004.

Google is a small player in the local Web search engine market, which is dominated by the Naver Web site of the South Korean company NHN and the portal of Daum Communications.

Naver and Daum encourage users to post questions and let others answer them, creating a fast-expanding Korean-language database that attracts Web surfers.

Nestlé, the food and beverage company, also failed to make a mark with its flagship baby formula segment.

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Wal-Mart Cleared in Negligent Hiring Case

Michael — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:42:56 GMT

By MEG KINNARD, Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A jury on Tuesday cleared Wal-Mart of negligence in hiring a convicted sex offender who fondled a 10-year-old girl while on the job.

The girl's mother sued Wal-Mart in 2001, claiming the retail giant should have known Bobby Devon Randall was a convicted sex offender. The family sought damages of up to $5 million in connection with the September 2000 incident.

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., said at the time it was not legally required to do background checks and that the employee who fondled the girl lied about his criminal past on his job application.

The company decided in August 2004 that it would begin conducting background checks on new hires nationwide.

Judge Ernest Kinard gave an attorney for the girl's family 10 days to file an appeal.

"I just, legally, from a lawyer's standpoint, do not understand how this jury could have reached this verdict," said David Massey, the family's lawyer.

Wal-Mart attorney Stephen Morrison expressed sympathy for the victim and her family.

What Randall did "was indecent and not the right thing to do," Morrison said. But "it's just a situation where Wal-Mart didn't do anything negligent that caused that to happen in their store."

Randall pleaded guilty in 2002 to committing a lewd act on a minor and received a 10-year sentence, but he died about six months later in prison after suffering an apparent heart attack, authorities said.

Randall's criminal record included three indecent exposure convictions between July 1990 and March 1999, according to the State Law Enforcement Division.

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Walmart offers to help fix U.S. health care system

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 20:07:59 GMT

I read this last week on yahoo news and I have to say I got a really good laugh out of the article. The only thing I can think that Walmart would do is make all health care professionals work off the clock, otherwise I fail to see what Walmart has to offer.

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southparks take on wallmart

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:06:09 GMT

something wallmart this way comes

part one http://www.youtube.com/watch_fullscreen?video_id=7bfy-h-GKsE&l=114&s=73CA12C4D0553791:A2D2A680D86F608F&fs=1&title=J%20gets%20duct%20taped%20and%20tickled.....again!!!!!

part two http://www.youtube.com/watch_fullscreen?video_id=TwY97gJJ4Ww&l=482&s=73CA12C4D0553791:A2D2A680D86F608F&fs=1&title=south%20park%20809:%20something%20wallmart%20this%20way%20comes,%202%20of%203

part three http://www.youtube.com/watch_fullscreen?video_id=z0SA3b62nTs&l=377&s=73CA12C4D0553791:A2D2A680D86F608F&fs=1&title=south%20park%20809:%20something%20wallmart%20this%20way%20comes,%203%20of%203

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Economic Alchemy: Making Corporate Social Responsibility Real

George — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:42:44 GMT

The accelerated consolidation of wealth and power in America is unprecedented. Through taxation policy, deregulation, legislative and policy changes we are observing a trend that gained momentum under "Supply-Side" economic theory made popular among the very wealthy during the Reagan years. As business is deregulated, and policy shifts to favor growth at the expense of worker safety and rights, our environment, conservation of natural resources and erosion of individual and community protections as a society we look for protection or empowerment elsewhere. The concept of capital in a capitalist economic system is raw, unbridled power. Why else would it be called capitalism? Organization of workers and collective bargaining (people capital) have been a successful means of countering the vast wealth and power of the corporate elite. Since the Reagan years, and the subsequent weakening of organized labor, we have seen other methods in which people could organize and express power economically. Such methods have had varied degrees of acceptance and success.

The Birth of SRI
Investment capital provides the underlying liquidity a business needs to grow. As the equity value of a business declines its ability to fund research, marketing, consider acquisition strategies and other vital strategic elements of growth becomes constrained. Understanding this, many far-sighted visionaries such as Amy Domini, Steve Lydenberg and others began to create mutual funds and provide institutional investment analysis and research to answer the question "What sort of corporate citizen are we empowering when we invest?" As investment capital enables strategic growth, by investing are we fueling a business that is...:

* notorious for lack of concern for its workers?
* poisoning our air and aquifers?
* depleting our finite natural resources?
* giving large executive bonuses while laying off its workforce?
* avoiding its share of taxes?
* attempting to undermine a representative government of the people, for the people and by the people?
Thus, the important Socially Responsible Investment community was born.

The Informed, Educated Consumer
We have witnessed an interesting evolution in the sophistication of consumers. Many years ago people would buy their favorite food products without regard to what is inside. As people became more concerned about what they were putting into their bodies (and their families bodies) they demanded disclosure -and thus product labeling of ingredients became commonplace. We are now seeing a similar awareness and concern in the consumer related to how a product was manufactured and sold. What is the supply-chain like? No one (except perhaps for neoconservative extremists) want to put on a pair of shoes that were made by slave labor. No one wants to buy products from a company that is poisoning the air and water in our communities (whether American communities or Global communities). The problem (until alonovo.com) was that we simply had no simple method to derive information about product price, quality and the underlying supply-chain behavior directly integrated into the consumer experience.

Role of Government
Government (theoretically) exists to provide consistent services to its citizens. A government should protect its people from foreign governments, provide safe highways and roads and other critical elements of infrastructure. A conflict develops as the body of government is comprised of politicians, who have slightly different individual priorities than the larger body of Government. Politicians exist to be re-elected. As more capital and power is consolidated to the corporate elite, politicians understand that by helping to undermine some individual protections through weak enforcement policy or deregulation of industries can drive profit to big business and are a fun and compelling method to raise funds for re-election. Particularly when their constituents are supportive of having their protections eroded -as is mostly the case when laws are introduced or legislation authored with a title that begins with `Clear, Clean, Healthy, No Child or PATRIOT'. Not that I would ever imply that a politician would accept money to exert influence that is counter to the health, safety or well-being of their constituents. I caution the reader with a sense of immediacy and without further Delay that I say it is improbable that this sort of betrayal of trust could occur. But, if one were to suspend belief for a moment amd consider, if you will, the possibility that because of their primary objective (Frist and foremost, re-election) individual politicians will provide benefit to the entity that can help them with their objective -re-election. A politician must raise alot of money to wage a successful campaign.

One Nation, Artificially Divided
Red versus Blue. Divide and Conquer. America is comprised of caring, heroic independent people. When there is a disaster -the American people come together to help. The notion of two Americas is a myth that is perpetuated to distract us while our pockets are collectively picked. How many people from any political ideology want to give their children a glass of sewage from the tap on a hot, thirsty day? How many of your neighbors prefer to look up and see a brown horizon? How many welcome the chance to have a high incidence rate of Asthma? How many do you think would want their energy policy dictated by Kenneth Lay? Lets face it. You don't have to be a Democrat to want to see a blue sky and enjoy a crisp, clear day. You don't have to be a Republican to want a growing economy. We generally want similar things for ourselves, families, communities and country. We are being polarized over issues intentionally. We are being frightened and distracted while an unprecedented consolidation of power and wealth accelerates.

Empowerment -the new Economic Evolutionaries
We are a capitalist society. In its purest form there is promise in such a system (provided it is not undermined by collusion, monopolies, corporate welfare and other betrayals of a pure free market economy) it provides incentive for competition, innovation and individual accountability.

We must act as informed investors, and now educated and aware consumers to understand the underlying corporate behavior we empower and perpetuate with our capital -through investment and our purchases. Doing so will effectively provide the intelligence and information that is required for an intelligent free-market economy instead of a theoretical one. This capital leverage and power we wield will sustain us through any government, whether the government acts as they should on behalf of its constituents or acts as they do now -as cheerleaders for the corporate elite). By directing our purchases and investment to businesses that are evolving to embody a balance between people, planet and profit -real social responsibility can prevail -and this drives social responsibility directly into where it is most visible to the corporate elite -their bottom line. We are not about being punitive toward companies that are driving the profit without regard for anything else economy. Instead we seek to reward visionary corporate executive teams that are leading in what is termed "the race to the top".

About the Author
Mr. Polisner founded alonovo.com in March of 2005. He has been working in most aspects of Information Technology since 1981 and was an early commercial adopter of the UNIX operating system. Prior to founding alonovo.com earlier this year, George was a Director at Oracle Corporation, and formed the technology and infrastructure for the Global Innovation and Quality groups within the On Demand unit for Oracle. Prior to that role he ran the Southwest Performance Architecture team. He is a frequent contributor to newspapers regarding political and economic policy and often appears as a guest on radio programs. In fact, when it comes to alonovo.com, it's pretty difficult to get him to stop talking.

About alonovo.com
The concept of alonovo.com is to provide an intelligent, informed online shopping experience for the powerful American consumer demographic. By directly integrating trusted Social Responsibility ratings coupled with a large, competitive array of products (from Amazon) into a visually compelling and simple user experience, we have started to redirect consumer spend.

Our mission is to catalyze a constructive relationship between an informed marketplace demand and the business supply chain. This will help accelerate a "race to the top" among businesses that are working to balance people, planet and profit. We seek to directly influence the profit motive by making real SR a competitive advantage.

While this will provide a gradual means of economic (and therefore political change), we are also seeking to address the fierce urgency of now. Therefore, our business model is predicated upon sharing 20% of our commerce revenue with beneficiary organizations such as United for a Fair Economy, Global Exchange, WalMart Watch and other organizations working to shape a meaningful and positive change for society.

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Wal-Mart coming to Phoenix despite residents' protests

Michael — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:09:34 GMT

Jessica Coomes
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 12, 2006 12:00 AM

Wal-Mart will open a 24-hour Supercenter in northeast Phoenix, despite protests from nearly 200 residents who say they fear the retailer will diminish their upscale neighborhood.

Like other Valley groups that have fought to keep Wal-Mart from their neighborhoods, these Phoenix residents rail against 24-hour traffic and bright lights glaring into their back yards. And they do not want Wal-Mart's low prices choking out existing stores.

Recently in Avondale and Chandler, the chain withdrew its plans for stores in the face of residents' backlash and uphill zoning requests. In Goodyear and Peoria, Wal-Mart battled back and won approval to build stores. Wal-Mart and Gilbert residents have been clashing over a Supercenter plan since 2004.

On Monday, nearly 200 residents, some of whom have never stepped foot in a Wal-Mart, gathered at Paradise Valley Community Center and told company representative Keith Morris that they do not think the Paradise Valley Mall area is suitable for the megadiscount merchant.

"They're not bringing anything we don't already have," resident Ray Bourne said.

"But they're going to take away from us because the existing stores cannot compete."

Wal-Mart will take over the soon-to-be-closed Burlington Coat Factory on the southeastern corner of Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard, so the city cannot stop the discount retailer on zoning grounds.

"If I had my choice, it would not be there," Phoenix Councilwoman Peggy Bilsten told her constituents. "I don't think that it's the appropriate spot."

Morris, after listening to residents on behalf of Wal-Mart, said he thinks the world's largest retailer gets a bad rap because people expect the "old blue-and-gray, one-dimensional buildings."

Wal-Mart's new Supercenters have a more modern look with fake hardwood floors and wider aisles, and they sell high-end electronics and organic groceries, he said.

The new store near Paradise Valley Mall will be 99,000 square feet, about half the size of an average Supercenter, Morris said. It will not have tire and lube or garden centers.

Morris called it a "smaller, intimate Supercenter."

Those amenities won't attract Ruth Ellsworth, who lives three blocks from the northeast Phoenix store, which could open early next year.

She said she has never even been to a Wal-Mart.

"We have Target," she said. "Why would we want Wal-Mart?"

Knowing they cannot stop Wal-Mart, residents at the Monday meeting said they wanted to voice concerns about traffic increases, unattractive signs, nighttime deliveries, 24-hour lighting and the possibility of an eventual expansion.

"If nothing else, maybe we can put some restrictions on to make it livable," said resident Melinda Hinkson, who organized the Paradise Village Neighborhood Coalition last month against Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart already signed long-term leases with property owner WestCor and Burlington Coat Factory.

In Gilbert, residents hope to scare away Wal-Mart, which faces a zoning change, General Plan amendment and architectural review.

In 2004, Wal-Mart announced plans to construct a 99,000-square-foot Supercenter in Gilbert Town Square, a shopping center near Gilbert and Warner roads.

"Our concerns about how it would adversely affect the neighborhood certainly haven't changed," said John Bree, who lives in the Raven Ranch subdivision separated from the Wal-Mart site only by the Consolidated Canal. "There's certainly other opportunities to shop at their stores if that's what you're interested in doing."

Wal-Mart has 66 stores in Arizona.

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Wal-Mart May Be Looking at Site in Queens

Michael — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:06:24 GMT

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 12, 2006
Wal-Mart, which has tried unsuccessfully to open a store in New York City, appeared to be trying once again with a notice published yesterday in a construction trade report soliciting contractors to convert the site of a former Caldor department store in Flushing, Queens.

The notice in The Dodge Report, published by McGraw-Hill Construction, said the site, which is on Roosevelt Avenue, would become a Wal-Mart, with work beginning in July. The notice was met with confusion, as local officials said they had no knowledge of the project, and was denounced by union and small-business leaders as a furtive attempt to gain a foothold in the city.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said the site had been considered but did not meet the retailer's criteria.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, whose chief of staff met with Wal-Mart representatives yesterday, said last night through a spokeswoman that the retailer did not mention specific sites, and that if the Flushing project was in the works, she would be "outraged" that the information had been withheld.

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a moment of levity at wal marts expense

angryamerican — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:58:01 GMT

sorry if duplicated, but its worth it

http://www.alldumb.com/item/24149/

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 3 replies

Please help

mentalfreedomne1 — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:16:16 GMT

please go to this website to send a fax to the related US
congress and senate members to Request a Congressional Hearing on the
Sujiatun case. it's a very easy to Fill out form, With just a click, the fax will be sent.
thank you,
joshua

here is the link:
http://publicpetition.unvcc.com/UN/index.php

there is more information about Sujiatun on the website:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html

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Wal-Mart takes its China lessons to India

Michael — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:16:26 GMT

By Emily Kaiser
Mon Mar 27, 12:17 AM ET

SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) - When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. opened its first store in Shenzhen a decade ago, the local newspaper headline proclaimed, "The Wolf is Coming."

The world's biggest retailer has not exactly devoured China's retail sector since then, opening just 56 stores, but it has learned a few lessons that may prove useful for its next major project -- India.

"China and India really represent the future of Wal-Mart," Joe Hatfield, chief executive officer for Wal-Mart Asia, told Reuters in Shenzhen, the retailer's China headquarters. Foreign retailers are not permitted to directly invest in India's retail sector, but they have been lobbying hard for a change to those rules.

Analysts say that will likely happen within a year or two.

Wal-Mart's opponents in India fear the "wolf" would demolish competitors and drive up unemployment in a country already struggling to feed and house its one billion citizens.

But Wal-Mart believes India, like China before it, will embrace Western retailers. The key is to show an understanding of local tastes, whether that means stocking popular spices, the right baked goods, or just the top-selling brand of soap.

Easier said than done.

In China, Wal-Mart tried to sell paint, something that works well in the United States. But customers weren't used to buying paint and food from the same place, and Wal-Mart eventually stopped carrying it.

Analysts and economists in India say the retail sector and its supply chain are in dire need of modernization. India's farm goods typically pass through six or seven intermediaries before reaching consumers, and some 40 percent of produce spoils along the way.

'STEAL SHAMELESSLY'

Wall Street is eager for signs Wal-Mart is making progress in China and India at a time when growth at home is sluggish.

The United States accounts for about 80 percent of Wal-Mart's annual sales, which topped $312 billion in the latest fiscal year, but rival Target Corp. has posted faster sales growth in recent quarters.

Investors have noticed. Target's shares are up more than 6 percent over the past year, and trade at 17.2 times analysts' profit forecasts for the current year, according to Reuters Estimates. Wal-Mart's stock has fallen about 5 percent in that time, and is valued at 16.5 times earnings.

Wal-Mart has already taken steps to prepare for India. The retailer has applied to open a liaison office in Bangalore to study the market, and recently hired a head of Asian strategy who will oversee expansion in India, among other things.

Wal-Mart Vice Chairman Mike Duke met Indian officials earlier in March, marking the retailer's second round of high-level talks in less than a year.

Hatfield himself may be one of the best resources. He opened Wal-Mart's China operations in 1994, so he is well aware of the potential pitfalls in a developing economy.

His best advice? "Steal shamelessly," Hatfield said, quoting from Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, who routinely visited competitors' stores to get new ideas.

He spent his first months in China walking around and talking to shopkeepers about which items sold well.

In China, Wal-Mart got off to a slow start, and trails rivals such as France's Carrefour, which did a better job of adapting stores to meet local tastes.

Hatfield says it is unlikely he will be in charge of Wal-Mart's India business, because a major China expansion will keep him busy. But he has some ideas about how a Wal-Mart store in India should look.

For starters, it should have an expansive spice section, where employees can custom grind orders while shoppers wait. It would also boast a large bakery section.

In India, as in China, few households have ovens, so baked goods must be purchased.

Stores would probably be smaller than they are in China -- no more than 140,000 square feet, instead of the 200,000 square-foot supercenters in China and the United States.

WHERE TO GO?

Figuring out what to put on the shelves is one thing -- the bigger task will be figuring out where to put the stores.

Analysts in India say it will be tough for Wal-Mart to get into the mega-cities such as New Delhi or Mumbai, where real estate is pricey and large parcels of land are hard to come by.

Severe traffic congestion will also be a problem. How many shoppers will be willing to brave hours in a car just to visit a Wal-Mart store, particularly when a multitude of small, corner shops offer convenience and service?

Millions of those small stores currently account for some 97 percent of India's retail market. Most of them accept telephone orders and will deliver to homes.

Raman Mangalorkar, a principal with consulting firm A.T. Kearney in Mumbai, said small, corner shops will survive because of the convenience factor, but some will need to change their merchandise offerings to compete.

"They'll have to evolve, just like they've done in China," he said. "They will cater to needs that are not being served by the Wal-Marts and Carrefours."

Mangalorkar, whose firm ranks India number one on its annual list of the top markets for international retail expansion, said he would advise foreign retailers to focus on the second-tier cities such as Lucknow.

Hatfield said Wal-Mart was interested in cities both large and small. He said his strategy would be to make a big splash early on, opening 12 to 18 stores in the first 18 months, to show consumers that Wal-Mart was committed to India.

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Wal-Mart tries new tack in upscale community

Michael — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:14:41 GMT

Plasma TVs and sushi join basic, low-cost staples as giant discounter goes after Target customer base.

BY DAVID KOENIG
Associated Press

PLANO, Texas — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has overcome its rural roots and downscale image to attract affluent shoppers, but executives admit that many of those well-heeled consumers come only for cheap groceries and steer clear of the other merchandise.

In its boldest effort yet to target upscale shoppers, the nation's largest retailer opened a new store last week with an expanded selection of high-end electronics, more fine jewelry, hundreds of types of wine ranging up to $500 a bottle, and even a sushi bar.
Wal-Mart says it won't duplicate this format anywhere else. But if plasma TVs, microbrewery beer and fancy balsamic vinegar sell in Plano, those items could be added to stores in other affluent communities.

Retail experts say nearly half of American families shop at Wal-Mart at least once a week. They say the retail giant has nearly tapped out its middle-class base and must attract consumers who love Target and Costco but not Wal-Mart.

With about 3,700 U.S. stores, Wal-Mart has nearly saturated the market, and analysts say future growth depends on boosting sales by offering a better shopping experience. The company is renovating 1,800 stores as many of its older outlets have started looking a little tired.

Wal-Mart profits keep rising, but not as fast as Wall Street expects, and same-store sales, those at locations open at least a year, rose faster in 2005 at smaller but trendier Target Corp. Wal-Mart stock has slipped about 20 percent in the past two years while Target shares gained about the same percentage.

Analysts say that despite low prices, Wal-Mart suffers from a perception that its merchandise is lower quality, which turns off consumers who can afford better. "The challenge they face is value, and upper-end consumers define value differently than a moderate-income shopper," said Patricia Edwards, who helps manage retail funds for Wentworth, Hauser and Violich investment counselors. "If it was just price, they would drink the office coffee instead of going to Starbucks."

In recent months, some Wal-Marts began selling upscale bed-and-bath items and its new Metro 7 and no boundaries clothing lines — all of which are highlighted in the new store.
Wal-Mart listened to focus groups of "selective shoppers" — the company's term for affluent customers — in designing the store, said regional general manager John Murphy.
"The upscale customer is shopping our store," Murphy said. "Are they interested in everything we have to offer? No. This is a test store. Can we make that leap to where they are interested in other parts of the store?"

Murphy said Wal-Mart hopes to prove it can reach affluent consumers, which should help persuade vendors who are reluctant to sell their goods there. Target has succeeded in selling designer lines.

Don Gher, an analyst with Coldstream Capital Management, said it took Target years to shift upscale and it won't happen quickly at Wal-Mart either. In the meantime, he said the stores must guard against changing too much, which could alienate its core customers.
Gher predicted that Wal-Mart will succeed at selling high-end electronics to upscale consumers, but selling them apparel will be more difficult. "Fashion can be fickle," he said.
The new store, which opened Wednesday, is 217,000 square feet, about 20,000 square feet bigger than the average Supercenter. It sits across the street from a SuperTarget, and you can see Costco from the parking lot. The blue and gray Wal-Mart exterior gave way to two-tone brick. Inside, wood floors and wide aisles abound. Shelves are lower to reduce clutter. Even employees look different in khaki pants and navy polo shirts instead of blue smocks.

The new store is just as notable for what's missing. The store won't sell guns. It has far less space devoted to lawn and garden, fishing, camping and automotive products.
"This customer is telling us they're not doing it themselves," said Ryan Lincks, the store's project manager. "They don't change their own oil."

But the store has rows of high-definition televisions, several of them more than $2,000, plus pricier bikes and even an expanded yoga section. It features an expanded baby clothes area, a cards and books section with cherry-finish wood racks and arching halogen gallery lights, and baggers at the checkout lines — a first for Wal-Mart.

Hungry shoppers will search in vain for McDonald's. It has been replaced by an espresso bar with a sandwich menu and free wireless Internet service.

Cosmetics and pharmacy aren't relegated to the far corner; they're next to the food and wine because female customers in focus groups said they want it that way for convenience and speed. Apparel areas have their own cash registers and more discrete fitting rooms.

But no layaways.

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Wally goes Organic...

WhiteSage — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 16:16:13 GMT

Wal-Mart's Organics Could Shake Up Retail

By MARCUS KABEL, Associated Press Writer Sat Mar 25, 12:54 AM ET

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is throwing its weight behind organic products, a move that experts say could have the same lasting effect on environmental practices that Wal-Mart has had on prices by forcing suppliers and competitors to keep up.

Putting new items on the shelf this year, from organic cotton baby clothes to ocean fish caught in ways that don't harm the environment, is part of a broader green policy launched last year to meet consumer demand, cut costs for things like energy and packaging and burnish a battered reputation.

Organic products are one lure for the more affluent shoppers Wal-Mart is trying to woo away from rivals like Target Corp., said Alice Peterson, president of Chicago-based consultancy Syrus Global.

A new Supercenter that opened this week in the Dallas suburb of Plano features over 400 organic foods as part of an experiment to see what kinds of products and interior decor can grab the interest of upscale shoppers.

"Like many big companies, they have figured out it is just good marketing and good reputation building to be in favor of things that Americans are increasingly interested in," Peterson said.

Wal-Mart's Lee Scott is not the first chief executive to advocate sustainability, a term for the corporate ethos of doing business in a way that benefits the environment. Industrial giant General Electric Co., for example, last year launched a program called "Ecomagination" to bring green technologies like wind power to market.

What makes Wal-Mart's efforts unique, sustainability experts say, is the retailer's sheer size and the power that gives it in relations with suppliers. Wal-Mart works closely with suppliers to shape their goods, if they want them on the shelves of Wal-Mart's nearly 4,000 U.S. stores and over 2,200 internationally.

"They have huge potential because it's not just Wal-Mart we're talking about, it's their entire supply chain," said Jeff Erikson, U.S. director of London-based consultancy and research group SustainAbility. The group says it does not do any consulting work for Wal-Mart.

Erikson said Wal-Mart could bring the same pressure it has exerted over the years on prices and apply that to pushing manufacturers and competitors to adopt more sustainable business practices and larger organic offerings.

"We love to see companies like Wal-Mart taking a big step and making pronouncements as they have, because their tentacles are so large," Erikson said.

Wal-Mart plans to double its organic grocery offerings in the next month and continue looking for more products to offer in areas such as grocery, apparel, paper and electronics.

Stephen Quinn, vice president of marketing, told an analysts' conference this month that Wal-Mart would have 400 organic food items in stores this summer "at the Wal-Mart price."

Some Wal-Mart critics call the effort just a public relations job. But others say Wal-Mart could make a real difference if the retailer brings a critical mass of organic products to market and pushes enough suppliers to adopt green practices.

Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, who is a board member of the union-backed group Wal-Mart Watch that criticizes the retailer, said it is too soon to tell if Wal-Mart will deliver but that the impact could be good for the environment.

"I think the direction they've said is a positive direction. The question is, `Are they are going to go there strongly enough?'" Pope said.

Some of the new items will be seafood caught in the wild. Wal-Mart last month announced a plan to have all its wild-caught fish, which accounts for about a third of seafood sales, certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as caught in a sustainable way.

The London-based MSC, founded in 1997 as a venture of the conservation group World Wildlife Fund and global consumer products company Unilever, issues the certificates to let consumers know which fisheries avoid overfishing and use methods that don't damage the ocean environment.

Sustainability experts say what makes this program interesting is that Wal-Mart will work with its suppliers to get more fisheries around the globe certified by MSC, instead of just buying up the existing stock of certified fish.

Wal-Mart says this means there will be more sustainable fish that will also be available to Wal-Mart's competitors, such as Whole Foods Market, which already sells about 18 MSC certified items, according to the MSC Web site. Wal-Mart plans to offer between 200 and 250 items.

The way Wal-Mart hatched the fish plan is typical of how it operates.

Peter Redmond, vice president and divisional merchandise manager in charge of deli and seafood, said he conceived the idea after meeting MSC board chairman Will Martin last fall. Wal-Mart and MSC worked out details and then Wal-Mart called in its 25 to 30 fish wholesalers in January to tell them it was switching to MSC certified seafood.

Wal-Mart developed a plan to work with its suppliers to encourage fisheries to adopt MSC practices. The plan includes barring its suppliers from switching fisheries in the first year to 18 months, giving the suppliers more reason to promote the changes.

"We don't want to walk away from a fishery just because it is in fairly poor shape or poor shape," Redmond said. "We want to try and recover that (non-certified) fishery to where it becomes a sustainable fishery. Our point being that if we just go for sustainable fisheries, it won't be enough at the end of the day unless we recover a lot of these that are in trouble now," he added.

The term fishery refers to a particular species of fish and the fleet that harvests them. Redmond said about 60 percent of the fisheries that Wal-Mart buys from now can be brought up to MSC standards within a year or two, and the remainder may need three to five years to change.

Redmond says the decision to go with sustainable fish came after Lee Scott launched the environmental policy last fall and fits Scott's maxim of "doing well by doing good".

"The environmental piece is a company (policy) plank. Secondly and probably the main reason is, when I look at seafood now and how many dollars it does now and how many dollars it's going to do in four years, I'm extremely concerned that that product is simply not going to be there."

"So we have to take the position that if I want to have hake five or six years from now, we as a company have to get involved and do something because I don't think it'll be there for us otherwise," Redmond said.

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Wal-Mart poised for major China expansion

Michael — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 15:04:20 GMT

By Emily Kaiser
Sun Mar 19, 5:25 AM ET

SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - news) plans to hire 150,000 people in China over the next five years, five times the number it currently employs here, as it prepares for a major store expansion.

Joe Hatfield, chief executive of Wal-Mart Asia, who has worked at the world's biggest retailer for more than 30 years and was its first employee in China in 1994, said on Sunday the company plans to open 20 stores in the country this year and is racing to train more staff so that it can speed up growth.

"We're really going to ramp this up," Hatfield told Reuters in an interview while touring stores in Shenzhen, Wal-Mart's China headquarters.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer currently has 56 stores in China, putting it behind other global chains such as France's Carrefour (CARR.PA), which had 78 at the end of 2005.

Wal-Mart did not even register enough sales to crack the top 30 on the Ministry of Commerce list of the biggest retailers in China, released last month.

That looks set to change.

"We're going to be growing in all directions," Hatfield said, adding that new stores were planned for both the major metropolises and the smaller cities.

Barring any major economic upheaval, Wal-Mart's China operations could be as big as its U.S. business in 20 years, Hatfield said -- something that Wall Street analysts have long predicted. Wal-Mart now has about 3,700 U.S. stores.

The United States generated 80 percent of Wal-Mart's $312 billion in sales for the latest fiscal year, but slowing growth and rising opposition at home have made international expansion all the more appealing.

America's love-hate relationship with Wal-Mart is well-documented. The retailer boasts that 100 million people shop at its U.S. stores each week, and yet its critics have grown increasingly vocal in the past year.

Two union-funded groups have set up Web sites and launched grassroots campaigns aimed at drawing attention to what they consider stingy wages and benefits for Wal-Mart workers.

Communities across the country have campaigned against new Wal-Mart stores, saying they devour green space, increase traffic congestion and drive competitors out of business. Activists have succeeded in blocking or delaying dozens.

WAL-MART UNIVERSITY?

In China, however, consumers can't seem to get enough. Stores here can draw 1.2 million people per month, and the retailer is constantly on the lookout for new locations.

The biggest challenge is finding staff.

Hatfield said he has asked Wal-Mart to set up a university degree program here to train future employees to work in jobs ranging from master baker to accountant.

The retailer employs about 30,000 people in China, and Hatfield said he will need to hire 150,000 more as the expansion picks up steam. Wal-Mart has already started putting extra staff in stores so that they can learn on the job and be ready to manage newly opened locations.

Wal-Mart got off to a slow start here. Hatfield arrived in 1994, but it was nearly two years before the retailer opened its first stores. Growth has been modest since then, but China relaxed rules for foreign retailers at the end of 2004, making it easier to expand.

Hatfield spent his first months in China visiting other retailers to get a feel for shopping habits and tastes. As a result, outlets here may look like American megastores from the outside, but they carry a wide array of local delicacies such as sliced pig's ear, live fish and even crocodile.

Hatfield, 61, said he has no desire to leave, and hopes to stick around long enough to see the day when Wal-Mart China rivals the retailer's U.S. operations. He tells co-workers he plans to work until he is 80.

And after that, he wants to be a Wal-Mart greeter, standing at the entrance to welcome shoppers.

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New Witness Confirms Existence of Chinese Concentration Camp, Says Organs Removed from Live Prisoners

mentalfreedomne1 — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 03:48:09 GMT

Please help to end this horrible persectuion. knowledge is our greatest weapon, please share this information. together in peace we can make a difference. Falun Dafa is a peaceful meditation practice that teaches putting others before yourself, kindness, always telling the truth and being tolerant of others. We are literally being killed for being good people. The national media has done very little to help us because of trade issues with China. It is up to us to let the world know. Please help us.

By Ji Da
The Epoch Times Mar 17, 2006
www.theepochtimes.com

The witness, a former employee at the Liaoning Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, and says the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners are cremated immediately after the organs are removed. (The Epoch Times)
[High-resolution image ] A former employee of Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine told The Epoch Times during a recent interview that the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in China was actually a part of a hospital. The concentration camp has engaged in taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners when they were still alive and selling the organs. Since 2001, the concentration camp has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, none of whom have been able to leave the camp alive. The hospital removed many kidneys, livers, and corneas from the practitioners. After the organ removal, the practitioners were thrown into an incinerator, which was converted from a boiler. Their ashes were dumped together with burned charcoal.

Organs from Three Quarters of the 6,000 People Were Removed
Those whose organs were removed were in various states of health. Because many of the victims were illegally detained, there was neither an arrest warrant nor identification as to who these people actually were. Often after their organs were removed, nobody claimed the bodies. Sometimes their bodies were picked up by crooks who pretended to be their family members.

About three-quarters of the 6,000 people died after their hearts, kidneys, corneas, or skin was removed; their bodies were then burned. This witness, whose family member participated in the removal of Falun Gong practitioners' organs, said that approximately 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners remain in the hospital. She was afraid that the authorities would kill all of them to destroy evidence.

The Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine is located at 49 Xuesong Road, Sujiatun, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China. It was the first hospital in China to specialize in the heart, the brain, and surrounding blood vessels. The hospital is composed of several organizations, including the Liaoning Traditional Chinese Medicine College Teaching Hospital and the Shenyang Thrombosis Treatment Center.

Concentration Camp Details
The hospital site is 21,087 square meters, with 17,564 square meters of building area. It employs 460 people in 24 departments and 20 specialized offices. Information from the Chinese government shows that the hospital was established in December 1988, and was formerly named the Shenyang Research Institute of Thrombosis and Liaoning Province Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine. In June 1998, it was renamed China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center.

The Chinese Business Morning View said in a story on July 4, 2004, that a farm worker died of abnormal causes in Sujiatun, Shenyang and was later cremated. The death certificate was provided by the Chinese Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center in Sujiatun. The news caused a stir in China.

Epoch Times: Did the hospital's medical staff inside the concentration camp know about this?

Answer: This hospital has a small number of officials and some doctors involved secretively in the operation of organ harvesting. Some other staff in the hospital knew about this, but this is absolutely a taboo [to talk about]. They all are afraid of being killed or courting trouble, so they all avoid the issue. Only those highly trusted doctors could be chosen to be the surgeons for organ harvesting operations.

ET: Were Falun Gong practitioners alive when their organs were harvested? Did their families know about this?

Answer: Falun Gong practitioners who were imprisoned there came mostly from Dabei Prison, Masanjia Labor Camp, and other prisons in Shenyang, or they were Falun Gong practitioners arrested in parks or residential homes. Because they refused to denounce Falun Gong, they were arrested without formal warrants, and their families did not know their situation. Many did not even have their names [recorded]. In addition, since the Chinese authority exercises a policy of "not being responsible" for killing Falun Gong practitioners, the death of Falun Gong practitioners is not a very big issue for prisons. The Chinese Communist Party persecutes Falun Gong, [but] these medical personnel were told Falun Gong practitioners were facing death because they killed people, or they were sentenced to death because of crimes, or they had become insane from practicing Falun Gong.

Those Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were harvested came from several types.

Organs harvested from live bodies are worth far more than organs taken from dead bodies. Many Falun Gong practitioners were still alive when their organs were taken. After their organs were cut out, some of these people were thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt, thus leaving no evidence. For some others, after their organs were stolen, the doctor sewed up the wound and asked the family or family representative to give a signature for cremation. Family members did not know at all that the dead had their organs taken out.

Furthermore, there were some healthy Falun Gong practitioners in prisons in other areas who were injected—without their knowledge—with psychoactive drugs that made their minds confused. They then were transferred to Sujiantun concentration camp to suffer further torture, till in the end their organs were harvested and their bodies were cremated in secret.

Among the Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were harvested, some were weak and some were healthy. Since most of them were illegally arrested, there were no arrest warrants or identification cards. After their organs were taken out while they were still alive, no one came to claim their bodies; or [sometimes] people using fake identities claimed their bodies.

None of these people have come out [of the concentration camp] alive; three-quarters of these 6,000 people have died, having their hearts, kidneys, retinas, and skins harvested and their bodies disposed of. I think now about 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners are still in this hospital, and I am afraid now that the authority will destroy all evidence and kill them.

Question: How did you know these things? Were you yourself a doctor involved in organ harvesting?

Answer: I worked at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, Shenyang. This is exactly where this concentration camp is located. One of my family members was involved in the operation to harvest Falun Gong practitioners' organs. This has brought great pain to our family.

Question: Please tell us what you knew about.

Answer: From 2001, our hospital started to detain Falun Gong practitioners. At the beginning, these people were detained in the single-storey houses in the back yard of the hospital. Later, the hospital authorities demolished the single-storey houses, and it was unknown where in the hospital the Falun Gong practitioners were transferred. Many staff of the hospital discussed in private that these Falun Gong practitioners had been secretly transferred to the underground chambers of the hospital. According to some people working inside the hospital, the hospital has a huge system of secret underground chambers.

At the time when we went to work there, the person in charge of logistics and purchasing in the hospital said that the quantity of disposable sterile gloves used for operations and daily supplies that the hospital authorities asked to be purchased had increased dramatically. The logistics people estimated based on the scale of purchases at that time that there were at least 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners detained in this hospital.

These Falun Gong practitioners were not detained in the 4-story building under the in-patient department and administration at the front of the hospital, in order to keep the hospital staff from seeing them at all. We only occasionally saw Falun Gong practitioners being sent on a mobile intensive care bed to the first floor for physical examinations. These people were very weak. For the majority of the Falun Gong practitioners, nobody knew where they were being secretly kept. While they still did not know where these people were kept, some staff inquired to the hospital authorities about why so much food and so many sterile gloves and daily supplies were purchased. The hospital authorities said, "You only need to do your job well. There is no need for you to ask any other questions."

Starting in 2001, a family member of mine participated in organ-harvesting operations. My family member tried to keep me from knowing about this at the beginning. The hospital authorities selected doctors they trust in different aspects to perform the secretive operations. After a period of time, I found that my family member was in a lot pain, often had nightmares, and appeared panic-stricken. After repeated inquiries, this family member told me the truth. The leader of the hospital had asked my family member to participate in the organ harvesting operations on Falun Gong practitioners as early as 2001. It was 2003 when my family member confessed. A few years after, my family member felt so much pain from participating in this incident that it was impossible to continue with the evildoing. My family member decided to go abroad to get away from this matter.

My family member also told me: "you don't understand my suffering; those Falun Gong practitioners were alive. It might be easier for me if they were dead, but they were alive."

Question: Were there any other doctors from the hospital taking part in the operations of cutting out Falun Gong practitioners' organs?

Answer: I know there were some. All these things have been carried out secretly. Many doctors at our hospital involved were practicum doctors transferred from other hospitals. Because the government does not want to be responsible for Falun Gong practitioners' bodies and lives, their lives are treated as garbage by the regime, and their bodies were used in experiments by new doctors doing their practitcums.

Many doctors came and left the hospital because they suffered a lot after having been involved in these kinds of things. They either requested to be transferred to other places, or changed their names. Some might have been killed to eliminate the evidence, their identity files were taken out from the hospital's filing system, or their names were changed. Nobody knows where the doctors have gone.

The hospital staff all know that the rear part of the hospital is forbidden. It is always watched. The staff avoids talking about the place.

Question: It is said the hospital is equipped with an incinerator. The person whose organs were removed will be burned when he or she is still alive. Is that true?

Answer: The employees in our hospital call this place "the incinerator." Actually, it is a boiler room. Some poor farmers from nearby places were hired to work in the boiler room. They were penniless when they first came here. But they could scrape up some watches, finger rings, necklaces, and so on. The amount is not small. It is said by the employees in the hospital these jewelry and watches were collected from the Falun Gong practitioners whose organs had been removed when they were about to be thrown in the boiler to be burned. It is also said by the employees in the hospital, some were still alive when being thrown into the boiler.

Question: Do they get injection of anesthetic when in surgery?

Answer: Yes. There is a cap to the anesthetic quantity used in mainland China's hospitals. Generally, the supply of anesthetic was determined according to the accommodation of the hospital. To the public, the number of patients in our care appears to be very small, and publicly reported number of surgical procedures performed is quite low. But the equipment and articles used in surgery are abundant. Because the amount of anesthetic is limited, these secret surgeries could not use the normal anesthetic doses. In order to save anesthetic, they economized on the anesthetic used in surgeries on these Falun Gong practitioners. The amount of anesthetic used was very small. However, many whose organs were removed were still alive. You can imagine the pain suffered by the Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were removed.

Question: Are there any survivors among the 6,000 people detained since 2001?

Answer: Nobody has come out alive. The number of them gets smaller and smaller. The Falun Gong practitioners detained at Sujiatun are fewer now than before. But I believe that the sin of removing the organs of the Falun Gong practitioners is still continuing.

Question: Where are these organs usually sold to? Do the higher authorities in the government know about this?

Answer: They are mainly sold to Thailand, but I believe they are also sold to other regions of the world. Nowadays, there are many patients in China who need human skin, corneas, and kidneys for organ transplant surgeries. Many patients have to wait in line to purchase organs. Currently, a kidney can be sold up to the price of 30,000 to 100,000 U.S. dollars. The profit from selling organs is simply too great. The people who benefit from this are not only the top leaders of hospital and the officials of the Chinese Communist Party's Heath Department. This is a crime present across the entire nation. People ranging from government officials to doctors to organ sellers are all involved in this and are profiting greatly.

Question: Why did they target Falun Gong practitioners as the source of organs?

Answer: Because relatives of many Falun Gong practitioners don't even know that their family members were arrested. So if the Falun Gong practitioners are killed, there will be no one to come and claim their dead bodies.

Question: Why did you want to expose this? This may bring great danger to you.

Answer: I know that there are many Falun Gong practitioners who are currently detained at the hospital. I would like to expose this to the international community, so those who are not yet killed can be saved. Also, I would like to expose this as an atonement for my family.

I am not a Falun Gong practitioner. But as a former staff member of the hospital, I have the responsibility to expose the truth, and let the world to save those Falun Gong practitioners who are still alive. Organs of some Falun Gong practitioners are still living on patients' bodies. I would like to call on all society to pay attention to this issue and stop this shocking crime.

you can find out how you can help at www.fofg.org

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-ocaust?

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 00:47:22 GMT

Sorry if this is a duplicate post..I just stumbled upon this. Interesting use of words...
www.walocaust.com/site/

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Clinton Quiet About Wal-Mart Ties

Michael — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:24:51 GMT

By BETH FOUHY, AP Political Writer
35 minutes ago

NEW YORK - With retail giant Wal-Mart under fire to improve its labor and health care policies, one Democrat with deep ties to the company — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — has started feeling her share of the political heat.

Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. And the Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company's legal affairs.

Clinton had kind words for Wal-Mart as recently as 2004, when she told an audience at the convention of the National Retail Federation that her time on the board "was a great experience in every respect."

But in recent months, as the company has become a target for Democratic activists, she has largely steered clear of any mention of Wal-Mart. And late last year, Clinton's re-election campaign returned a $5,000 contribution from Wal-Mart, citing "serious differences with current company practices."

As Clinton sheds her Arkansas past and looks ahead to a possible 2008 presidential run, the Wal-Mart issue presents an exquisite dilemma: how to reconcile the political demands she faces today with her history at a company many American consumers depend upon but many Democratic activists revile.

"The interesting question is not just Hillary Clinton's history at Wal-Mart, but why it's delicate for her to talk about Wal-Mart," said Charles Fishman, author of "The Wal-Mart Effect," a book on the company's impact on the national economy. "Plenty of Democrats denounce Wal-Mart, but there are also plenty of people who need it, love it and rely on it."

___

In 1986, when Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, tapped Clinton to be the company's first female board member, Wal-Mart was a fraction of its current size, with $11.9 billion in net sales.

Today, Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and largest private employer, with over $312 billion in sales last year and 1.3 million employees or "associates" in the U.S. alone. But recently, the company has drawn intense scrutiny for its labor practices — from its wages to the lack of affordable health coverage for employees, to its stiff resistance to unionization.

Throughout the 1980s, both Bill and Hillary Clinton nurtured relationships with Walton, a conservative Republican and by far Arkansas' most influential businessman.

Among other things, Hillary Clinton sought Walton's help in 1983 for Bill Clinton's so-called Blue Ribbon Commission on Education, a major effort to improve Arkansas' troubled public schools. The overhaul became a centerpiece of Clinton's governorship.

And Wal-Mart's Made in America campaign, which for years touted the company's sales of American products in its stores, was launched after Bill Clinton persuaded Walton to help save 200 jobs at an Arkansas shirt manufacturing plant. The Made in America campaign has virtually vanished in recent years, as the company's manufacturing has gradually moved overseas — another point of criticism by many anti-Wal-Mart activists.

The Clintons also benefited financially from Wal-Mart. Hillary Clinton was paid $18,000 each year she served on the board, plus $1,500 for each meeting she attended. By 1993 she had accumulated at least $100,000 in Wal-Mart stock, according to Bill Clinton's federal financial disclosure that year. The Clintons also flew for free on Wal-Mart corporate planes 14 times in 1990 and 1991 in preparation for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential bid.

___

Wal-Mart has little to say about Hillary Clinton's board service, and will not release minutes of the company's board meetings during her tenure. Lorraine Voles, Clinton's communications director, turned down a request for an interview with the senator.

Still, details have come to light over the years.

Bob Ortega, author of "In Sam We Trust," a history of Wal-Mart, said Clinton used her position to urge the company to improve its gender and racial diversity. Because of Clinton's prodding, Walton agreed to hire an outside firm to track the company's progress in hiring women and minorities, Ortega said.

"These were things the company was not addressing and wouldn't have, had she not pushed them to do so," Ortega said. "She's somebody who could definitely get things done."

In fact, Clinton proved to be such a thorn in Walton's side that at Wal-Mart's annual meeting in 1987, when shareholders challenged Walton on the company's lack of female managers, he assured them the record was improving "now that we have a strong willed young lady on the board."

Clinton was particularly vocal on environmental matters, pressing the company to boost its sale and use of recycled materials and other "green" products.

Garry Mauro, who served with Clinton on a Wal-Mart environmental advisory committee, pointed to many successes, such as persuading the company to establish recycling centers and sell products like recycled oil and long-life light bulbs.

"Hillary had real impact — when she had an idea, things got moving," he said. "When she resigned from the committee, it stopped having any innovative ideas and stopped being effective."

Still, critics say there was little tangible change at Wal-Mart during Clinton's tenure, despite her apparent prodding.

"There's no evidence she did anything to improve the status of women or make it a very different place in ways Mrs. Clinton's Democratic base would care about," said Liza Featherstone, author of "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart."

___

The Wal-Mart debate has been playing out in Legislatures and city councils around the country in the last year, even hitting close to Clinton's adopted home.

New York State legislators of both parties are promoting bills requiring businesses including Wal-Mart to provide health coverage to their workers. And in October, New York City passed a law, aimed squarely at Wal-Mart, requiring large grocery stores to pay most workers a health care benefit worth an estimated $2.50 to $3 an hour. The law helped stall Wal-Mart's efforts to move into the city, even though recent polls indicate a majority of New Yorkers would welcome Wal-Mart.

Amid the deluge of legislative proposals around the country, Wal-Mart CEO Scott Lee announced last month that the company would expand its effort to enroll more workers in a new, low-premium health plan. The company will also trim the waiting period for part-time employees to become eligible for coverage.

But Hillary Clinton, who as first lady proposed a wide-ranging but ultimately unsuccessful plan to reshape the nation's health care system, has had little to say about Wal-Mart's health care record.

"That was a long time ago," she said recently when asked if she had done anything about the company's health care policies while she served on its board.

That comment was met with disbelief from Jonathan Tasini, a longtime labor organizer mounting a longshot challenge to Clinton in New York's Democratic Senate primary.

"Voters would find it a strained argument to believe that the senator who prides herself on intelligence and knowledge of detail can't recall any details in this case. It just strains credulity," Tasini said.

Nonetheless, Clinton and her advisers continue to insist that Wal-Mart has fundamentally changed since her tenure on the board.

"Wal-Mart was a different company then and the country was not facing the same health care challenges we face today," communications director Lorraine Voles said.

Even Clinton's decision to return Wal-Mart's campaign contribution illustrated the complicated role still Wal-Mart plays in her political life.

Wake-Up Wal-Mart posted several entries on its Web log applauding the decision, but others complained that the move seemed hypocritical and opportunistic given her history with the company.

Meanwhile, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt called the move "standard operating procedure" for Clinton.

"When push comes to shove, the senator allows politics to trump principle every time," Schmitt said.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign

Michael — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:58:46 GMT

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: March 7, 2006
New York Times

Brian Pickrell, a blogger, recently posted a note on his Web site attacking state legislation that would force Wal-Mart Stores to spend more on employee health insurance. "All across the country, newspaper editorial boards — no great friends of business — are ripping the bills," he wrote.

It was the kind of pro-Wal-Mart comment the giant retailer might write itself. And, in fact, it did.

Several sentences in Mr. Pickrell's Jan. 20 posting — and others from different days — are identical to those written by an employee at one of Wal-Mart's public relations firms and distributed by e-mail to bloggers.

Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters.

But the strategy raises questions about what bloggers, who pride themselves on independence, should disclose to readers. Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, has been forthright with bloggers about the origins of its communications, and the company and its public relations firm, Edelman, say they do not compensate the bloggers.

But some bloggers have posted information from Wal-Mart, at times word for word, without revealing where it came from.

Glenn Reynolds, the founder of Instapundit.com, one of the oldest blogs on the Web, said that even in the blogosphere, which is renowned for its lack of rules, a basic tenet applies: "If I reprint something, I say where it came from. A blog is about your voice, it seems to me, not somebody else's."

Companies of all stripes are using blogs to help shape public opinion.

Before General Electric announced a major investment in energy-efficient technology last year, company executives first met with major environmental bloggers to build support. Others have reached out to bloggers to promote a product or service, as Microsoft did with its Xbox game system and Cingular Wireless has done in the introduction of a new phone.

What is different about Wal-Mart's approach to blogging is that rather than promoting a product — something it does quite well, given its $300 billion in annual sales — it is trying to improve its battered image.

Wal-Mart, long criticized for low wages and its health benefits, began working with bloggers in late 2005 "as part of our overall effort to tell our story," said Mona Williams, a company spokeswoman.

"As more and more Americans go to the Internet to get information from varied, credible, trusted sources, Wal-Mart is committed to participating in that online conversation," she said.

Copies of e-mail messages that a Wal-Mart representative sent to bloggers were made available to The New York Times by Bob Beller, who runs a blog called Crazy Politico's Rantings. Mr. Beller, a regular Wal-Mart shopper who frequently defends the retailer on his blog, said the company never asked that the messages be kept private.

In the messages, Wal-Mart promotes positive news about itself, like the high number of job applications it received at a new store in Illinois, and criticizes opponents, noting for example that a rival, Target, raised "zero" money for the Salvation Army in 2005, because it banned red-kettle collectors from stores.

The author of the e-mail messages is a blogger named Marshall Manson, a senior account supervisor at Edelman who writes for conservative Web sites like Human Events Online, which advocates limited government, and Confirm Them, which has pushed for the confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees.

In interviews, bloggers said Mr. Manson contacted them after they wrote postings that either endorsed the retailer or challenged its critics.

Mr. Beller, who runs Crazy Politico's Rantings, for example, said he received an e-mail message from Mr. Manson soon after criticizing the passage of a law in Maryland that requires Wal-Mart to spend 8 percent of its payroll on health care.

Mr. Manson, identifying himself as a "blogger myself" who does "online public affairs for Wal-Mart," began with a bit of flattery: "Just wanted you to know that your post criticizing Maryland's Wal-Mart health care bill was noticed here and at the corporate headquarters in Bentonville," he wrote, referring to the city in Arkansas.

"If you're interested," he continued, "I'd like to drop you the occasional update with some newsworthy info about the company and an occasional nugget that you won't hear about in the M.S.M." — or mainstream media.

Bloggers who agreed to receive the e-mail messages said they were eager to hear Wal-Mart's side of the story, which they said they felt had been drowned out by critics, and were tantalized by the promise of exclusive news that might attract more visitors to their Web sites.

"I am always interested in tips to stories," said one recipient of Mr. Manson's e-mail messages, Bill Nienhuis, who operates a Web site called PunditGuy.com.

But some bloggers are also defensive about their contacts with Wal-Mart. When they learned that The New York Times was looking at how they were using information from the retailer, several bloggers posted items challenging The Times's article before it had appeared. One blog, Iowa Voice, run by Mr. Pickrell, pleads for advertisers to buy space on the blog in anticipation of more traffic because of the article.

The e-mail messages Mr. Manson has sent to bloggers are structured like typical blog postings, with a pungent sentence or two introducing a link to a news article or release.

John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette University who runs the Marquette Warrior blog, recently posted three links about union activity in the same order as he received them from Mr. Manson. Mr. McAdams acknowledged that he worked from Wal-Mart's links and that he did not disclose his contact with Mr. Manson.

"I usually do not reveal where I get a tip or a lead on a story," he said, adding that journalists often do not disclose where they get ideas for stories either.

Wal-Mart has warned bloggers against lifting text from the e-mail it sends them. After apparently noticing the practice, Mr. Manson asked them to "resist the urge," because "I'd be sick if someone ripped you because they noticed a couple of bloggers with nearly identical posts."

But Mr. Manson has not encouraged bloggers to reveal that they communicate with Wal-Mart or to attribute information to either the retailer or Edelman, Ms. Williams of Wal-Mart said.

To be sure, some bloggers who post material from Mr. Manson's e-mail do disclose its origins, mentioning Mr. Manson and Wal-Mart by name. But others refer to Mr. Manson as "one reader," say they received a "heads up" about news from Wal-Mart or disclose nothing at all.

Mr. Pickrell, the 37-year-old who runs the Iowa Voice blog, said he began receiving updates from Wal-Mart in January. Like Mr. Beller, of Crazy Politico, Mr. Pickrell had criticized the Maryland legislature over its health care law before Wal-Mart contacted him.

Since then, he has written at least three postings that contain language identical to sentences in e-mail from Mr. Manson. In one, which Mr. Pickrell attributed to a "reader," he reported that Wal-Mart was about to announce that a store in Illinois received 25,000 applications for 325 jobs. "That's a 1.3 percent acceptance rate," the message read. "Consider this: Harvard University (undergraduate) accepts 11 percent of applicants. The Navy Seals accept 5 percent of applicants."

Asked in a telephone interview about the resemblance of his postings to Mr. Manson's, Mr. Pickrell said: "I probably cut and paste a little bit and I should not have," adding that "I try to write my posting in my own words."

In an e-mail message sent after the interview, Mr. Pickrell said he received e-mail from many groups, including those opposed to Wal-Mart, which he uses as a starting point to "do my own research on a topic."

"I draw my own conclusions when I form my opinions," he said.

Mr. Pickrell, explaining his support for Wal-Mart, said he shops there regularly and is impressed with how his mother-in-law, a Wal-Mart employee, is treated. "They go real out of their way for their people," he said.

Wal-Mart's blogging initiative is part of a ballooning public relations campaign developed in consultation with Edelman to help Wal-Mart as two groups, Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart, aggressively prod it to change. The groups operate blogs that receive posts from current and former Wal-Mart employees, elected leaders and consumers.

Edelman also helped Wal-Mart develop a political-style war room, staffed by former political operatives, which monitors and responds to the retailer's critics, and helped create Working Families for Wal-Mart, a new group that is trying to build support for the company in cities across the country.

At Edelman, Mr. Manson, who sends many of the e-mail messages to bloggers, works closely on the Wal-Mart account with Mike Krempasky, a co-founder of RedState.org, a conservative blog. Both are regular bloggers, which in Mr. Manson's case means he has written critically of individuals and groups Wal-Mart may eventually call on for support.

Before he was hired by Edelman in November, Mr. Manson wrote on the Human Events Online blog that members of the San Francisco city council were "dolts" and "twits" for rejecting a proposed World War II memorial and that every day "the United Nations slides further and further into irrelevance." After he was hired, Mr. Manson wrote that the career of Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island was marked by "pointless indecision."

Wal-Mart declined to make Mr. Manson available for comment. Ms. Williams said, "It is not Wal-Mart's role to monitor the opinions of our consultants or how they express them on their own time."

In a sign of how eager Wal-Mart is to develop ties to bloggers, the company has invited them to a media conference to be held at its headquarters in April. In e-mail messages, Wal-Mart has polled several bloggers about whether they would make the trip, which the bloggers would have to pay for themselves.

Mr. Reynolds of Instapundit.com said he recently was invited to Wal-Mart's offices but declined. "Bentonville, Arkansas," he said, "is not my idea of a fun destination."

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Wal-Mart to Sell "Plan B" Pill

primochic — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 00:55:13 GMT

Didn't think I'd live to see the day...

Wal-Mart, in Reversal, to Sell Plan B Pill

By MARCUS KABEL, Associated Press

"Officials of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Friday the company will reverse its earlier policy and stock emergency contraception pills in all of its pharmacies effective March 20, saying the giant retailer could not justify being the country's only major pharmacy chain not to carry the morning-after pill. The announcement comes after Massachusetts last month ordered the world's largest retailer to stock the so-called Plan B pill, following a lawsuit by three Boston women against Wal-Mart. Illinois also requires pharmacies to carry the prescription drug, and those are the only two states where Wal-Mart has so far stocked emergency contraception."

BUT, the article continues... "[ Ron Chomiuk, vice president of pharmacy for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart] said the company will maintain its conscientious objection policy, which it said is consistent with the tenets of the American Pharmaceutical Association. The policy, except where prohibited by law, allows any Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacy employee who does not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060303/ap_on_re_us/wal_mart_contraception

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Civil rights icon tapped to defend Wal-Mart

Michael — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:37:26 GMT

Mon Feb 27, 4:35 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Civil rights leader and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young will become the public face of a Wal-Mart-backed group whose aim is to combat criticism of the world's largest retailer, the group said on Monday.

Young, who was an aide to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights protests of the 1960s and served as ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter, will serve as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart's national steering committee, the group said in a statement.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was among the financial backers of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group of people "who understand and appreciate Wal-Mart's positive impact on the working families of America," according to its Web site.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer has stepped up efforts to counter criticism from unions and other groups who say the company pays poverty-level wages, discriminates against women and drives competitors out of business.

Image has become increasingly important for Wal-Mart as it reaches out to wealthier shoppers and grapples with growing opposition to its expansion, particularly into urban areas.

"The critics have it wrong," Young said in a statement. "For those who care about the poor it is time to step up, speak out and join this national discussion."

Wake Up Wal-Mart, a union-backed group critical of Wal-Mart, called on Young to use his position to push for changes at the retailer.

"Ambassador Young is now in a unique position to reach out to Wal-Mart and CEO Lee Scott and urge them to change," Paul Blank, campaign director for Wake Up Wal-Mart, said in a statement.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

Walmart & the Green Issues Working Group

ToxicReverend — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 07:07:59 GMT

The walmart fight has been a topic at the Green Issues Working Group.
This is a Yahoo group of Green Party Memebers. I was on the phone
in a two hour conference cal the other day, with members of the
Green Party. This Yahoo Group is very interested and active in
fighting Walmart in a few places. They even brought in an
expert that has stopped five Walmarts, in Florida.

Go to:>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenIssuesWorkingGroup/

Best regards,

The Toxic Reverend

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

shhhh, be careful what you say, "IT" will hear you

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 18:01:09 GMT

gotta love that episode of South PArk

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-Mart banking plan causing an uproar

Michael — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 02:52:47 GMT

Critics fear move would dominate the industry

By Kathleen Day
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Wal-Mart entered the grocery business in 1988 to compete with established names such as Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, which had dominated food retailing for decades.

Today Wal-Mart is America's biggest grocer, with 16 percent of the U.S. retail food market, and its sales continue to climb, even as dozens of grocery chains struggle.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s decision to jump full-force into toys about 15 years ago has had similar results. Its sales overtook leader Toys R Us Inc. — the inventor of selling toys in big-box discount stores — in 1998. Wal-Mart now has 28 percent of that market. And it's not just food and toys: Owners of religious bookstores worry about being outpriced by the retailing behemoth. The list of Wal-Mart's effects on businesses goes on and on.

Congressional lawmakers and federal regulators now face a tough question: Should they permit Wal-Mart to use a legal loophole to enter banking and potentially do in that arena what it has done to nearly every other consumer product and service it has touched?

The question rattles bankers from Maine to California, even though the retailer no longer wants a full-service bank, only a limited-purpose one. It has whipped up longtime Wal-Mart critics, including labor unions, consumer groups and some congressmen on both sides of the aisle, who say the company is already too big, with too much power over the American economy, sometimes to the detriment of workers' pay and domestic jobs.
Charles Fishman, author of a new book, "The Wal-Mart Effect," chronicling how the company's growth and low-price philosophy influences the U.S. economy, is undecided: "I don't know if Wal-Mart would be good or bad for banking in the long run. But I'll bet ATM fees would come down pretty quick."

At issue is the possibility that Wal-Mart and a dozen other nonfinancial firms would be allowed to erode and possibly jettison a prohibition that's been in place for most of America's 230-year history barring commercial firms from owning full-service retail banks, and vice versa. Supporters of the ban say letting commerce and banking mix would foster unfair concentrations of power, create conflicts of interest in how credit is granted and perhaps one day burden taxpayers should the failure of a bank and its affiliate put at risk the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the federal fund that insures consumers' bank deposits.

"What's really at issue is the nature of the American economy," says Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, who for two decades has fought efforts by industry to lift the ban. "If such concentrations are allowed, you could have our largest banks combined with our largest retail companies and high-tech companies and create questions about how credit is allocated. It has enormous consequences for competition, and I think America would become less competitive in the world."

But others say low pricing is king. "Wal-Mart sees banking as an opportunity to give the customer a better deal," says Howard Davidowitz, founder and chairman of Davido-witz & Associates Inc., a New York retail consulting and investment banking firm. "That's what Wal-Mart's about. That's why they have demolished the food and toy industries. If it's better for the customers, then that's the way it ought to be."

Sparking the current uproar is Wal-Mart's application to obtain federal deposit insurance, which is required before it can open a state-chartered bank in Utah known as an industrial loan corporation, or ILC.

Congress overlooked the ILC loophole in 1999 when it passed laws to deregulate financial services by allowing bankers, securities brokers and insurers to enter one another's businesses and sell such products under one roof. But despite overlooking ILCs, Congress specifically addressed the issue of commerce and banking: It voted to maintain the ban on mixing the two by closing another loophole that allowed nonfinancial firms such as Wal-Mart to own a savings and loan, a specialty bank.

A handful of states, including California and Nevada but most of all Utah, grant charters for ILCs. Sixty-one ILCs have been granted since 1984, nearly half of them after the 1999 financial deregulation bill passed, and six applications, including Wal-Mart's, are pending. The advantage of an ILC — aside from the fact that commercial firms are prohibited from owning a traditional bank — is that it allows its owner to bypass regulation by this country's main bank regulator, the Federal Reserve Board.

Instead, ILCs are supervised by their state regulator and, at the federal level, the FDIC, which in addition to insuring all banks has for decades regulated some state banks. The FDIC has said it has the capability to provide sufficient federal oversight of these state banks. Leach and others disagree, as did the Government Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress, in a report last fall.

The majority of ILCs are owned by financial companies such as securities firms Merrill Lynch & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that under deregulation could own a traditional bank but don't want to because that would require they be regulated by the Fed as bank holding companies. The Fed requires holding companies to maintain certain amounts of cash against potential losses, and that's an expense these firms want to avoid. The dozen or so nonfinancial companies that own ILCs — BMW of North America LLC, Volvo and the like — do so to finance purchases of their cars and motorcycles.

Controversy has surrounded ILCs for several years, but the debate has been mostly among lawmakers and regulators. Not until Wal-Mart applied to the FDIC did the issue attract widespread public attention.

Partly it's Wal-Mart's sheer size. But it's also because of Wal-Mart's employment and pricing practices. For years, labor unions, employees in dozens of lawsuits across the country and even state legislators have criticized the company for low pay and health benefits. Critics also say the low prices the company uses to dominate industries — while they may make consumers smile at the checkout — have put many smaller companies out of business and shipped jobs to cheaper overseas labor markets.

The FDIC has received 1,500 comment letters on Wal-Mart's application, the most it's received on an issue. Many support Wal-Mart's bid to own a bank, but most are from banks and bank-lobbying groups across the country opposing it.

Three dozen members of Congress, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, have written the FDIC expressing concern about Wal-Mart's application: Twenty-five members of the House Financial Services Committee, including Leach, and three senators asked the FDIC to hold hearings before making a decision, which it has said it will do in the next few months.

Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., chairman of the House financial institutions and consumer credit subcommittee, has announced plans to hold hearings on ILCs.

And Alan Greenspan, while Federal Reserve Board chairman, at least twice told members of Congress that ILCs — especially if given authority to open branches nationwide — threatened to undermine sound banking oversight by creating a second, parallel system.

"These are crucial decisions that should be made in the public interest after full deliberation by the Congress," Greenspan said in a recent letter to Leach. "They should not be made through the expansion and exploitation of a loophole that is available to only one type of institution chartered by a handful of states."

By contrast, the FDIC, with little fanfare and no headlines, granted retail discounter Target Corp.'s application for insurance for a Utah-chartered ILC 18 months ago. Target is using it to offer a credit card to its small-business customers. Wal-Mart uses Target to press its case in its lobbying of Congress, saying it's unfair to let its rival own a bank when it doesn't.

Wal-Mart officials, in letters to Congress, in the company's FDIC application and in interviews, say it too would use the Utah bank for limited purposes, namely to accept large deposits brokered through third parties and, by removing the middleman, to lower costs of back-room operations by tens of millions of dollars a year in the processing of 2.5 billion credit and debit-card transactions.

That's a change in plan from a few years ago, when the company said it wanted to enter full-service retail banking because that's what its customers want. A spokesman for the company in 2003, for example, said that because Wal-Mart could not find enough banks willing to open branches in its stores, it wanted to do it on its own.

At about the same time, Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that the company wanted to be gung-ho into financial services, including mortgages.

Since then, Wal-Mart has changed its approach, says Jane Thompson, president of Wal-Mart Financial Services. The company has "read the tea leaves," she said. The in-store banks will now be outside partners.

Thompson says the company already works with 300 banks that operate branches in its stores and has embarked on an aggressive campaign to recruit more. Wal-Mart has 1,980 supercenters, 1,150 of them with full-service bank branches. And Wal-Mart has contracts for an additional 250 branches in its stores.

Thompson, as proof of Wal-Mart's new direction, points out that its contracts with outside banks are long-term, lasting 15 years if a bank wants. And partnering with outside firms is something Wal-Mart is used to, she said. Wal-Mart credit cards are offered through GE Money Bank, and wire transfers around the world go through MoneyGram Payment Systems Inc.

"People are not looking at the facts," Thompson said of the vocal opposition. "We have no aspirations to have our own branch in our stores. We've said publicly that we have no intent to branch. We're heading the other way."

Critics remain skeptical that Wal-Mart's ultimate goal has changed.

"Why should we believe them?" asked Tracy Sefl, spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch, a coalition of organized labor, community groups, environmentalists and others critical of the retailer's business practices. "Nothing would prevent Wal-Mart, once it's granted a bank charter, from coming back to the FDIC and asking to do more with it."

Even some Wal-Mart supporters think the company's entry into banking would inevitably change the industry. "Typically, when Wal-Mart enters a new product category, all of a sudden, the world goes topsy turvy," says Britt Beemer, founder and chairman of Americas Research Group in Charleston, S.C, a consumer-research firm that interviews as many as 15,000 consumers a week for corporate clients. "It forces the marketplace to charge less for the categories it's into. It would be a good thing in banking because instead of banks talking about customer service, they would actually have to offer it."

The FDIC must weigh objective measures, such as Wal-Mart's financial soundness, but it also must consider the "general character and fitness" of management, which could provide room for disagreement. Wal-Mart officials say they look forward to FDIC and congressional hearings as a chance to set the record straight.

And customers do love having a bank in the stores. "It works for me," said Darlene Thornhill, shopping at the Wal-Mart supercenter in Culpeper, Va. She strolled up with her as-yet-empty shopping cart to one of two tellers manning the store's SunTrust branch.
She said the branch is open longer than the other one on the other side of town. Does she buy more at Wal-Mart because she can bank there? "It probably helps," she said. "I usually think, 'Oh well, while I'm here I might as well pick up such-and-such.' "

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Book takes shots at Wal-Mart

Michael — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 02:48:40 GMT

By MARYANNA LEWYCKYJ -- Toronto Sun

The Bully Of Bentonville
By Anthony Bianco
(Doubleday)

You've got to wonder whether Sam Walton, the billionaire founder of the Wal-Mart empire, isn't spinning in his $200 grave these days.

The discount chain that Walton deftly nurtured into the world's biggest retail juggernaut has been rocked by a series of ugly revelations in recent years that have tarnished its trademark smiley-face image.

Wal-Mart has come under fire for its labour practices, its ruthless squeezing of suppliers, and its often devastating effect on small businesses in communities where it sets up shop.

In The Bully Of Bentonville, veteran BusinessWeek writer Anthony Bianco exposes a corporate culture that verges on Orwellian.

A supercomputer at Wal-Mart headquarters uses its giant digital brain not only to streamline the flow of merchandise to stores, but also to closely monitor and evaluate employees, and juggle schedules to best suppress costs.

The system is precise enough to track the amount of sales rung up by a particular cashier at any given hour.

There's an attempt at thought control, as well. Would-be workers are screened for submissive traits, as an undercover journalist who applied for a job with Wal-Mart discovered. She was queried by the interviewer when she replied to the statement "rules have to be followed to the letter at all times" by agreeing "strongly" rather than agreeing "very strongly" or "totally."

It helps to have a docile workforce if an employer decides to lock in cleaners or stock clerks during after-hours overnight shifts, to keep staff from drinking beer in the parking lot.

Bianco says Wal-Mart still permitted overnight lock-ins as of 2004. However, managers are prohibited from chaining shut emergency doors. The ban came after a stocker in Savannah, Ga., collapsed and died inside a store while paramedics waited outside for the door to be unlocked.

In 2003, U.S. officials raided 61 Wal-Mart stores and arrested 245 janitors working as illegal immigrants. Wal-Mart later agreed to tighten up its contractor review process and made a $11-million US payment to the government. The money was not a fine, Wal-Mart stressed, but a contribution to support enforcement of immigration laws and curb abuses.

Last December, a California jury awarded $207 million US to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.

Wal-Mart made headlines in Canada in April 2003 when it closed a Jonquiere, Que., store after the workers opted to unionize. In the fall of 2005, the Quebec Labour Relations board ruled in favour of Jonquiere workers who had filed complaints that Wal-Mart illegally dismissed them for pro-union activities.

(Despite this ruling, and a $500,000 penalty Wal-Mart paid in February 2005 for violations of Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, Wal-Mart was recently ranked 21st on a list of Canada's 50 best employers as compiled by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm.)

But The Bully Of Bentonville isn't just a recounting of some controversial labour relation practices. It also explains how some suppliers who ink deals with Wal-Mart end up losing their shirt to meet Wal-Mart's strict cost-cutting standards.

The book also touches on the impact Wal-Mart is having on the overall U.S. economy by importing enormous quantities of goods from China. While low prices are a boon to consumers, the ultimate cost may be fewer domestic jobs.

"You can't buy anything if you're not employed," notes Steve Dobbins, president and CEO of Carolina Mills. "We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."

In the course of explaining the inner workings of Wal-Mart, readers get a fascinating primer on the retail industry, along with lively anecdotes and vivid portrayals of some key figures. Sam Walton comes off as a lovable cheapskate who kept wages down, but would field beefs from the lowliest worker and side with them against a manager if warranted.

While Wal-Mart officials will likely dismiss Bianco's book as one-sided sensationalism, even shoppers who boycott Wal-Mart are likely to come away with a grudging respect for its fanatical dedication to keeping down prices.

As Bianco says, "Let's give Wal-Mart its due and concede that it is indeed the best, most sincerely devoted corporate friend that the budget-minded American shopper has ever had."

But value -- like beauty -- is often in the eye of the beholder.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-Mart bags larger share of local Pittsburgh grocery dollar; Giant Eagle stays No. 1

Michael — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:06:04 GMT

Thursday, February 16, 2006

By Teresa F. Lindeman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest grocer, soon could claim one-fifth of the Pittsburgh region's grocery dollars, but Giant Eagle's aggressive use of price cuts and gas discounts have kept the O'Hara chain on top of the local market.

That's the picture painted by new supermarket market share numbers that show Wal-Mart with 17.4 percent in December, up from 13.9 percent last February. No. 1 Giant Eagle stayed relatively flat with a hefty 51 percent, according to Market Scope, a publication of TradeDimensions International Inc.

Meanwhile, grocery distributor Supervalu, which had 26.6 percent last winter in its Shop 'n Save, Foodland and Save-A-Lot operations, dropped to 22.1 percent by year-end, according to the Connecticut research firm's review of the metropolitan statistical area.

"Right now, Pittsburgh is a market that's very, very competitive," said J. Christopher Michael, chief executive officer of Associated Wholesalers Inc., an Eastern Pennsylvania grocery distribution cooperative that's relatively new to the market and controls a slim 1.7 percent slice.

It's hard to find a U.S. market that's not these days, as the supermarket industry, which last year celebrated its 75th anniversary, tries to figure out which companies and which strategies will survive the current upheaval.

In January, Minnesota-based Supervalu agreed to buy more than 1,000 stores from Idaho-based Albertsons. Last summer, Florida's Winn-Dixie Stores chain sold more than 100 locations. And Indiana's Marsh Supermarkets recently said it would explore a possible sale of the company.

Wal-Mart's steady supercenter expansion has been a major factor in forcing grocers to examine their strategies, but so have the growth of food shelves in discount chains, warehouse stores and dollar stores.

The Trade Dimensions supermarket report does not address the incursion of stores that don't have produce and other traditional grocery services, which means cereal and toilet paper sales at Pittsburgh-area Target stores aren't included in the report.

Still, the numbers offer a pretty good snapshot of the shifts in the industry, said Thomas Donato, the research firm's director of editorial research. In his view, Pittsburgh's numbers show an opportunity for someone to make a big move.

That may be easier advised than accomplished. Wal-Mart opened a string of supercenters in the region through 2003, and then slowed down. While there are plans for more, the topography and tight retail spaces seem to be forcing even the giant chain to move deliberately.

Private company Giant Eagle has been aggressive in protecting its turf. When consumers said they wanted better prices, the 216-store company found ways to trim costs so it could afford three rounds of price cuts across all its markets, including Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, amounting to annualized savings of $100 million for consumers.

In addition, the retailer's popular program of giving gas discounts to loyalty card users has been extended to include dry cleaning and pharmacy purchases. Giant Eagle's own market share numbers show the company trending up, said company spokesman Rob Borella.

Supervalu's attempt to tinker with its store model here caught the attention of trade publication Progressive Grocer last summer, which heralded the new Shop 'n Save prototype in East Liberty as a sign the operation was getting its groove back.

Just a couple of months later, the Minneapolis corporation appeared to signal that times were tough in this slow-growth, hotly competitive market by announcing it would sell its 20 company stores in the Pittsburgh area and leave the field to the independent operators who have about 60 Shop 'n Save stores here.

Supervalu's subsequent deal to purchase Albertsons did not bring it any stores in the Pittsburgh market. If there is any impact here from the purchase, it could come in the form of lower wholesale prices to the distributor's client stores, said Meg Major, a senior editor with Progressive Grocer. Supervalu's growing heft may not outweigh that of Wal-Mart, but it may mean more discounts from vendors.

In the meantime, the company continues to work on the sale of those 20 area stores. Two went to the independent Kuhn's Quality Foods group, which will stock them with supplies from Supervalu. The sale of 16 more locations, probably to existing Shop 'n Save operators, should come soon. Officials chose to shut two stores.

Area consumers have seen both closings and name changes in recent months, and there may be more to come.

One reason Associated Wholesalers's market share grew was that some longtime Foodland store operators switched distributors. The Bloomfield Foodland morphed into a Shur Save last year. The same move wasn't enough to save a struggling independent on Frankstown Road in Penn Hills that recently closed its doors.

Associated Wholesalers doesn't require independents take any particular name. It does offer services intended to help them compete with bigger chains, especially in key areas such as fresh produce and meats, said Mr. Michael. "We hope to be a larger player [in Pittsburgh] in the future."

Another grocer trying to make a move is Greensboro, N.C.-based The Fresh Market chain, which has put stores in Ohio and signed deals for sites in Eastern Pennsylvania. "We are trying to get to that area," said Eric Blaesing, the grocery's director of community relations.

He described The Fresh Market as a 20,000-square-foot store styled after an Old World European market with fresh flowers, produce and other items but not a wide enough selection to complete the family's shopping trip. "We are not a one-stop shop," said Mr. Blaesing. The company likes suburban locations with parking for 100 or more cars.

Natural food grocer Whole Foods Markets, which has one local location in East Liberty and 0.3 percent of the local market, has long talked of opening a second store. Another niche player that has been adding stores is limited assortment chain Aldi, which has several small locations and 1.1 percent of the market.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 3 replies

a couple of petitions to sign

lionjill — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:40:37 GMT

Tell Walmart to Stop Blocking the Sale of Birth Control
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/529203894

and
Tell Garth Brooks to cut his ties with Walmart
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/232201392

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

go get em girls!!

Brunstan — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 01:31:57 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060201/ap_on_re_us/wal_mart_contraception

wal mart gets sued!!

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

Wal-Mart to upgrade its Web store

Michael — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 03:26:45 GMT

Site to have interactive features, better selection

By LAURA COLEMAN-LOCHNER
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the retailer whose online sales have been closing the gap behind the Internet sales leader, Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc., plans to improve the design of its Web site and expand the selection of home goods and electronics after sales rose 40 percent last year.

The site will add interactive features and larger, more detailed pictures to improve the shopping experience, Walmart.com President Carter Cast said in an interview Friday. It also will offer more apparel and items for infants and toddlers, he said.

"One of the areas that I think we can do a better job of selling is the customer experience overall," Cast said. "I think we can make it more evocative, and we can make there be a stronger emotional connection and romance the products better than we are now."

Wal-Mart is focusing on the Web as sales growth at U.S. stores slows, and it's seeking to attract more upscale shoppers. The retailer sees the Web as a growth area because only a fraction of its customers who shop online do so at Walmart.com. About 70 percent of Wal-Mart customers shop on the Internet and less than 40 percent visit Walmart.com, Cast said.

Cast's plans are parallel to the strategy Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott is undertaking at the company's stores. Wal-Mart is upgrading stores by adding faux wood floors in some areas, more space between racks and better signs.

The company wants to bring the same ethic to the Web site through content and aesthetic changes, Cast said.

"We're looking at overhauling and improving the whole visual experience, the design and the look and the feel" of the site "as we try to appeal to more selective shoppers," Cast said.

The company is "decluttering the online experience," he said. It's cutting the amount of text it uses and may add interactive features to make shopping easier.

Among the ideas it's considering is an online feature allowing customers to coordinate rooms of furniture and accessories, he said. That would make it easier for shoppers to see how items might fit in their own homes.

Wal-Mart's plans follow a holiday season in which the retailer emphasized the Web site to promote sales of electronics.

The effort helped Walmart.com boost traffic by 40 percent to 500 million visits last year, Cast said. In 2005, Walmart.com was the third-most-visited online shopping site after eBay and Amazon, according to ComScore Networks Inc.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Critical documentary on Wal-Mart stirs Berlin fest

Michael — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 03:25:07 GMT

By Erik Kirschbaum
Sun Feb 12, 5:16 PM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A documentary on the perils of runaway capitalism that spotlights Wal-Mart screened at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday, and interest among European distributors and television networks has been strong.

The feature-length documentary focuses on working conditions at the U.S. retail giant and argues that the company treats its employees shabbily in pursuit of maximum profit.

"Wal-Mart is the poster child for the worst in corporate behavior," U.S. director Robert Greenwald said in an interview after his film, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," screened to a large and appreciative audience.

"But it is not only Wal-Mart, it is these issues that affect all of us all around the world."

Wal-Mart, based in Betonville, Arkansas, has criticized the film by saying it is not an accurate portrayal of the company.

"Let's be clear about Mr. Greenwald's intent: it is not to present a fair and accurate portrayal of Wal-Mart," the retailer said in a statement last year. "It is a propaganda video -- pure and simple -- designed to advance a narrow, special-interest agenda."

Greenwald's film, which has sold 110,000 DVDs since November and been shown in a limited theatrical release in the United States, was quickly snapped up by distributors in Britain, Germany and Australia.

The film, which Greenwald partly financed, portrays Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as a monster that destroys the fabric of small towns by killing off small business with discount prices, and as a firm paying poverty-level wages without adequate health coverage.

Greenwald, who said he tried unsuccessfully to interview Wal-Mart executives for his documentary, shows how Wal-Mart moved into two small towns in Ohio and Missouri, among other places, and how family-owned stores folded after its arrival.

"Wal-Mart is on a rampage across America, but no one is doing anything about it," says hardware store worker John Faenza in the film. Greenwald reports that wages and property values fell when Wal-Mart came to town.

Images of boarded-up shops accompanied by haunting Bruce Springsteen songs deliver a powerful message about the excesses of capitalism, one which scares many Europeans.

"Wal-Mart is sucking down standards around the world," the narrator says. Greenwald includes interviews with ex-Wal-Mart managers and employees detailing poor treatment of staff.

"Wal-Mart is abusive in ways that other corporations that are committed to profits are not," Greenwald told Reuters.

"They have a culture that says it's okay to do anything as long as it's good for profits. It's okay not to give employees health insurance. It's okay to take money away from communities to build Wal-Marts.

"I don't believe there is any other company that is as aggressively exploiting people as Wal-Mart."

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-Mart and Li ka-Shing seen key to Mexico port expansion

Michael — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 03:23:25 GMT

By Nick Carey
Sun Feb 12, 2:47 PM ET

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Top retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - news) and Hong Kong magnate Li ka-Shing are key players in a $300 million expansion of Mexico's Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas aimed at ensuring goods reach U.S. shelves, according to the U.S. railroad that serves the port.

"Wal-Mart and other retailers are looking for backup routes so that even if some ports face stoppages they have reliable backups," Michael Haverty, chief executive of Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU - news), told Reuters at KCS headquarters here in a recent interview.

As part of current plans, he added, Wal-Mart may build a major distribution center in Kansas City.

When asked about the plans for Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City, Wal-Mart declined to comment. "It is premature for us to discuss details of this project," said Marty Heires, a spokesman for the world's biggest retailer.

But stoppages in 2004 at the largest U.S. container port complex in Los Angeles-Long Beach and concerns over capacity crunches at U.S. ports have led Wal-Mart and other retailers such as Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT - news) and Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD - news), to seek backup routes for a vast tide of imported merchandise.

With U.S. imports seeing double-digit volume growth over the past three years and set for further gains, the search for backup routes has become more urgent, Haverty said.

Analysts have questioned how much business Lazaro Cardenas can bring to KCS. But Haverty said expansion plans by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (0013.HK) -- the flagship of Hong Kong magnate Li ka-Shing and operator of the world's top container port in Hong Kong -- include Lazaro Cardenas.

Haverty said an initial $300 million development phase for Lazaro Cardenas planned with Wal-Mart and Hutchison participation, with more investment seen possible, has "the potential to transform our company."

In Hong Kong, Hutchison spokesman Anthony Tam said the company did not wish to disclose plans for Lazaro Cardenas.

But Haverty said most of the $200 million Kansas City Southern has earmarked for investment in Mexico in 2006-2007 will be for track from Lazaro Cardenas.

AVOIDING BOTTLENECKS

Lazaro Cardenas already annually handles 100,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEU), or containers. But Hutchison will add capacity equivalent to 700,000 TEUs a year by 2008, with the option to increase that to 2 million, Haverty told Reuters.

Long Beach handled 14.2 million TEUs in 2005, up 8 percent from 2004 -- much of that driven by shipments from China, which has seen a steadily expanding trade surplus with the United States.

Ports on both coasts of the United States are expanding to catch some of this extra business as big retailers "continue to diversify their port policies," John Lanigan, chief marketing officer at the No. 2 U.S. railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (NYSE:BNI - news), told Reuters in a separate interview.

Prince Rupert in British Columbia, long the second Pacific gateway for Canada after Vancouver, now touts itself on its Web site as "North America's closest port to Asia."

But via its rail links, Kansas City also hopes to benefit from and promote what Chris Gutierrez of local nonprofit company Smartport describes as an "inland port."

Kansas City Southern Chief Financial Officer Arthur Shoener said a trip from Mexico to Houston or Atlanta on KCS rail lines was 300 miles shorter than for containers from Long Beach.

Lazaro Cardenas would also be cheaper and less likely to suffer labor disruptions than at unionized U.S. facilities.

Shoener said another port-building company besides Hutchison was in talks with the Mexico authorities to build a separate facility at Lazaro Cardenas. He did not name that company.

Haverty said KCS has also discussed Lazaro Cardenas with both Target and Home Depot, but only through intermediaries.

Using Lazaro Cardenas was not what KCS planned in 1995 when it bought a minority stake in Mexico's largest railroad, gaining access to Lazaro Cardenas. At that point, KCS planned to ship goods between manufacturers in Mexico, the United States and Canada in what it touted as the "NAFTA Railway."

After 2004 Long Beach delays, the strategy was reviewed.

Hutchison, encouraged by Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moeller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) -- Wal-Mart's largest shipper -- studied the U.S. coast and Mexico to find additional entry points to the U.S. market, Haverty said. Hutchison has already expanded a facility at the eastern end of the Panama Canal.

"It wasn't until the major delays on the West Coast in 2004 that the potential of Lazaro Cardenas became apparent," Haverty said. "We're not looking to compete with Long Beach because we never could. But there is plenty of additional business to go round."

It makes sense for Wal-Mart to consider moving goods through Lazaro Cardenas because its Mexican unit Wal-Mart de Mexico (WALMEXV.MX) is the largest retailer in the country, Standard & Poor's analyst Andrew West said.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-mart sued for defects cover up.

Tedster — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 06:33:43 GMT

MARIN COUNTY
Boys hurt on bikes sue Wal-Mart, importer
Marin trial to focus on wheel clasp used on millions of cycles
- Demian Bulwa and Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writers
Sunday, December 4, 2005

Anthony McCurdy watched the front wheel fall off his bike while riding to a bowling alley, he says. The 12-year-old's face hit the sidewalk, and his bicycle landed on his chest. Short of breath, he got up, but then had a seizure and again fell face-first, knocking out his two top front teeth.

Anthony, now a high school junior in West Chicago, said the crash more than five years ago changed him. "I'm just not as able to absorb information as I was before," he said.

He and eight other boys from around the nation are suing retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which sold the bikes, and a San Rafael company that imported them from China. A trial in the case begins Monday in a Marin County courtroom, and the youths are expected to testify about smashing their faces into pavement after the front wheels came loose.

The lawsuit asserts that the so-called quick-release devices on the front wheels malfunctioned when the bikes hit bumps. The clasps, used on millions of bicycles, are designed to hold the front-wheel axle to the frame and allow the wheel to be easily removed for repairs or transport.

The boys and their parents also claim that Wal-Mart conspired with Dynacraft BSC Inc. of San Rafael and Carl Warren & Co., which investigated complaints for the importer, to cover up the defects.

The suit alleges that Wal-Mart, which sold the bikes for about $150 each, and the Marin importer, which has a record of failing to report injuries, knew the bikes were dangerous because of complaints from users -- but failed to report alleged defects to government regulators while continuing to sell the bicycles.

"Consumers in America deserve to be able to rely on the safety of products they buy for their children," said Mark Webb, a San Francisco attorney representing the boys, who crashed from February 2000 to September 2003.

Among the evidence that will be presented in the trial is a display containing seven photographs of children ranging in age from 7 to 13 with gruesome, debilitating head wounds and gashes on the face. The bikes alleged to have defective wheel-release levers are no longer being sold, the plaintiffs' attorneys say, but many of them are in use.

Wal-Mart says the bicycles in question -- mostly mountain bikes known as Next Ultra Shock and Next Shock Zone that had mechanisms allowing their front wheels to be removed with a hand lever -- are safe as long as they are "properly used."

A company spokesman said that the bikes' quick-release feature has never been the subject of a recall or safety citation and that similar mechanisms are on millions of bicycles sold in the United States.

"Our view of the facts is substantially different from the plaintiffs'," Wal-Mart spokesman Marty Heires said.

Lawyers for the retailer and the importer of the bikes argued Friday that the plaintiffs' attorneys have gathered a wide variety of claims involving many makes and models of bicycles without showing a common link.

"The problem is we have multiple allegations of multiple defects," Robert Phillips, an attorney for Wal-Mart, said during a pretrial hearing Friday. "There's no evidence that any of these claims have any similarities."

Fletcher Alford, an attorney representing Dynacraft as well as insurance administrator Carl Warren & Co. of Orange, declined to comment in detail about the lawsuit but said, "They believe these claims have no merit, and they expect to be vindicated at trial."

Under federal law, importers, distributors, retailers and manufacturers are required to tell regulators about anything "that could be a substantial product hazard or has injured or killed a consumer," said U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson.

The firms are left to determine which injuries were caused by defects.

Wolfson said the safety commission is investigating the parents' claims of defective quick-release levers. He declined to elaborate, saying the investigation is active.

The parents, meanwhile, have started a Web site (shokbikes.org) warning others about the bicycles. The parents' lawyers say they do not object to quick-release systems in general. But the suit alleges that most of the families didn't receive manuals warning that "correct adjustment of the axle nuts or quick-release levers is vitally important to avoid an accident caused by loose wheels." The bikes were assembled by untrained Wal-Mart workers, according to the suit, and lacked adequate backup systems to keep front wheels in place.

Eric Hjertberg, manager of new technology for Full Speed Ahead, an internationally respected bicycle component-maker, said quick releases on bicycles have generated at least as much litigation over the years as all other bicycle parts combined.

As a result, manufacturing standards have improved dramatically and, Hjertberg said, it is now very unlikely that one would release on its own or after hitting a bump. Other safety devices, such as notches on fork tips dubbed "lawyers lips," have been developed to prevent wheels from falling off in the event of quick-release lever malfunctions.

"A quick release is a pretty sound system when it is correctly installed," Hjertberg said. "It is extremely reliable. The fact that they are used in the Tour de France and the Olympics shows that they are built using the highest standards. But I would agree that without the instructions, there would be greater risk."

Wal-Mart and Dynacraft knew of problems with the front wheels but continued to sell the bikes, the Marin lawsuit alleges. None of the parents were told that similar accidents had occurred on the bikes imported by Dynacraft, and as a result, some of them accepted small cash settlements for medical costs, according to the suit. Anthony McCurdy's mother said she accepted $5,000.

Ryan May-Carman crashed in March 2003 while riding his mountain bike over a speed bump on his way to the library in Melbourne, Fla. The boy, who is now 15 and lives in San Jose, had stitches where his top two front teeth -- which broke in half -- tore through his upper lip. He's still awaiting permanent crowns for his teeth.

His mother, Cynthia May-Carman, said a Wal-Mart manager at first declined to do anything for her but produced a claim form when she brought up medical costs. She's been dealing with insurance adjusters since then. Her son's Boy Scout master, who had inspected the bike before a ride, was interviewed. But she never got a refund for the bike.

For more than two years, Wal-Mart has been reporting defective products under specific rules adopted after the company was accused of failing to report instances in which customers were injured while trying exercise equipment in stores.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, fined Dynacraft $1.4 million a year ago after accusing the company of failing to report defective forks on the steering column of hundreds of thousands of mountain bikes. Those bikes are not the ones targeted in the lawsuit alleging faulty front-wheel releases.

The penalty was assessed after five recalls over the course of 18 months. According to the commission, Dynacraft continually underreported injuries, including concussions, broken bones and a blood clot in one rider's brain, and failed to pull defective bikes from store shelves in a timely manner.

Anthony's mother, Sandy Huber, said she regrets that she didn't take her son's bike back sooner after he crashed in September 2000. She said he had to tighten the lever on the quick-release mechanism almost every time he went for a ride. Her then-husband also tried to fix it. After the crash, she said, an insurance adjuster sent her a letter telling her that her son had been negligent.

"I think that's a bunch of B.S.," Anthony said. "I just used the bike to ride from place to place."

Page B - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/04/BIKES.TMP

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

The cancer spreads...

jb — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:24:30 GMT

It looks like we've got our work cut out for us:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/07/D8FKLVQG0.html

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

NYC VOTERS HAVE A HEART FOR WAL-MART

Michael — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 20:40:05 GMT

By DAVID SEIFMAN
Sat Feb 4, 6:00 AM ET

Despite the reservations they have about Wal-Mart, most New Yorkers support allowing the retail giant to open here and two-thirds would shop at one of the stores if it were near them, according to a poll released yesterday.

The findings came just days after the City Council approved zoning changes for a vast new retail complex at the Bronx Terminal Market where all businesses but one - Wal-Mart - would be welcomed.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that move didn't reflect the sentiment of 1,072 New York City voters questioned Jan. 25-30.

By a 51-37 percent margin, they backed Wal-Mart.

Even union households, by a 47-37 percent margin, said the world's largest retailer has the right to set up shop here.

And 65 percent of New Yorkers said they'd become customers if a Wal-Mart opened near them, while 29 percent said they wouldn't.

"This poll confirms what other recent polls have shown: America's working families - including the working families of New York City - support Wal-Mart," the chain said in a statement.

"They know that our stores provide enormous savings for our customers, economic opportunity for our associates, and increased tax revenue and charitable support for the communities we serve.

"This is what prompted 25,000 people to apply for 325 available jobs at a recent store opening in the Chicago area. This also drove our outstanding 4.7 percent sales growth last month. Wal-Mart is good for America's communities."

But the findings didn't sway Wal-Mart's opponents, including James Oddo (R-S.I.), the Republican leader of the City Council.

"If you asked the question, 'Would you want to underwrite the health-care costs of a company that makes $10 billion a year?' I guarantee you the bulk of the people would answer no," said Oddo.

Critics who've blocked Wal-Mart's entry into the five boroughs charge its benefits are so poor that taxpayers end up picking up the tab for employees' health-care costs.

In its defense, Wal-Mart says spending on employee benefits is growing at 15 percent a year, increasing from 1.5 to 1.9 percent of sales between fiscal 2002 and 2005.

The company said it plans to spend $4.7 billion on those benefits this fiscal year.

The pounding Wal-Mart has taken from union leaders was evident in the poll.

Seventy percent of New Yorkers agreed that Wal-Mart's lower prices benefit its shoppers.

But 74 percent also said its cut-rate prices hurt nearby businesses. And 57 percent complained Wal-Mart doesn't pay workers enough in wages and benefits.

Pollster Doug Schwartz observed that while New Yorkers may sympathize with the plight of others, "a bargain is a bargain."

In other poll findings, voters by a 59-35 percent margin gave a thumbs up to the NYPD's practice of placing undercover cops within protest groups to gather information.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Hillary Clinton Returns Wal-Mart Cash

Michael — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 20:30:33 GMT

Hillary may have given the money back that she should have never accepted in the first place (she accepted wal-mart money during her last election run too) to collect a few more votes, but her record of having close ties with Wal-Mart will not disappear. Many of her top campaign people are now running the Wal-Mart war room along with Kerry folks and others involved with high profile Republicans. President Bush and the right winger Rick Santorum are also Wal-Mart favorites. Corporate America owns our two parties.

******************************************************************************

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
Fri Feb 3, 6:58 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton gathered checks from Hollywood friends, John Kerry's wife and even a former Republican congressman, but records filed Friday show she returned cash from an even older ally — Wal-Mart.

Senate records made public Friday detail how Clinton, D-N.Y., raised a whopping $6 million in the last three months of 2005, bringing her campaign cash to $17 million going into her re-election run, in which she has yet to face organized opposition.

Some $1,500 of that money came from Amo Houghton Jr., the former Republican congressman who retired in 2004. Houghton, an heir to the Corning glass company in upstate New York, did not immediately return a call for comment.

The junior senator from New York is also a potential presidential candidate in 2008. She took in plenty of donations from box office stars and political heavyweights, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., gave Clinton $2,100. John Kerry, who lost the 2004 presidential race, is also considered a presidential prospect in 2008.

Clinton returned $5,000 to the political action committee of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a company with long ties to the Clintons dating back to their days in Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered.

Clinton campaign spokeswoman Ann Lewis said the money was returned "because of serious differences with current company practices."

The senator served on the Wal-Mart board from 1986 to 1992, and was close with the Walton family that created the nation's largest retailer.

But the senator signaled a new stance on the company's business practices in a speech last week, when she told the U.S. Conference of Mayors that the company should provide better worker benefits.

"Cities and states are saying we can't keep holding the bag here," Clinton told the conference, citing a new Maryland law requiring Wal-Mart to spend 8 percent of payroll in health benefits or contribute to insurance plans.

Other donors to Clinton include former Sept. 11 commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who gave her $1,000 in November. Actress Reese Witherspoon contributed $1,000, and talk show host Jerry Springer donated $4,200.

Actor Danny DeVito gave $1,000, and actress Morgan Fairchild gave $1,500. Edie Falco of "The Sopranos" gave $1,000, and Jessica Seinfeld — comedian Jerry Seinfeld's wife — gave $4,200.

The papers also showed what it costs a candidate to raise $6 million in three months. One company alone was paid more than $461,000 to conduct direct mail appeals for Clinton.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Ha-ha!...Mall Wart not allowed to build on their own land...

jb — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:07:39 GMT

The bastards bought 17 acres in November. Now the city won't let 'em spoil it with another Mall Wart! Ha-ha!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/03/BAGRIH26HD1.DTL

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Wal-Mart Applies to Open India Office

Michael — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:27:07 GMT

By CHUCK BARTELS, AP Business Writer
Thu Feb 2, 11:12 AM ET

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has applied to the government of India to open an office to explore a possible entry into the retail market there, the company acknowledged Thursday.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, already has a presence in India, where it is buying an increasing number of the goods for its store shelves. India prohibits foreign direct investment in general merchandise stores, but Wal-Mart is hoping for a rule change.

The office proposed for Bangalore would be a separate entity, devoted to "market research and business development in relationship to the retail industry in India," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Beth Keck said Thursday.

Keck said Wal-Mart is optimistic that the rules will be changed, particularly in light of a move last week by the Indian government to let foreign brands open their own stores. That move would allow stores that sell Nike or other single brands open outlets but not companies that sell broader ranges of goods.

Wal-Mart has about 80 employees already in India to oversee purchasing. Keck said Wal-Mart bought $600 million worth of goods from India in the last year.

India has a growing middle class and that is driving a greater demand for goods. But there is opposition within the government to opening India to foreign direct investment in retailers, particularly because the limited step taken last week could open the door to Wal-Mart. Critics say Wal-Mart and other big merchandisers would drive small retailers out of business.

Wal-Mart filed its application for the office last year. The Bangalore office would have one person, who would move from the Bentonville headquarters, Keck said.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

More work for the Mall Wart lawyers...

jb — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:02:39 GMT

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/01/national/a122627S08.DTL

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Walmart's getting quarantined!

hamster_pie — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 23:16:27 GMT

I'm not involved with this, just wanted to pass the news along..

The Ruckus Society and our good friends at ACORN have teamed up to form the Bureau
of Worker Health (BWH). This Sunday a task force of 150 BWH Officers will mobilize
to quarantine Wal-Mart's senior management staff in Kansas City. That's right--the
top 6100 managers of Wal-Mart are meeting in Missouri this weekend to map out the
rest of their plan of total global domination. Oddly, they are imposing a media
blackout on this important meeting.

However, at 4:00pm this Sunday, Kansas City citizen deputies of the Bureau of Worker
Health in HAZMAT suits, face shields and rubber gloves will attempt to "quarantine"
the entire meeting at the Bartle Hall in downtown Kansas City. They will be equipped
with yellow caution tape, health hazard signs and "Notices of Quarantine." Officers
of the Bureau will serve the notices to the Wal-Mart managers as they come in and
out of the Center.

Dr. Andrew Boyd, BWH's Quarantine Division Chief, bristled at Wal-Mart management's
accusations that the Quarantine was being undertaken frivolously. "Wal-Mart’s
business model threatens the health and well-being of millions of low wage American
Workers and their children. Moreover, their model has gone viral and threatens to
become a national contagion. If we are unable to contain Wal-Martitis here in Kansas
City we may be looking at a global pandemic."

Wal-Mart's failure to provide health care to a majority of its employees has
received massive media exposure in recent moths. Two weeks ago, Maryland passed a
law compelling Wal-Mart to improve its health care benefits. Now, several other
states are moving forward with similar legislation--a nightmare scenario for
Wal-Mart.

It is outrageous that the largest corporation in the world has full-time workers who
are forced to enroll in Medicaid at the Missouri tax-payers' expense," said Head
Organizer of ACORN Kansas City, Andrew Ginsberg. The average pay for a Wal-Mart
sales associate is $1,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Wal-Mart
employees top Medicaid rolls in at least 16 states.

When asked how they would respond to the BWH Quarantine, one senior Wal-Mart Vice
President who insisted on anonymity, said "I don't mind being kept in Kansas City.
All I can expect at home are more uncomfortable dinner conversations with my kids
about what I have to do for a living."

Cheers,

P.S. - DOES YOUR COMMUNITY HAVE WAL-MARTITIS? Symptoms include: swelling welfare
rolls; depletion of public funds; exhaustion; difficulty making ends meet; and
feverishprofits. Contact the Bureau of Worker Health immediately.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

Chicago Area Wal-Mart Gets Record 25,000 Job Applicants!

Michael — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:03:18 GMT

This can't be a good sign.
************************

EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. -- Wal-Mart said its new store opening this week the southwestern Chicago suburbs had the largest number of job applicants in the giant retailer's history.

The store is scheduled to open Friday.

Crain's Chicago Business reported that the store received 25,000 applications for 325 positions.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said the only other site that came close to that number of applications was a store in Oakland, Calif. It received some 11,000 applications for about the same number of positions last year.

Wal-Mart's Chicago-area manager said most new Wal-Mart stores receive between 3,000 and 4,000 applications for between 300 and 450 positions.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 1 reply

Wal-Mart Launches Online Music Service

Michael — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:59:41 GMT

By MARCUS KABEL, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 25, 9:37 PM ET

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched an online music video and audio service with exclusive studio performances Wednesday, part of a broader strategy to make itself trendier and draw consumers already in the store for cheap staples into other departments.

Dubbed "Wal-Mart Soundcheck", the service features studio performances and interviews with new and established bands and musicians, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said in a statement. First up were punk pop fivesome Yellowcard and rock band Switchfoot.

The segments, each with four to six songs, will play for free on http://www.walmart.com and on television screens in Wal-Mart electronics departments. There will be a viewing event in stores of the complete 30- to 40-minute performance every few weeks on Friday nights and fans can also download audio tracks from the performances for a fee from the Web site.

The artist selection will cover genres including rock, pop, punk, country, hip-hop and R&B. New acts will follow monthly.

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Greenspan urges end to Wal-Mart banking exemption

Michael — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:57:34 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is urging Congress to close a regulatory loophole that lets companies own a certain breed of banks, which includes a bank Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants to operate in Utah.
The Fed chief's remarks take direct aim at an exemption in federal law that allows any type of company — commercial firm, foreign bank or other — to own so-called industrial loan companies in a handful of states, principally Utah, California and Nevada.

When the exemption was adopted in 1987, industrial loan companies, or ILCs, were mostly small, locally owned institutions that had only limited deposit-taking and lending powers, Greenspan said. Since then, however, these loan companies have grown considerably, the Fed chief pointed out in a letter to Rep Jim Leach, R-Iowa, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees banking matters.

Total assets held by industrial loan companies have grown by more than 3,500% between 1987 and 2004, Greenspan said.

Greenspan noted that General Motors, General Electric, Pitney Bowes and BMW are among the companies that now own industrial loan companies under the exemption. Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, has filed an application to operate an industrial loan company in Utah, he said.

Greenspan's comments didn't make a specific attack on Wal-Mart's efforts but rather were a broader shot at the exemption itself.

The exemption allows the corporate owners of these industrial loan companies to avoid the regulatory requirements that apply to corporate owners of other types of insured banks overseen by the Federal Reserve, said Greenspan. He found this troubling.

"The character, powers and ownership of ILCs have changed materially since Congress first enacted the ILC exemption. These changes are undermining the prudential framework that Congress has carefully crafted and developed for the corporate owners of other full-service banks," Greenspan wrote.

"Importantly, these changes also threaten to remove Congress' ability to determine the direction of our nation's financial system with regard to the mixing of banking and commerce and the appropriate framework of prudential supervision," he added.

These crucial decisions should be made after careful deliberations in Congress, Greenspan said. "They should not be made through the expansion and exploitation of a loophole that is available to only one type of institution chartered in a handful of states," he wrote.

Some legislative proposals in Congress would change the exemption to give industrial loan companies more leeway in their business activities. Leach, however, has offered legislation that would subject owners of industrial loan companies to the same regulations that now apply to big financial holding companies.

The letter to Leach was dated Jan. 20 and released to The Associated Press on Thursday.

It may be one of the last pieces of correspondence to Congress that Greenspan will write as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan, 79, retires on Jan. 31 after 18-plus years at the helm. Ben Bernanke has been tapped to succeed him.

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New Hampshire: Nashua rejects Wal-Mart plan

Michael — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:35:59 GMT

WCAX-TV3

NASHUA, N.H. Retail giant Wal-Mart couldn't make it past planning board in Nashua (New Hampshire).

In a four-to-three vote yesterday, the board rejected a plan to build a 140-thousand square-foot superstore in the city. The narrow vote broke a two-week old deadlock, and was greeted by silence, then applause, at last night's meeting.

Wal-Mart has the option of fighting the board's decision in court. Lawyer Andrew Prolman would not comment on whether Wal-Mart would appeal the vote.

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Florida: 3 lawsuits filed to stop Wal-Mart distribution center plans

Michael — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:32:53 GMT

By SARA KIESLER
Staff Writer
January 20, 2006

The battle to stop Wal-Mart from building a 1.1-million-square-foot distribution center across the rural county line landed in court this week.

Volusia County, a citizen's group and a business have all filed legal action this week against Putnam County. They say the county's rezoning of a 235-acre potato farm into industrial land for Wal-Mart's use is against Putnam's own comprehensive plan -- its blueprint for the future.

The distribution center would be built off U.S. 17 on Crescent City's Clifton Road. Up to 80 percent of the generated truck and car trips -- thousands to and from the center each day -- would drive through Volusia on U.S. 17.

Volusia leaders have said Putnam did not contact the county about the distribution center because the facility fell below the threshold of a development of regional impact -- a development of a certain size -- that would have required notification. Wal-Mart says it will create 600 jobs to benefit the economically challenged county and its neighbors within the first three years.

Volusia's plan of attack to halt the development is to prove Putnam County did not follow the procedure required by law to pass the rezoning, said Assistant County Attorney Mary Brennan. Volusia also argues in its suit filed Thursday that the retail mammoth will burden environmentally sensitive lands if built off Clifton Road.

Brennan said Volusia's goals are quite simple.

"We'd like the rezoning overturned. We'd like to plan with Putnam County for anything that negatively impacts Volusia County," Brennan said, adding that Putnam would get all the tax benefits while Volusia sees the brunt of the traffic.

Leaders from both counties say they would prefer to settle their dispute without the courts. A conflict resolution is set for Feb. 3 in the Putnam County Board of Commissioners' office, said Rick Leary, Putnam County administrator. If a consensus is not reached, the lawsuits will proceed.

"Our county feels like this is a project that is certainly needed in bringing jobs to the county," Leary said. "Frankly, a lot of jobs will be taken by Volusia County residents, so residents of multiple counties will be able to secure employment and ultimately enjoy an improved quality of life."

Brennan said it is not unusual for one municipality to sue another, but Leary says this is Putnam's first foray into conflict resolution.

Lake Crescent Citizens for Responsible Growth, a "Not in My Back Yard" group formed by residents of Clifton Road, has filed three separate court actions. Two are similar to Volusia, but a third says Putnam County failed to give the public an opportunity to review the rezoning ordinance 10 days in advance of the meeting. The ordinance wasn't available until the morning of the meeting, Dec. 20.

"That seems like the type of issue you'd put in front of the judge without a lot of fuss or muss," said Michael Woodward, the group's lawyer.

A 1,100-acre plant nursery across the road from the potato farm also filed suit. Wal-Mart had tried courting Skinner Nurseries to buy its land for the distribution center. However, the Skinner brothers do not feel it fits with their hopes for a future residential neighborhood along scenic Clifton Road, said Charlie Skinner.

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Indiana: Wal-Mart's storage issue sparks concern

Michael — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:30:01 GMT

HOBART Panel questions need for containers behind store

BY CARRIE RODOVICH
crodovich@nwitimes.com
219.662.5325

HOBART | Customers put about $900,000 of merchandise on layaway at Wal-Mart over the holiday season, items that were stored in secure storage containers behind the store on U.S. 30.

Members of the Hobart Board of Zoning Appeals said they are concerned about the number of trailers and the appearance of the area. They want to know if the retail giant plans an addition to the building anytime soon to meet its storage needs.

"We need a permanent solution," said Councilman Carl Lindsay, R-2, who sits on the board.

The Hobart store was before the board Thursday night requesting up to 30 storage containers -- some that could be 40 feet long -- to use for 90 days during the year.

Debra Maitland, a co-manager at Wal-Mart, said layaways began increasing in November and continued through the holidays.

Although she admits that some of the trailers on the property aren't the ideal situation and that the store didn't have all the proper permitting necessary for the 2005 season, the store is already trying to secure permits for this year.

If the board doesn't approve storage containers behind the store, the store might have to consider changing its layaway policy because there is nowhere to house the merchandise, she said.

"There are a lot of people who can't purchase things right away," she said. "We're trying to do something for them. ... It's not fair for customers who use that service."

The board continued the Wal-Mart hearing until its February meeting, asking Maitland to secure at least a letter from corporate Wal-Mart detailing any future expansion plans the store might have and what might happen if its request is not approved.

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California Seeks Unpaid Fees From Wal-Mart, Home Depot

Michael — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:27:46 GMT

Thu Jan 19, 4:42 PM ET

KCRA3

Earlier this month, KCRA 3 Investigates reported that Wal-Mart is under criminal investigation for allegedly shipping hazardous waste out of California, and now investigative reporter Josh Bernstein has learned that the state of California is looking at Wal-Mart and another "super store" for allegedly failing to pay millions of dollars in environmental fees.

State officials said Wal-Mart is breaking the law and cheating the state out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they said Wal-Mart is not alone.

Pesticide sales is a booming business, with California retailers ringing up $2 billion annually.

Smaller retailers say they're losing money to super stores, such as Wal-Mart. The "little guys" say they're not only being outsold but priced out of the market.

Stores that sell pesticides are required to pay a fee. But a KCRA 3 investigation has learned the state Department of Pesticide Regulation is going after Wal-Mart and other super stores, claiming they owe the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid fees. Exactly how much money Wal-Mart owes is not yet known.

In an effort to hold the company accountable, the Department of Pesticide Regulation has ordered Wal-Mart to turn over all financial records reflecting the sale of pesticides throughout the state.

DPR officials said they have requested the records more than a half dozens times. The records are crucial because they are the only way state officials can determine how much Wal-Mart owes.

Any retailer selling pesticides in California is required to pay a 2.1-cent fee for every dollar of pesticides sold. Wal-Mart has more than 130 stores throughout the state, and super stores are one of the largest suppliers.

"It does create an unleveled playing field. When you have retailers that do meet their obligation and then you have them competing against retailers that do not, it's just one more area where there is inequity," Department of Pesticide Regulation Director Mary-Ann Warmerdam said.

In a letter to Wal-Mart's attorneys, DPR describes the company's failure to cooperate as "bad faith." "They're also selling materials that are unregistered for use in California," Warmerdan said.

State officials said they're also looking at Home Depot.

"In the last decade we have not received one penny from Home Depot as it relates to this obligation," Warmerdan said.

According to Home Depot's own records, 2005 was a record-setting year, with profits in the tens of millions of dollars. But like Wal-Mart, DPR says Home Depot failed to pay its pesticide fees in California.

DPR recently collected more than $1.6 million in fines and fees from other companies, such as True Value Hardware, United Industries, Betz Dearborne and others.

In statements released to KCRA 3, Wal-Mart and Home Depot said they are actively working with DPR to settle this dispute.

Home Depot says it only owes fees on pesticides sold over the Internet, but DPR says that's not true.

Wal-Mart says it has turned over all records requested by DPR and is currently trying to determine if the state has already been paid by Wal-Mart's suppliers.

DPR says Wal-Mart and Home Depot are not cooperating, and that Wal-Mart has been ordered to turn over records relating to 20 different products but has only turned over records for three of those products.

According to DPR, Home Depot was ordered to turn over all sales reports for in-store sales and sales made online. A DPR official said Home Depot has failed to turn over any in-store reports and described the information provide for online sales as "wildly" inaccurate.

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Court: Case Against Wal-Mart Can Proceed

Michael — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:25:49 GMT

By MARCUS KABEL
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 19, 2006; 3:33 PM

-- A federal appeals court told a lower court Thursday to go ahead and rule on a lawsuit by Wal-Mart workers alleging that the world's largest retailer unfairly threatened to withhold benefits from employees who unionize.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge Robert T. Dawson of Fort Smith, Ark., who said the court did not have jurisdiction over the dispute because it fell under the sole authority of the National Labor Relations Board.

The original lawsuit was filed by several employees of a Wal-Mart tire and lube service center in Kingman, Ariz., who had sought a vote on unionizing in October 2000.

The appeals court said the vote was never held because the employees filed complaints with the labor relations board and in court was charging that Wal-Mart had undermined their efforts by threatening to withhold profit sharing, retirement and health benefits.

At issue is a so-called union exclusion clause that Wal-Mart at the time had in its benefits booklets for employees. The clause said unionized employees were not eligible for profit sharing, 401K and health plans.

The National Labor Relations Board brought Wal-Mart before an administrative law court that ordered the company in 2003 to drop the exclusion clause after finding the exclusion was meant "to ensure, to the extent it (Wal-Mart) could, that its employees were fearful of losing their benefits, and thus continued to reject union representation".

Wal-Mart appealed that decision and remains in settlement discussions with the labor relations board to this day, the appeals court said.

Wal-Mart has since changed the wording in its benefits booklets but the case should still be decided because the plaintiffs have outstanding claims for damages and attorneys' fees, the appeals court ruled.

The appeals court also rejected the district judge's argument that it did not have jurisdiction because the workers' complaint was pending with the National Labor Relations Board.

The appeals court said the precedent cited by the district court for that decision was meant to keep state courts from giving conflicting opinions on federal matters. But this was a case of two federal institutions, the courts and the labor board, being asked to act, the appeals panel noted.

"Because the court does have jurisdiction and the plaintiff's claims are not moot, the district court's order to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings with respect to those claims," the appeals court wrote.

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Wal-Mart opening new store in Hawaii, further destroying the islands

Michael — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 01:36:06 GMT

Wal-Mart in Pearl City is scheduled to open on
Tuesday, Jan. 31.

The approximately 148,000-square-foot store at 1131 Kuala St. will be Oahu's fourth Wal-Mart store; the others are in Honolulu, Mililani and Kunia.

Glen "Boyd" Schneider, the Wal-Mart store manager in Hilo, has been named general manager of the Pearl City store.

Wal-Mart Pearl City is expected to create 620 new jobs, the majority of them full-time.

The store will offer a McDonald's restaurant, vision center, portrait studio, one-hour photo lab, American Savings Bank and pharmacy.

Colliers Monroe Friedlander also leased out a suite of small shops fronting Kuala Street called Pearl City Shops at Wal-Mart. The shops are next to Wal-Mart and near the proposed Sam's Club gas station.

Tenants that have signed leases include Panda Express, Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Kozo Sushi, Nextel and L&L Hawaiian BBQ. Wendy's and Central Pacific Bank have signed leases for standalone buildings at the site.

Wal-Mart Pearl City will be open 24 hours, seven days a week.

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Wal-Mart Hires Auto industry Veteran for Marketing Post

Michael — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 01:30:28 GMT

By MARCUS KABEL, AP Business Writer

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday it has hired an auto-industry veteran to help drive shoppers from the retailer's grocery and sundries aisles into the fashions and electronics departments.

Julie Roehm, as senior vice president of marketing communications, will report to John Fleming, whom Wal-Mart hired last year as its chief marketing officer. Fleming has said a part of the company's strategy is to persuade its existing customers to buy a broader range of items.

In a statement Wednesday, Fleming said Roehm would develop and execute Wal-Mart's advertising strategies, including special events. Having a single person responsible for the tasks would ensure Wal-Mart's message was consistent, he said.

Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer. Roehm most recently worked to promote Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge. She worked for Ford Motor Co. before joining Chrysler Group, a unit of DaimlerChrysler AG, in 2001.

Kevin Thornton, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the giant retailer was drawn to Roehm's experience in event-planning, sponsorships and customer-relations database management.

"She's going to be able to get the message across that you can go to Wal-Mart for even basic needs and yet find a surprise across the aisle or across the store," Thornton said.

Wal-Mart would not say how much it spends on advertising nor the size of Roehm's budget.

Wal-Mart last year made a shift in its national and local advertising buys. The company for years had featured its own associates in ads, but in 2005 hired Garth Brooks and Destiny's Child to help promote holiday items. It also purchased advertisements in local newspapers in Missouri and Oklahoma as part of a study.

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Wal-Mart Pulls the Plug on Northridge Site

Michael — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:26:48 GMT

some good news!

*******************************************
Wal-Mart Pulls the Plug
By Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writer

Retail behemoth Wal-Mart has dropped its plans to open a store in Northridge after deciding it did not want to conduct a lengthy environmental impact report demanded by neighbors and city officials.

Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been trying for a year to open a store in an existing building at Nordhoff Street and Tampa Avenue. Officials said that an environmental study for the more than 150,000-square-foot store in the San Fernando Valley would have been too costly and would have delayed the project by at least several months.

"The time it took to do the environmental impact report added to the time it would take to start construction and the economics of maintaining the land while going through this process was a factor," said Kevin McCall, spokesman for Wal-Mart in Southern California.

Two other Wal-Mart stores, in West Hills and Porter Ranch, are within several miles of the site. McCall said the purpose of the new store was to alleviate long lines at those two locations.

But the plan met with strong resistance from nearby residents and Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith, whose 12th District includes Northridge.

Wal-Mart "explained to me through their intermediary that as they analyzed this further, it wasn't worth it for them to go forward," Smith said. "It was surprising. I thought it was a foregone conclusion."

Residents and activists, who sometimes sparred with Smith over his commitment to opposing the project, applauded the retailer's decision.

"I'm not surprised that we won, I'm just surprised that Wal-Mart went this fast," said Jim Alger, president of the Northridge West Neighborhood Council. "This is what I think it came down to: The environment impact report had to include alternative uses for the property that have a less significant impact on the community."

Wal-Mart has had its share of success in Southern California, operating five stores in Los Angeles. But increasingly it has run into opposition from communities whose concerns about the company include its salary and benefit plans for employees and its effect on local businesses.

The Northridge project was unusual because Wal-Mart was moving into an existing building already zoned for large retail purposes. Also, Wal-Mart was not proposing to turn the store into a so-called supercenter, which sells groceries.

But the new store would have been surrounded by other businesses. Northridge Fashion Center is across the street and restaurants and retail strip centers abound.

That, combined with the store's location at an already busy intersection, was apparently the tipping point.

"I'm very pro-business, but for me, it was the wrong business in the wrong place" because of traffic, Smith said.

One city report suggested that a Wal-Mart store would have put an extra 5,000 cars on nearby streets each day.

McCall, the Wal-Mart spokesman, said his company would continue to seek potential sites in Los Angeles.

"We are always looking on how to best serve the community," he said. "We believe the Valley is a wonderful opportunity for retail, and we're always looking."

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Wal-Mart's 2006 Spin Campaign Kicks Off; TV Spots Show Customers Ways to 'Save More, Smile More'

Michael — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:19:41 GMT

Wal-Mart is launching it's newest spin campaign for 2006.

*******************************************
Wal-Mart Ad Campaign Kicks Off 2006; TV Spots Show Customers Ways to 'Save More, Smile More'

PR Newswire

BENTONVILLE, Ark., Jan. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is launching a new advertising campaign designed to show how its wide assortment of quality merchandise brings value to the retailer's broad range of customers. Beginning this week, the "Save More, Smile More" 30- second television spots will run on network and national cable stations and in national syndication and local markets.

"This campaign is very much in line with Wal-Mart's strategy of becoming constantly more relevant to the broad range of customers who shop our stores," said John Fleming, Wal-Mart's chief marketing officer. "Although our customers have a wide variety of needs and lifestyles, they all appreciate value, and value is a combination of quality, price, convenience, and trust. Our objective with this campaign is to show how our customers can find value across all our merchandise categories, value that improves the quality of their lives."

The "Save More, Smile More" spots feature a series of lifestyle scenes that show people using merchandise from Wal-Mart in their everyday activities. Merchandise categories represented include home decor, fitness equipment, food, health and beauty products, jewelry, and office supplies. Central to every scene is a smile -- each unique, each with its own place in its surroundings.

"The smiles aren't all easy to spot in these ads," said Fleming, "but if you look closely, you'll find every one of them. Similarly, we know that our customers will find the value they want at Wal-Mart in every one of our categories -- even where they least expect it -- if they cross the aisle to take a closer look. Our goal is to make that trip across the aisle a pleasant surprise for our customers every time."

About Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates Wal-Mart Stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and SAM'S CLUB locations in the United States. The company also operates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the United Kingdom. The company's securities are listed on the New York and Pacific stock exchanges under the symbol WMT.

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 0 replies

Maryland Vs. Walmart

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 06:57:10 GMT

The state of Maryland passed legislation today, January 12th, requiring Walmart to increase spending on employee health care. Very interesting....

posted in Boycott Walmart! - 2 replies

Ehrlich Defends Wal-Mart Veto; Fundraiser At Issue

Michael — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:05:22 GMT

Official: Maryland Governor Misspoke About Wal-Mart Fundraiser

WBALChannel.com

BALTIMORE -- Maryland's governor may have misspoken on national cable television Wednesday, according to a spokesman, about political contributions from Wal-Mart.

The same day, some Wal-Mart employees spoke out in Annapolis to support a veto override of legislation mandating large companies to provide health care coverage.

"I've worked at Wal-Mart for more than five years, and I still can't afford health care," one worker said. "The sad truth is many of the associates are scared to speak out."

Gov. Bob Ehrlich appeared on CNBC Wednesday afternoon to discuss his veto of the so-called Wal-Mart Bill during the previous legislative session.

"This is real bad policy, this is embarrassing policy. Everybody knows it's silly, artificial and very subjective," Ehrlich told CNBC's Ron Insana.

The bill was crafted to require companies that employ at least 10,000 Marylanders to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health care. The bill offered also an option for companies to instead pay the difference to the state Medicaid program.

Wal-Mart is the only company in the state that would qualify as such an employer.

"Even the sponsors have said the numbers in this bill will be changed," Ehrlich said. "It's a starting point for the unions and their never-ending campaigns against Wal-Mart."

During the same interview, Insana questioned the governor's stance based on a fundraiser sponsored by Wal-Mart.

CNBC reported the United Food And Commercial Workers Union Local 400 made the fundraising claim.

The union provided to 11 News a Baltimore Sun article about the fundraiser and also sent a copy of an invitation for a Wal-Mart fundraiser for the governor on Dec. 15, 2004. Ehrlich denied that Wal-Mart sponsored the fundraiser, which came at a cost of $1,000 per attendee.

The invitation, in part, reads: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cordially invites you to a reception honoring Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., governor of Maryland."

But a gubernatorial representative later told 11 News that the governor may have misspoken, confirming that while the event was not a fundraiser held exclusively by Wal-Mart, the company did participate.

"Have I received Wal-Mart dollars in the past? I suspect I have; I can't tell you whether I have or not," Ehrlich said on CNBC.

Meanwhile, as many as 32 other states that have similar bills pending await the outcome of Maryland's legislation.

"It's not a function of who's giving whom dollars. It's a function of trying to embarrass a hot state with a very good economy, a pro-business reputation because one or two particular unions do not like Wal-Mart," Ehrlich said.

The gubernatorial representative pointed out that the fundraiser took place before lawmakers proposed this bill.

The state's Democratic leaders have pushed for a veto override and are expected to debate the matter when Session 2006 begins on Thursday.

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Judge: Wal-Mart Workers Can Sue Over Hours

Michael — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:58:25 GMT

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA - A judge approved a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. by employees in Pennsylvania who say the company pressured them to work off the clock, claims that mirror those in suits filed around the country.

A California jury last month awarded Wal-Mart workers $172 million for illegally denied lunch breaks, while Wal-Mart settled a similar Colorado case for $50 million.

In Pennsylvania, the lead plaintiff's suit alleges she worked through breaks and after quitting time — eight to 12 unpaid hours a month, on average — to meet work demands.

"One of Wal-Mart's undisclosed secrets for its profitability is its creation and implementation of a system that encourages off-the-clock work for its hourly employees, ..." Dolores Hummel, who worked at a Sam's Club in Reading from 1992-2002, charged in her suit.

The suit was approved for class certification late last month by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Mark I. Bernstein. The class could include nearly 150,000 current or former employees who worked at a Wal-Mart or Sam's Club in the state since March 19, 1998.

"We strongly deny the allegations in this lawsuit. Wal-Mart's policy is to pay associates for every minute they work," the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said in a statement.

Wal-Mart earned $10 billion in 2004.

The class-certification decision followed days of hearings that examined Wal-Mart's pay records, break policies and even electronic systems that show when employees are signed on to cash registers or other machines, said plaintiff's lawyer Michael Donovan.

"There's a lot of electronic evidence, that when you examine it shows that these people aren't getting breaks, but they're continuing to run the cash register or do inventory or whatever," Donovan said.

Wal-Mart, which is appealing the California verdict, may also pursue an appeal of the class-action certification in Philadelphia, according to lawyer Martin D'Urso.

The certification alone does not prove any wrongdoing, the company's statement noted.

The suit was initially filed in 2002. At the time, Wal-Mart employed more than 31,600 people in 123 stores in Pennsylvania, the suit said.

Hummel had to work off the books to meet quotas on cakes she made in the bakery, Donovan said. She was eventually dismissed over her productivity level, he said.

The California jury award — which includes $115 million in punitive damages — covers about 115,000 class members. That suit involved unpaid lunch breaks.

Hummel's suit cites a Wal-Mart corporate policy that gives hourly employees one paid 15-minute break during a shift of at least 3 hours and two such breaks, plus an unpaid 30-minute meal break, on a shift of at least 6 hours.

The company's break policies can vary according to state law, spokesman Kevin Thornton said.

According to Donovan, similar suits against Wal-Mart have been granted class certification in states including Massachusetts and Minnesota, but denied in New Jersey.

Shares of Wal-Mart rose 24 cents, or 2.4 percent, to close at $10.41in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Wal Mart, The High Cost of Low Prices

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:32:43 GMT

I'm sure your all familiar with this documentary but if you haven't check it out and spread the word. I knew these bastrads were evil but not to this extent.

http://www.walmartmovie.com/

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Was Wal-Mart's Anti-Union Image Used as a Shield?

Michael — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:50:32 GMT

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: January 9, 2006
New York Times

In December 2004, shortly before Thomas M. Coughlin left his job as the second-ranking executive at Wal-Mart Stores, he instructed a subordinate to order him a $1,700 laptop computer, which he later charged to Wal-Mart. "This," he wrote to the aide, in an e-mail message later disclosed by the company, "is to be used on the union project."

The union project, according to Mr. Coughlin, was a secret scheme, approved by senior Wal-Mart executives, to pay union members for information about which stores they planned to organize.

A year later, when Mr. Coughlin was accused of misusing more than $500,000 in company funds through fraudulent reimbursements, the union project became the heart of his defense, and it immediately transformed the case into a symbol of anti-unionism on the part of Wal-Mart. Reporters seized on it, labor groups issued a flurry of angry press releases about it and the National Labor Relations Board began an investigation into it.

But Mr. Coughlin's agreement to plead guilty to federal wire fraud and tax evasion charges, which two people close to the negotiations disclosed on Friday, and the lack of evidence that he used the missing money to spy on unions raise doubts as to whether such a project even existed.

A nearly yearlong investigation, in which prosecutors reviewed records of Mr. Coughlin's travel, phone calls and e-mail messages, produced no evidence that he or any other executive at Wal-Mart ever paid a union member for information, according to one person briefed on the inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Coughlin is not scheduled to officially enter the plea until later this month.

Lacking evidence of the scheme, the Coughlin case follows a far more familiar track - a highflying executive, paid millions of dollars a year, who stole from his company.

Wal-Mart, in a separate legal complaint with a former Coughlin subordinate, called the union project a "complete fabrication." But what made Mr. Coughlin's defense so powerful - and, in a way, so convenient - was that it seemed so plausible to longtime observers of the company.

Such a scheme "certainly would not be out of character," said Harley Shaiken, a professor on labor issues at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied Wal-Mart for years. "Given Wal-Mart's antipathy for unions and its aggressiveness in fighting them, what Coughlin fabricated appeared to be real."

Wal-Mart has long been known for its bare-knuckled approach to fighting unions. When employees at an outlet in Canada voted last year to unionize, the retailer shut the store down, arguing it was unprofitable. In 2000, shortly after 11 Wal-Mart meat cutters in Texas voted to form a union, the company eliminated meat-cutter jobs companywide and announced it would use prepackaged meat instead.

The National Labor Relations Board has filed dozens of complaints accusing Wal-Mart of using hardball tactics to fight unions, such as improperly firing union supporters and threatening to deny bonuses to management if workers unionized.

In one case, Mr. Coughlin - at the time, he was chief of Wal-Mart Stores in the United States - was accused by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union of personally trying to improperly influence a union vote at a Wal-Mart auto center in Arizona by showing up at the store and speaking with employees about their working conditions.

Indeed, when word of the union project first emerged a year ago, the food and commercial workers union, which is trying to unionize Wal-Mart's 1.3 million workers in the United States, believed it enough to file an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

The complaint touched off an agency investigation that is continuing.

It was Mr. Coughlin who worked hardest to keep the union project - or at least the idea of it - alive, according to corporate records from Wal-Mart.

Over a period of several years, when he headed the United States operations of Wal-Mart and was vice chairman of the company and a board member, he mentioned it frequently to his underlings, almost always to explain why he needed large sums of company money.

In 2002, for example, Mr. Coughlin told one of his aides to prepare two fake invoices, each for $5,000, that "the union people in Vegas needed," according to a lawsuit Wal-Mart filed to strip Mr. Coughlin of his retirement benefits.

The aide sent the money, which was used to purchase a $10,810 custom-built hunting vehicle for Mr. Coughlin, according to Wal-Mart.

In 1997, Mr. Coughlin told the same aide to obtain a corporate calling card number so he could make long-distance calls to "the union people," Wal-Mart said. For five years, the company alleges, Mr. Coughlin used the card number to make lengthy telephone calls to and from cities where his children were attending college.

Neither Mr. Coughlin nor a representative for Wal-Mart returned phone messages yesterday.

Mr. Coughlin's employees appeared to have doubts about the union project. According to the company, one of Mr. Coughlin's top deputies disclosed in interviews with company investigators that he "always suspected there was no union project. " After reviewing expense account statements and e-mail messages, he concluded instead that it was a "cover for his fraud."

But if Wal-Mart employees had doubts about the project, and the validity of Mr. Coughlin's expenses, they kept them private. Mr. Coughlin, a 6-foot-4 former football player and hunting buddy of Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, was among the most powerful executives at the company.

By 2003, as vice chairman, he oversaw Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and walmart.com. For much of that time, he was responsible for Wal-Mart's loss prevention department, which investigated alleged theft and fraud by employees.

Indeed, Mr. Coughlin's supposed use of misappropriated gift cards and false invoices to pay for personal purchases like CD's, beer and hunting gear was not disclosed by the people he worked with but by a low-level store employee. The worker called Wal-Mart's headquarters to inquire about Mr. Coughlin's use of a gift card - originally designated for store employees to improve morale - to buy a pair of contact lenses.

People briefed on the matter said Mr. Coughlin might still advance the union project defense before a judge later this month in Fort Smith, Ark., not far from the company's headquarters in Bentonville. It is unclear why he would pursue such a defense, because his lawyers apparently presented no firm evidence to support it and prosecutors found no evidence to back it up, according to people involved in the case.

If the plea deal holds, Mr. Coughlin may serve more than two years in jail and pay restitution of at least $350,000, according to people briefed on the matter.

"This is probably his last choice," said Mr. Shaiken, the professor of labor studies. "It represents few options and a pretty grim reality for him."

"He wanted to bargain with" the union project, Mr. Shaiken said, "but it did not prove possible."

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Wal-Mart agrees to settlement on overcharges

Michael — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:47:30 GMT

By Todd RichmondAssociated Press

MADISON, Wis. – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay $25,000 to settle allegations it overcharged customers at some Wisconsin stores, state consumer protection officials said.

Supercenter stores in West Bend, Fond du Lac, Antigo, Shawano and Appleton overcharged customers for bulk items including sweet potatoes, grapes and grind-it-yourself coffee.
The stores charge for those products by weight, but scales at the check-out registers didn’t automatically subtract the weight of the bags from the total as required by state law, said Jim Rabbitt, director of the consumer protection division of the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

“This particular problem … is something very few consumers ever have the ability to notice or test,” Rabbitt said Thursday.
Wal-Mart’s corporate offices in Bentonville, Ark., have alerted all Wisconsin stores to correct the practice, Rabbitt said. State inspectors still plan to make extra stops at the stores, he said.

Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman said scales at eight stores in Wisconsin weren’t properly programmed with the correct weights of containers.

Each store is responsible for entering weights on its own, he said.

“Wal-Mart … regrets any inconvenience to our customers,” Fogleman said in a statement.

DATCP officials offered Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, a chance to settle before a lawsuit was filed, and Wal-Mart officials cooperated during negotiations in late December, Rabbitt said.

The settlement was filed Tues- day in Washington County Circuit Court.

“Weights and measure things, they’re pretty hard to defend. There’s not a lot of discussion that goes on with this problem,” Rabbitt said. “They came in and said ‘what do we need to do to settle this.’ ”

Most states require container weight to be deducted from prices, said Rachelle Miller, DATCP weights and measures field supervisor.

Wisconsin levies a $1,000 fine for each weights violation, Rabbitt said. Inspectors tested 25 items at the stores in question, resulting in the $25,000 settlement, Rabbitt said. Most of the money will go to the state’s school fund, he said. The $500 million fund is used for bond investments, loans to school districts and municipalities and school library supplies.
Wisconsin weight inspectors first discovered the problem in 2003, Rabbitt said. State consumer protection officials warned Wal-Mart to correct it, but inspectors discovered it again last fall, Rabbitt said. Wal-Mart could be overcharging customers through its scales in other states as well, he said.
“It’s hard to imagine they’re operating in a different manner in other states. My guess would be when some other states start looking around they’ll find the same problem,” he said.
Fogleman said he doesn’t know how Rabbitt could draw that conclusion.

“We certainly are committed to complying with the law,” he said.

Two union-commissioned studies released in November found Wal-Mart charged the wrong prices to shoppers in California and the Midwest at a rate that exceeds federal guidelines.
The studies said random purchases at 60 Wal-Mart stores in California found the wrong price came up 8.3 percent of the time. At 78 stores in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, the wrong price came 6.4 percent of the time.

The studies, conducted by the University of Illinois-Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development and the University of California-Berkeley, were commissioned by the United Food and Commercial Workers.

The union has been trying to organize Wal-Mart workers for years. Wal-Mart officials have ripped the findings as incomplete and say they don’t apply nationwide.

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Wal-Mart halts movie suggestions on the web after racially offensive referrals

Michael — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:02:16 GMT

Wal-Mart Web Site Makes Racial Connections
DVD Shoppers Get Offensive Referrals

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 6, 2006; Page D01

Wal-Mart apologized yesterday after its retail Web site directed potential buyers of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Planet of the Apes" DVDs to also consider purchasing DVDs with African American themes.

The world's largest retailer said in a statement that it was "heartsick" over the racially offensive grouping and that the site was linking "seemingly random combinations of titles."

"It's just simply not working correctly," said Mona Williams, vice president of corporate communications for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The company said it was alerted to the problem early yesterday afternoon after word began spreading among bloggers. When visitors to Walmart.com requested "Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series" on DVD, four other movies were recommended under the heading "Similar Items." Those films included "Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream/Assassination of MLK" and "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson."

Williams said similar titles were called up when the DVD of the movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was requested. There were three such combinations involving those two movies and African Americans films, she said.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart said in a written statement that it removed the combinations at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time. By last evening, "Planet of the Apes" was linked to DVDs of the fifth season of the CBS comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the 10th season of the NBC hit "Friends." The company said it planned to shut down its entire cross-selling system overnight.

Like most other major retail sites, including Amazon.com, Wal-Mart's site directs users searching for movies to other titles that might interest them; Wal-Mart calls the process "mapping." Wal-Mart said last night that the system was malfunctioning but did not explain why or how.

Williams said the company has "absolutely no evidence" that the problem was intentional. A company statement said that the site had also linked African American films to the movies "Home Alone" and "The Powerpuff Girls." Marty Hires, a spokesman, said the company is investigating.

Williams said news of the problem was first posted on a blog. The company then learned about the offensive combinations when a reporter called to ask about it.

The blog Firedoglake, run by Jane Hamsher in Oregon, posted news of the combination yesterday afternoon under the heading "So Wrong."

The incident illustrated how quickly a firestorm can build on the Internet. Two minutes after the post appeared on Hamsher's blog, it was up on the Crooks and Liars site. Within hours, more than 100 comments were posted to that site, questioning such things as Wal-Mart's agenda and the technicalities of mapping.

Wal-Mart has been in a public relations battle over the past year. In May, the company apologized for a newspaper advertisement in Arizona that equated a proposed state zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning. Then came the Robert Greenwald documentary "The High Cost of Low Price," which criticized Wal-Mart's treatment of employees.

The company fought back by hiring former political operatives to polish its image and has joined in founding a group called "Working Families for Wal-Mart" that helps promote positive stories. Yesterday, Wal-Mart repeatedly apologized for the offensive material on its Web site.

"We are deeply sorry that this happened," it said in a written statement.

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Wal-Mart reports disappointing December

Michael — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 16:24:28 GMT

The retail behemoth expects fourth-quarter earnings to come in at the low end of its estimate.

January 5, 2006: 8:16 AM EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Thursday fourth-quarter profit would likely reach only the low end of its forecast after a disappointing December.

Shares of Wal-Mart edged lower in premarket trading on the Inet electronic brokerage network.

The world's biggest retailer, which confirmed that December sales rose just 2.2 percent at its U.S. stores open at least a year, said it expects profit near the low end of its forecast of 82 cents to 86 cents per share.

Analysts, on average, expected 83 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Total sales for the five-week period ended Dec. 30 rose 6.3 percent to $40.8 billion.

Wal-Mart got off to a fast start to the holiday season with aggressive advertising and discounts that helped drive strong November sales. But demand dropped early in December as shoppers waited until the last minute for deeper discounts.

As a result, Wal-Mart said the Friday before Christmas was the busiest shopping day of the year.

Demand for gift cards was particularly strong, which bodes well for January, and Wal-Mart forecast 3 percent to 5 percent same-store sales growth for that month. Retailers record revenue from gift cards when they are redeemed, not when they are sold, so that tends to deflate December sales.

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Wal-Mart in Their Sights, States Press for Health Benefits

MyBodyIsATemple — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:36:40 GMT

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: January 5, 2006
In a national campaign aimed squarely at Wal-Mart Stores, lawmakers in 30 states are preparing to introduce legislation that would require large corporations to increase spending on employee health insurance, according to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which planned to announce the initiative this morning.

The legislative push underscores state lawmakers' growing frustration with the progress of federal health care reform and the success of a union effort to turn Wal-Mart into a symbol of everything that is wrong with the system.

In Maryland this year, legislators passed a bill forcing large employers like Wal-Mart to insure more of their workers. The governor vetoed the bill but there appeared to be enough votes for an override in the next few weeks, which would hand unions and their supporters a major victory.

Seizing on momentum from the Maryland bill, lawmakers plan to introduce similar legislation in Connecticut, Kansas, Florida, Colorado and Tennessee, among other states, according to A.F.L.-C.I.O. leaders.

"We know that Congress is not going to take action any time soon," said Naomi Walker, director of state legislative programs at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "So states are finding their own way to get at this problem."

The measures are also backed by the Service Employees International and the United Food and Commercial Workers Unions and two union-backed groups: Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart.

The bills, some of which are still being drafted, vary but generally stipulate that a state's largest private employers devote 8 percent to 11 percent of their payroll to health insurance or contribute a fee to a state fund. Some require nonprofit organizations to devote slightly less.

None of the bills are explicitly directed at Wal-Mart, but because of its size - Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in many states - nearly all of them would require the retailer to pay more for employee health care. The Maryland bill, for example, is expected to affect only Wal-Mart.

Lawmakers complain that health insurance remains out of reach for many of Wal-Mart's 1.2 million workers, forcing thousands of them to turn to state-sponsored programs or forgo coverage altogether.

"It is real easy to use Wal-Mart as an example and motivator on this issue," said Representative Terese L. Berceau, a Democratic from Wisconsin, who is sponsoring a health insurance bill there.

Wisconsin has found that 4,700 Wal-Mart employees rely on state-sponsored health insurance, the most of any company in the state. But Ms. Berceau conceded that the bill was unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled legislature.

Wal-Mart denounced the campaign yesterday, saying it already provides health insurance to nearly half of its employees. This fall, after years of criticism, the company introduced what it said was more affordable benefits, including a plan with $11 monthly premiums. 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.

"This is just the latest negative attack from Washington union leaders," said Sarah Clark, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. "These bills will do nothing to address the enormous number of uninsured or control the soaring costs of health care."

Business leaders also criticized the union-backed legislation, arguing that it would brand any state that passed it as unfriendly to corporations. "It creates a real disincentive for business to locate in that state," said Randy Johnson of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Representative Marcia G. Moody of New Hampshire, a Democrat, said the legislation she was sponsoring would ultimately help businesses. Her bill, which would require companies with more than 1,500 employees to devote 8 percent of payroll to health insurance, should increase employee productivity, she said.

"They will not be out sick all the time," she said. "A person that has health insurance has stability."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/business/05fhealth.html

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walmart sending toxic waste from Sacramento to Nevada

Cynthia — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 05:18:48 GMT

hi, i've just been invited by Michael to join this tribe. i've been boycotting walmart since Nov. 19 altho i dont know why i ever really shopped there before-weakness for some lower prices i guess- but i saw the error of my ways. just going in that store would give me the heebeejeebies and i would max out and have to leave even before finishing shopping. i just caught a news blurb this evening that some of the walmarts in the sac area send toxic waste to nevada illegally! i don't know anything more about it, but what are they thinking?
happy new year to all and i shall continue with my happier shopping in much smaller more ambient stores.
cheers,
Cindy

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Wal-Mart goes after the Banking industry.

Michael — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 23:02:39 GMT

The FDIC could reach a decision about a Wal-Mart bank as early as next month but criticism abounds.
By Shaheen Pasha, CNNMoney.com staff writer
January 4, 2006: 1:46 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - It's a new year and the fate of Wal-Mart Bank still hangs in the balance.

In July 2005, the world's largest retailer filed an application with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to operate an industrial bank. The company said the bank would be narrowly focused on processing the company's credit, debit and electronic check payments which could save the company millions of dollars in fees that Wal-Mart (Research) currently pays out to other banking institutions.

But skeptics viewed the proposal with wariness and despite assurances from the company that Wal-Mart, known for its aggressive retailing tactics, has no interest in branch banking, the banking industry has been in an uproar to prevent the FDIC from approving the application.

FDIC spokesman David Barr said the federal regulator is still reviewing the application and a decision could be made between February and May of this year -- a timetable initially set when the application was introduced.

"It's really hard to gauge timing," Barr said. "A lot depends on what negotiations might have to be made and whether we need more information from the applicant."

And members of Congress are also pushing the FDIC to defer any decision until the FDIC's board of directors is complete. The FDIC chairman position has been open since Nov. 15, after Donald Powell left to direct Gulf rebuilding efforts. FDIC Vice Chairman Martin Gruenberg has been acting chairman.

In a letter to the FDIC in December, members of the House Committee on Financial Services said "the application is clearly of sufficient importance to require that it be made by the members of the FDIC Board itself and only by a full Board without vacancies."

Members of Congress went on to ask the FDIC to hold public hearings on the application due to the unusually large response to the Wal-Mart Bank proposal from banks and consumers. Since July, the FDIC has received about 1,700 letters, with the majority of respondents vehemently opposing Wal-Mart's foray into banking.

The FDIC hasn't issued a comment on the letters.

Wal-Mart spokesman Marty Heires said the company hopes that "people understand the scope of the [proposed] bank operation" and insisted that the company, which has 1,100 third-party bank branches already in its stores and 300 more commitments to open branches, isn't interested in opening branches of its own.

The Independent Community Bankers of America, which is leading the charge against the formation of a Wal-Mart bank, isn't buying it.

"Fifteen years ago, Wal-Mart said it had no designs on the grocery business and 20 years ago, they said they had no designs on the hardware business but now they dominate both businesses," said ICBA president and chief executive Camden Fine. "You have to judge future action based on past record."

And while some supporters of the plan have written letters asking the FDIC to approve the application because Wal-Mart will create healthy competition in the banking industry and provide better savings and checking rates to consumers, Fine said that any benefits to the consumer will be short-lived.

"They may be able to bring prices down until they monopolize an area," he said. "But once they have such a concentration and there is no other business to counterbalance Wal-Mart, they will be able to price however they want."

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Pennsylvania Wal-Mart Employees Who Missed Breaks Certified as a Class

Michael — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:56:40 GMT

Wednesday January 4, 3:00 am ET
Asher Hawkins, The Legal Intelligencer

A Philadelphia judge has certified as a class all Pennsylvania Wal-Mart employees who believe they were not compensated for rest and meal breaks they allegedly missed over the course of the past seven years.

Judge Mark I. Bernstein’s decision in Hummel v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. came just days after a California jury awarded a class with similar complaints $172 million following four months of testimony. Of that award $115 million was for punitive damages.

That California class consisted of roughly 115,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees.

Local class counsel Michael Donovan of Donovan Searles in Philadelphia said he believes the Hummel class could eventually include nearly 150,000 current and former employees of the retail giant's Pennsylvania stores since March 1998.

Wal-Mart is being represented in the matter by Martin D’Urso of Kohn Swift & Graf in Philadelphia.

A Wal-Mart spokesman told The Legal Tuesday that any store manager who does not follow the company’s policy on employee break time will be subject to termination.

"We strongly deny the allegations in this lawsuit," said company spokesman Kevin Thornton. "Wal-Mart's policy is to pay associates for every minute they work. Certifying this as a class does not mean that the company has done anything wrong or improper. There has been no ruling on the merits of the plaintiffs' claims."

Bernstein concluded in Hummel that Wal-Mart's own computerized time sheet records had helped the plaintiffs make their prima facie case that breaks were routinely missed and that employees were not compensated after missing them.

He rejected the defense argument that the class should not be certified because several employees had given deposition testimony in which the time sheet discrepancies were explained away.

"Although this court was offered a few carefully selected snippets of videotaped deposition testimony, it is certainly improper to decide credibility on this basis," Bernstein wrote in his Dec. 27 opinion. "Neither would it be proper to deny certification because this court concluded that the plaintiffs have not proven their case to the satisfaction of the court sitting as if conducting a nonjury trial.

"One need only recall the symbolic placement of the middle finger of the captured crew members of the USS Pueblo in photographs displayed by their North Korean captors along with their 'confessions' to recognize the need to observe all the testimony of current employees testifying under their employer's watchful eye that they voluntarily worked off-the-clock without pay because of their devotion to the ideal of corporate profitability through customer satisfaction."

According to the opinion, Wal-Mart internal policy dictates that all "work associates" receive one paid 15-minute break during each three-hour shift and two paid 15-minute breaks and unpaid 30-minute meal break during each six-hour shift.

Bernstein concluded that the proposed class had satisfied the five prerequisites for certification under Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 1702: numerosity, commonality, typicality, adequacy of representation, and fair and efficient method of adjudication.

In his commonality analysis, he noted that a plaintiffs' expert had found, after examining management reports from 12 Pennsylvania Wal-Mart stores between 1998 and 2000, that roughly 65 percent of the workers' shifts reflected insufficient breaks and that 40 percent of the workers did not receive the promised number of breaks.

A Wal-Mart internal audit backed up those findings, Bernstein noted.

"The defendant's own [nationwide] internal management analysis revealed that an average of two breaks per associate per week were either missed or shorted at every store," Bernstein wrote. "The internal audit's findings concerning the Pennsylvania stores [specifically] actually revealed greater deficiencies than [the plaintiffs' expert's] conclusions."

Later on in his commonality analysis, Bernstein argued that Wal-Mart should not now be able to distance itself from its internal time sheet records, even if certain employees have testified during depositions that there were logical explanations for irregularities found therein.

"It is unusual in the extreme for the defendant, who relies on their records for business purposes, to contend that although required by law to be created and maintained, their records are so unreliable that they cannot constitute prima facie proof of their contents," he wrote. "Since 1939, [Pennsylvania's] Business Records Act [has] allowed business records into evidence without any actual proof of their accuracy because the law presumed the regularity and accuracy of records maintained in the regular course of business."

Bernstein has ordered that discovery be completed by the end of June and that trial will begin in early September.

Donovan said that if the action is successful, recovery for individual class members could range from $100 to thousands of dollars.

"We're gratified with the decision; we think it's the correct decision in light of the small amounts at stake," Donovan said.

Donovan's out-of-state co-counsel in Hummel include Abbey Gardy of New York City, and Bader & Associates and Franklin D. Azar & Associates, both of Aurora, Colo.

Donovan said attorneys from the Colorado firms served as lead counsel in the break-time class action brought by Wal-Mart employees in that state that settled for $50 million.

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Google And Wal-Mart: PC Partners?

Michael — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:52:39 GMT

By Mark Sullivan, Light Reading, EE Times
7:59 AM EST Wed. Jan. 04, 2006

Google Inc. and Wal-Mart are both denying reports that the two are planning to market low-priced, Google PCs via Wal-Mart stores. The LA Times reported Monday (Jan. 1) that Google intends to market a fully functioning PC running a Google operating system and pricing out at a bargain basement $200.

The account suggests Google co-founder Larry Page will unveil the “Google PC” during his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Friday (Jan. 5). Several Wall Street analysts to whom Light Reading spoke Monday had heard chatter of a simple Google home device, but not of a full-blown personal computer product. Analysts believe it is more likely that Google will announce a partnership with a well-known hardware manufacturer if it decides to build such a device. That view seems to tally with Google's response to the rumor Monday.

“We have many PC partners who serve their markets exceedingly well and we see no need to enter that market,” Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriguez told Light Reading via email. “We would rather partner with great companies.”

The LA Times report further asserts that Google has been in talks with Wal-Mart stores to market the new PC product, a notion Wal-Mart firmly denied. “There is absolutely no truth to that rumor,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Jolanda Stewart told Light Reading Monday. But as with many rumors, there may be some truth in Google's home hardware aspirations. Analysts have long wondered if Google might enter the hardware game as a way of delivering new, network-based Google applications. Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. analysts speculated in a Dec. 19, 2005, research note that Google would market a Google “cube,” a small device which would deliver music, video and even VOIP calls from the PC to the televisions, stereos and phones in the home. “The cubes would be designed to be as "dumb" as possible (which is the whole point of making the network the computer), and Google would probably subsidize them so that they cost less than $20 or maybe even free (like AOL CDs),” explained Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck in the note.

But the LA Times goes much further, asserting that Google will market a smart device with Google brains.

Some Google watchers question the strategy and timing of Google entering the PC arena. “The profit margins have got to be razor thin,” said Bill St. Arnaud, Internet analyst and senior director of advanced networks at Canarie Inc. “It will also put Google in direct competition not only with Microsoft Corp. but Apple Computer Inc. and perhaps Intel Corp., as well,” said St. Arnaud. St. Arnaud points out that Google’s immediate challenge is moving from its core search business into applications, an area in which rival Microsoft currently dominates.

“In time, with Web services, more applications will move to the network from the desktop,” said St. Arnaud. “But I think Google has got to first get these applications developed and solve the bottleneck in the last mile rather than competing with Microsoft on the OS.” What is likely is that Google — as it has done with its search appliances for enterprises — is seeking some way of using hardware to connect more people to its services so it can deliver more ads and book more revenue.

Google founder, Larry Page, is scheduled to speak at 4pm on Friday, Jan. 6 at the Las Vegas Hilton during the Consumer Electronics Show. The company hasn't commented on what he plans to discuss at that appearance.

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www.ReclaimTheCommons.Net

Ethan — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 01:53:37 GMT

ReclaimTheCommons.Net
http://www.reclaimthecommons.net

New Sections:

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GMOpposition 2006 Day of Action
"Energy Dissent" and the 2006 G8 Summit in Russia
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Initially formed to oppose Bio 2004 (the world's largest biotechnology and pharmaceutical conference held at San Francisco CA in 2004), RECLAIM THE COMMONS has quickly grown from a single mobilization into an ongoing commitment to teach and demonstrate sustainable, life-affirming alternatives to biotechnology and corporate power in general: organic food, community gardens, water reclamation, urban transformation, a gift economy, and so much more. We do this hoping to inform, enrage, and inspire, as we spread the skills and tools we need to bring our vision of ecological democracy to fruition.

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