Liza Featherstone (Salon): Wal-Mart's P.R. war

[Jack Rabbit]

From Salon.com (Subscription or Day Pass Required)
Dated Tuesday August 2

Wal-Mart's P.R. war
Activists against the behemoth think this is their year: Two new national campaigns, a critical upcoming documentary and more stores thwarted. But can they force America's largest private employer to change its ways?
By Liza Featherstone

Firing whistleblowers. Discriminating against women (and, most recently, black truck drivers). Violating child labor laws. Locking workers into stores overnight. Mooching off taxpayers. Disregarding local zoning laws. Mistreating immigrant janitors. Abusing young Bangladeshi women. Paying poverty-level wages in the United States. Destroying small-town America. If you read any newspapers -- or even watch "The Daily Show" -- you can probably guess which company has been grabbing headlines for these and countless other charges and offenses.

It's Wal-Mart, of course. The largest and most profitable retailer in the world -- and in the United States, with 1.3 million workers, the largest private employer -- is becoming nearly as infamous as Enron or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The bad publicity may be well deserved, but it's also the calculated result of a coordinated effort by company critics, what Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott recently called "one of the most organized, most sophisticated, most expensive corporate campaigns ever launched against a single company."

Years of citizen outrage -- on a slow, under-the-radar boil -- has this year exploded in a highly visible public education effort, backed by a powerful and in many ways united set of forces: two new national efforts, hundreds of community groups, unions, women's rights groups, environmental activists and mad-as-hell individuals. What's more, this November will mark the launch of a documentary film about the company, directed by Robert Greenwald ("Outfoxed"). Greenwald says he expects his movie, which will be promoted in a grass-roots manner suited to its subject -- through screenings at house parties, union halls and churches -- to contribute to an anti-Wal-Mart "echo chamber."

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[Zuni]

1. excellent

wal mart is one of the greediest, most obnoxious companies in existence

[warrens]

2. Their culture makes them highly vulnerable

They can't seriously take criticism. Sometimes, to get someone off their back, they'll change policies or apologize or something, but they never MEAN it. Within months, they're back to their old ways because they truly believe they are right. Perfect.

Notice the over-the-top, victimhood rhetoric Scott uses. "Us poor little rednecks are being picked on by the librul elite. Do you see them oppressing us?" The fact is that most Wal-Mart employees are criminally underpaid (they're not the only ones, but that is not an excuse for the most profitable company in the world) and their claim that employees make $10 an hour is a joke, since it DOES include all the department and store managers, who are part of management, and DOESN'T include all the part time employees, who get about $6 and no benefits.

Their health insurance is a joke, a simple catastrophic policy with $1000 deductible and high copays.

It's fun watching them squirm. They recently had their first journalist day ever. I've been there a few times, and every time they sicced two PR people to follow me around to make sure I didn't talk to any employees. So they have their make-nice press day...and start lecturing the reporters about how unfair they are to poor little Wal-Mart.

What a pack of whiners.

OTOH, it is worth noting that they underpay their executives too. Scott makes about $3 million a year or so, plus some stock options and other goodies, but people in his position normally make at least $10 million. So to be fair, they screw everybody.

And they have significantly lowered prices of a lot of overpriced crap, like batteries, film and the like, which cost about half what they used to. So gotta give them some credit. But it will never outweigh the damage they do.