Friday, December 23, 2005
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Tags: Wal-Mart, WalMart, rss, xml, feed
Smiling to Keep from Crying
Tags: Wal-Mart, WalMart, rss, xml, feed
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Smiley face belies Wal-Mart
By Cindy Rodriguez
Denver Post Staff Columnist
DenverPost.com
Robert Greenwald's latest documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," feels like a rushed, poorly edited film.
That is understandable, considering the director assembled more than 800 "field producers" who, in a few months, fanned the country and also headed to Wal-Mart factories in Bangladesh, China and Honduras to collect stories of how the nation's largest retailer is undermining the American quality of life.
He spliced dozens of those stories together, many with poor sound quality or shaky footage.
But the voices of current and former Wal-Mart sales associates and managers bring to life the way that corporate dominance and stockholder greed have created a segment of the American workforce, 1.3 million people, who earn slightly above the U.S. poverty rate.
The film documents that, even after putting in a 40-hour workweek, workers are eligible for food stamps, Medicaid and other public-assistance programs. It's an insult to these workers and a drain on taxpayer-funded programs. (Welfare was never meant to help supplement exploited workers.)
All the while Wal-Mart raked in billions in profits - $10 billion in 2004 alone - while chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. reported earnings that year above $17.5 million.
Watching this film will make you never want to shop at Wal- Mart again.
I haven't shopped there in years because the so-called low prices cost us too much.
There will be those who will turn a blind eye, justifying their Wal-Mart purchases because they need to save a few dollars. They will say all companies want higher profits and that Wal-Mart continues to grow because it buys in bulk and Americans like shopping there.
But at what point do you stop saying the ends justify the $15.78 jeans?
Consider that those jeans, Lee, are assembled overseas by workers making just enough to feed themselves. Keep in mind that "NBC Dateline" revealed in 1992 that Lee paid workers in Bangladesh to sew "made in the USA" labels in jeans being shipped to Wal-Mart.
Among the information revealed in the film, most of which has been established by government agencies and labor organizations:
The average Wal-Mart sales associate earns less than $14,000 a year and can't afford the $1,000 deductible required by the health-care plan.
Wal-Mart has a history of union-busting.
Wal-Mart factory workers in China make less than $3 a week, after putting in more than 72 hours of work.
Family-owned businesses collapse when Wal-Mart moves to town.
The company has denied the movie's claims and says the film distorts Wal-Mart's image.
Can this Arkansas-based company, under public pressure, change its predatory business style?
Wal-Mart should take its cues from rival Costco, a highly profitable yet benevolent company.
Costco pays its average employee $17 an hour. It offers workers an affordable health-care package that 85 percent of employees take part in. It contributes to employees' 401(k) plan.
Of course, Jim Sinegal, the CEO of Costco, takes a more modest annual salary of $350,000, a sliver of what Wal-Mart's Lee brings to his palatial estate.
Perhaps Wal-Mart's CEO greed trickles down from the top.
The Walton family - widow Helen and three children Rob, Jim, and Alice (another son, John, died in a plane crash in June) have a collective net worth topping $100 billion, according to Forbes magazine. The film reports the family donated just $6,000 to a company fund that helps needy employees.
The more you find out about Wal-Mart, the more you realize that the low costs come indeed at too high a price. Shop elsewhere. Boycott Wal-Mart, the company known for always low wages.
Cindy Rodriguez's column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene.
Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
So, wanna guess where I shop? CostCo. Better environment because I hate the stench of exploitation.
Tags: Wal-Mart, WalMart, High Cost of Low Prices, mad profit, corporate responsibility
Wal-Mart Buries Tortoises Alive
By Cindy Rodriguez
Denver Post Staff Columnist
DenverPost.com
Robert Greenwald's latest documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," feels like a rushed, poorly edited film.
That is understandable, considering the director assembled more than 800 "field producers" who, in a few months, fanned the country and also headed to Wal-Mart factories in Bangladesh, China and Honduras to collect stories of how the nation's largest retailer is undermining the American quality of life.
He spliced dozens of those stories together, many with poor sound quality or shaky footage.
But the voices of current and former Wal-Mart sales associates and managers bring to life the way that corporate dominance and stockholder greed have created a segment of the American workforce, 1.3 million people, who earn slightly above the U.S. poverty rate.
The film documents that, even after putting in a 40-hour workweek, workers are eligible for food stamps, Medicaid and other public-assistance programs. It's an insult to these workers and a drain on taxpayer-funded programs. (Welfare was never meant to help supplement exploited workers.)
All the while Wal-Mart raked in billions in profits - $10 billion in 2004 alone - while chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. reported earnings that year above $17.5 million.
Watching this film will make you never want to shop at Wal- Mart again.
I haven't shopped there in years because the so-called low prices cost us too much.
There will be those who will turn a blind eye, justifying their Wal-Mart purchases because they need to save a few dollars. They will say all companies want higher profits and that Wal-Mart continues to grow because it buys in bulk and Americans like shopping there.
But at what point do you stop saying the ends justify the $15.78 jeans?
Consider that those jeans, Lee, are assembled overseas by workers making just enough to feed themselves. Keep in mind that "NBC Dateline" revealed in 1992 that Lee paid workers in Bangladesh to sew "made in the USA" labels in jeans being shipped to Wal-Mart.
Among the information revealed in the film, most of which has been established by government agencies and labor organizations:
The average Wal-Mart sales associate earns less than $14,000 a year and can't afford the $1,000 deductible required by the health-care plan.
Wal-Mart has a history of union-busting.
Wal-Mart factory workers in China make less than $3 a week, after putting in more than 72 hours of work.
Family-owned businesses collapse when Wal-Mart moves to town.
The company has denied the movie's claims and says the film distorts Wal-Mart's image.
Can this Arkansas-based company, under public pressure, change its predatory business style?
Wal-Mart should take its cues from rival Costco, a highly profitable yet benevolent company.
Costco pays its average employee $17 an hour. It offers workers an affordable health-care package that 85 percent of employees take part in. It contributes to employees' 401(k) plan.
Of course, Jim Sinegal, the CEO of Costco, takes a more modest annual salary of $350,000, a sliver of what Wal-Mart's Lee brings to his palatial estate.
Perhaps Wal-Mart's CEO greed trickles down from the top.
The Walton family - widow Helen and three children Rob, Jim, and Alice (another son, John, died in a plane crash in June) have a collective net worth topping $100 billion, according to Forbes magazine. The film reports the family donated just $6,000 to a company fund that helps needy employees.
The more you find out about Wal-Mart, the more you realize that the low costs come indeed at too high a price. Shop elsewhere. Boycott Wal-Mart, the company known for always low wages.
Cindy Rodriguez's column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene.
Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
So, wanna guess where I shop? CostCo. Better environment because I hate the stench of exploitation.
Tags: Wal-Mart, WalMart, High Cost of Low Prices, mad profit, corporate responsibility
Wal-Mart Buries Tortoises Alive
Florida allows the Wal-Mart store's developers to bury the tortoises alive. Did you need another reason to avoid this soulless corporation? How about them killing defenseless tortoises in the name of the progress and construction?
By Robert P. King
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005
North Palm Beach County shoppers looking for low-priced pants, patio furniture and DVD players will owe an awesome debt to five dead reptiles. The five gopher tortoises had the bad luck to dig their burrows on the site of a future Wal-Mart in Lake Park. And they paid a ghastly price: The state allowed the store's developers to bury the tortoises alive earlier this year, leaving them to starve or gasp for air for the weeks or months it would take them to die. Wal-Mart paid $11,409 for the permit.
John J. Lopinot/The Post
The state has allowed as many as 74,000 gopher tortoises to be buried in the past 14 years, collecting $47 million in fees. More local news
As many as 74,000 gopher tortoises have met the same doom in the past 14 years, with the blessing of Florida's wildlife regulators. But this time, the fate of the Lake Park Five inspired an outcry that Cynthia Pandolfe heard more than 4,800 miles away.
"I was outraged and shocked that they can do this," said Pandolfe, a Honolulu resident who was one of many people to receive an e-mail alert from the Humane Society of the United States denouncing the actions of Wal-Mart and the state. "They're basically selling their souls."
The Humane Society's Nov. 23 alert, inspired by a tip from a resident, drew hundreds of similar responses, the group estimates. It came too late to save those five tortoises, but it cast a nationwide light on a practice that disturbs even some who participate in it.
"People are upset, even in our agency, at the individual losses of tortoises," said Kim Jamerson, a spokeswoman for the state Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission, which issues the burial permits. "Many of our staff have devoted their lives to gopher tortoise conservation."
Wal-Mart also doesn't relish the idea of entombing tortoises, spokesman Eric Brewer said. He said the company considers burial a last resort and is interested in working on alternatives.
"This will come up again, and we want to do a better job than what's been happening," he said.
Wal-Mart is far from alone. Gopher tortoises have suffered from countless housing subdivisions, shopping centers, roads and other developments throughout Florida. They've also posed obstacles to some projects, including Florida Atlantic University's long-troubled effort to build a football stadium in Boca Raton.
These are the main rubs: The tortoises thrive in the same high, sandy ground that developers prize. And the most popular alternative to burial ó moving the tortoises someplace else ó has serious drawbacks. Some gopher tortoises suffer from a contagious respiratory disease, so the state won't allow landowners to move them off-site. And some relocation attempts do more harm than good: Dumped onto unsuitable habitat, the tortoises try to flee, only to fall victim to cars or dogs.
Landowners also can move the tortoises to a safe spot within the same tract as their original burrow. But eventually that can leave tortoises scattered in isolated spots throughout a subdivision, unable to reach each other to breed.
"It's kind of a feel-good permit," wildlife commission biologist
Ricardo Zambrano said of that last option. "It has very little biological value for the tortoises."
None of the alternatives avoids the ecological loss that occurs whenever tortoises' habitats are destroyed. Their burrows provide shelter to more than 360 animal species, according to the not-for-profit Gopher Tortoise Council ó including owls, armadillos, snakes, the gopher frog, the gopher cricket, and a species of mouse than cannot exist without the tortoises' tunnels. After being around for 60 million years, the tortoise has lost as much as 80 percent of its population during the past century as its habitat has dwindled, state scientists estimate. The burial program offers one remedy for the habitat problem: The permits have brought in $47 million worth of fees since 1991, allowing the wildlife commission to buy and manage 22,000 acres of gopher tortoise habitat statewide. "That land is protected forever," Jamerson said.
Still, the price that the buried tortoises pay strikes the Humane Society and other critics as ó well, inhumane.
"To think they're just entombed 6 would you do that to your cat or your dog or your rabbit?" asked Laurie Macdonald, an activist for the group Defenders of Wildlife, who serves on a state panel examining gopher tortoise policies.
"It's pretty cold-blooded what we're doing."
Jamerson said the commission's staff and the tortoise panel are examining ways to lessen future tortoise killings, perhaps by increasing efforts to put displaced tortoises on public land. The staff also is proposing to declare the gopher tortoise a threatened species ó possibly affording greater protection than its current status, "species of special concern."
A change can't come soon enough for people such as Pandolfe, who said Florida should emulate the philosophy she sees in Hawaii.
"Animals are special here," she said. "We don't just go killing animals for money."
Tags: Wal-Mart, WalMart, tortoises, killing, heartless
Thursday, December 22, 2005
A Sordid Tale of Wal-Mart's Misdeeds from the Trampled
By Robert P. King
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005
North Palm Beach County shoppers looking for low-priced pants, patio furniture and DVD players will owe an awesome debt to five dead reptiles. The five gopher tortoises had the bad luck to dig their burrows on the site of a future Wal-Mart in Lake Park. And they paid a ghastly price: The state allowed the store's developers to bury the tortoises alive earlier this year, leaving them to starve or gasp for air for the weeks or months it would take them to die. Wal-Mart paid $11,409 for the permit.
John J. Lopinot/The Post
The state has allowed as many as 74,000 gopher tortoises to be buried in the past 14 years, collecting $47 million in fees. More local news
As many as 74,000 gopher tortoises have met the same doom in the past 14 years, with the blessing of Florida's wildlife regulators. But this time, the fate of the Lake Park Five inspired an outcry that Cynthia Pandolfe heard more than 4,800 miles away.
"I was outraged and shocked that they can do this," said Pandolfe, a Honolulu resident who was one of many people to receive an e-mail alert from the Humane Society of the United States denouncing the actions of Wal-Mart and the state. "They're basically selling their souls."
The Humane Society's Nov. 23 alert, inspired by a tip from a resident, drew hundreds of similar responses, the group estimates. It came too late to save those five tortoises, but it cast a nationwide light on a practice that disturbs even some who participate in it.
"People are upset, even in our agency, at the individual losses of tortoises," said Kim Jamerson, a spokeswoman for the state Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission, which issues the burial permits. "Many of our staff have devoted their lives to gopher tortoise conservation."
Wal-Mart also doesn't relish the idea of entombing tortoises, spokesman Eric Brewer said. He said the company considers burial a last resort and is interested in working on alternatives.
"This will come up again, and we want to do a better job than what's been happening," he said.
Wal-Mart is far from alone. Gopher tortoises have suffered from countless housing subdivisions, shopping centers, roads and other developments throughout Florida. They've also posed obstacles to some projects, including Florida Atlantic University's long-troubled effort to build a football stadium in Boca Raton.
These are the main rubs: The tortoises thrive in the same high, sandy ground that developers prize. And the most popular alternative to burial ó moving the tortoises someplace else ó has serious drawbacks. Some gopher tortoises suffer from a contagious respiratory disease, so the state won't allow landowners to move them off-site. And some relocation attempts do more harm than good: Dumped onto unsuitable habitat, the tortoises try to flee, only to fall victim to cars or dogs.
Landowners also can move the tortoises to a safe spot within the same tract as their original burrow. But eventually that can leave tortoises scattered in isolated spots throughout a subdivision, unable to reach each other to breed.
"It's kind of a feel-good permit," wildlife commission biologist
Ricardo Zambrano said of that last option. "It has very little biological value for the tortoises."
None of the alternatives avoids the ecological loss that occurs whenever tortoises' habitats are destroyed. Their burrows provide shelter to more than 360 animal species, according to the not-for-profit Gopher Tortoise Council ó including owls, armadillos, snakes, the gopher frog, the gopher cricket, and a species of mouse than cannot exist without the tortoises' tunnels. After being around for 60 million years, the tortoise has lost as much as 80 percent of its population during the past century as its habitat has dwindled, state scientists estimate. The burial program offers one remedy for the habitat problem: The permits have brought in $47 million worth of fees since 1991, allowing the wildlife commission to buy and manage 22,000 acres of gopher tortoise habitat statewide. "That land is protected forever," Jamerson said.
Still, the price that the buried tortoises pay strikes the Humane Society and other critics as ó well, inhumane.
"To think they're just entombed 6 would you do that to your cat or your dog or your rabbit?" asked Laurie Macdonald, an activist for the group Defenders of Wildlife, who serves on a state panel examining gopher tortoise policies.
"It's pretty cold-blooded what we're doing."
Jamerson said the commission's staff and the tortoise panel are examining ways to lessen future tortoise killings, perhaps by increasing efforts to put displaced tortoises on public land. The staff also is proposing to declare the gopher tortoise a threatened species ó possibly affording greater protection than its current status, "species of special concern."
A change can't come soon enough for people such as Pandolfe, who said Florida should emulate the philosophy she sees in Hawaii.
"Animals are special here," she said. "We don't just go killing animals for money."
Tags: Wal-Mart, WalMart, tortoises, killing, heartless
Thursday, December 22, 2005
A Sordid Tale of Wal-Mart's Misdeeds from the Trampled
Peggy Collins left this as a comment and I have decided that I would like to add a new feature to Wal-Mart is Pure Evil. I'd like to invite people with stories about Wal-Mart's misdeeds to post their stories here for others to read and learn from.
Do you have a story about Wal-Mart you'd like to share? Send me an email or leave it in a comment and I'll do my best to get it converted into a post as soon as I can.
Peggy's story (emphasis and formatting mine):
Let's talk about how Walmart Corporation (which includes Sam's Club and I think Lowes [Ed. note: I've not been able to verify that Lowes is a Wal-Mart holding, preliminary research indicates that it may not be part of the Wal-Mart empire. Please feel free to correct me if you've got better intel.], most people don't know this) are contracting small company's to erect more and more buildings and not paying.
My husband is on the verge of bankruptcy, along with several other small company's in my area alone, due to non-payment for services rendered, and there are many lawsuits pending just here, not to mention my state (Michigan), so I'm sure it's nationwide! This conglomerate GIANT is putting on stall tactics to avoid payment hoping the small company's will fold (not many can survive million dollar deficit's) or start litigation so their corporate lawyers can tie this up in court for years! They would rather pay their big shot lawyers than pay their bills and they are destroying our economy!
The trickle down effect is devastating! The General Contractor doesn't get paid, so the Sub-contractors don't get paid, the union doesn't get paid as well as the bills and employee's! It is mass destruction! It is the most frustrating and helpless feeling knowing there is no recourse to make this giant pay. A lawsuit is what they're hoping for. A lien put on the constructed building will never go into effect until the suit goes to court and that will never happen. In the mean time, they are up and doing business in the stores these poor smucks built for them, making hand-over-foot profits while the little guy folds!
Their profits are exorbitant and they don't care who they destroy to get there! We need every small business owner to step up and demand help from our government before they take our whole economy down! The last thing we need is more bankruptcy in this state or this country. The politician's promises for aid for the small business is single-handedly being brought down by this corporate giant and they need to help us now.
My husband is on the verge of a nervous breakdown because he has never had business conducted like this before and is in peril of losing everything he's worked his whole life to build, and he is just ONE SUB-contractor on two jobs! Imagine what they are doing to the others! We are pleading for help!
End Peggy's Story
Did reading this piss you off knowing that it could happen to you or someone you know? Then do something about it. Don't shop at Wal-Mart, don't shop at Sam's Club, don't feed this monster because they have and will continue to chew up and spit out contractors, employees, unions and anything or anyone else that gets between them and their bottom line, ethics be damned.
Got a story to share? Drop me an email (remove the nospam and xxx's) or just leave a comment.
Tags: testimonial, deceitful, tag, Wal-Mart, WalMart, WIPE, greed, trumps, ethics
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Big Box Mart
Do you have a story about Wal-Mart you'd like to share? Send me an email or leave it in a comment and I'll do my best to get it converted into a post as soon as I can.
Peggy's story (emphasis and formatting mine):
Let's talk about how Walmart Corporation (which includes Sam's Club and I think Lowes [Ed. note: I've not been able to verify that Lowes is a Wal-Mart holding, preliminary research indicates that it may not be part of the Wal-Mart empire. Please feel free to correct me if you've got better intel.], most people don't know this) are contracting small company's to erect more and more buildings and not paying.
My husband is on the verge of bankruptcy, along with several other small company's in my area alone, due to non-payment for services rendered, and there are many lawsuits pending just here, not to mention my state (Michigan), so I'm sure it's nationwide! This conglomerate GIANT is putting on stall tactics to avoid payment hoping the small company's will fold (not many can survive million dollar deficit's) or start litigation so their corporate lawyers can tie this up in court for years! They would rather pay their big shot lawyers than pay their bills and they are destroying our economy!
The trickle down effect is devastating! The General Contractor doesn't get paid, so the Sub-contractors don't get paid, the union doesn't get paid as well as the bills and employee's! It is mass destruction! It is the most frustrating and helpless feeling knowing there is no recourse to make this giant pay. A lawsuit is what they're hoping for. A lien put on the constructed building will never go into effect until the suit goes to court and that will never happen. In the mean time, they are up and doing business in the stores these poor smucks built for them, making hand-over-foot profits while the little guy folds!
Their profits are exorbitant and they don't care who they destroy to get there! We need every small business owner to step up and demand help from our government before they take our whole economy down! The last thing we need is more bankruptcy in this state or this country. The politician's promises for aid for the small business is single-handedly being brought down by this corporate giant and they need to help us now.
My husband is on the verge of a nervous breakdown because he has never had business conducted like this before and is in peril of losing everything he's worked his whole life to build, and he is just ONE SUB-contractor on two jobs! Imagine what they are doing to the others! We are pleading for help!
End Peggy's Story
Did reading this piss you off knowing that it could happen to you or someone you know? Then do something about it. Don't shop at Wal-Mart, don't shop at Sam's Club, don't feed this monster because they have and will continue to chew up and spit out contractors, employees, unions and anything or anyone else that gets between them and their bottom line, ethics be damned.
Got a story to share? Drop me an email (remove the nospam and xxx's) or just leave a comment.
Tags: testimonial, deceitful, tag, Wal-Mart, WalMart, WIPE, greed, trumps, ethics
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Big Box Mart
Yeah, its been around the block a few times already but there's nothing wrong with watching it again, especially if you missed it the first time.
Watch Big Box Mart and get a little better sense of the problem with a chuckle tossed in to help break up the depressing side of it.
Tags: JibJab, Wal-Mart, Big Box Mart
Friday, December 09, 2005
Taking Personal Responsibility
Watch Big Box Mart and get a little better sense of the problem with a chuckle tossed in to help break up the depressing side of it.
Tags: JibJab, Wal-Mart, Big Box Mart
Friday, December 09, 2005
Taking Personal Responsibility
If you're reading this blog then you're probably either already an anti-Wal-Mart person or you're wondering what the big deal is.
So I thought I'd take a few minutes and relate what Wal-Mart is and represents to me and, hopefully, that will help explain why I will never spend another dime of my money in any of their stores (unless they completely remake the company in a more ethical image but that would cut into the bottom line and they'll never do it).
Wal-Mart is an enormous company with more power at its fingertips than, most likely, the majority of the world's countries. They certainly make more money than alot of countries. But, instead of using their bulk and power to make the world a better place (which is, truth be told, not their job or their mission) they use their power to weaken America, they use their power to keep people poor, they use their power to exploit neighborhoods and towns, they use their power to do nothing but pursue every single buck they possibly can.
And they have a long track record of crossing ethical and legal lines. From forced overtime without pay to cooking the books so that it looks like they have more full-timers than they do (defining a 28 hour work week as full-time does not a full-time job make), foisting their healthcare expenses on the local governments of their monster stores, making applicants perform some silly physical exercise to discourage fat people from applying, the list goes on and on and on.
I realize that large corporations have large problems. But they can afford to and should be leading by example and not by exception. They could use their energy to make the American people stronger, they could use their power to help force reform on the healthcare industry rather than sweeping their problems under the rug's of the localities they inhabit. They could be a responsible corporate citizen but instead they focus on the bottomline and dismiss the rest as inconsequential.
Well, people like me don't think its inconsequential. I vote with my wallet and make sure that Wal-Mart never sees a penny of my money. I also make it known that I will not accept gifts purchased at Wal-Mart. Nor will I support in anyway people who shill for them (that's you Beyonce and Garth not that I care for either of your musical styles anyway). Its a small thing but it makes me feel better as I'm not supporting a company that could be so much better but isn't because of greed. And I do not have any desire to fuel their greed or their efforts to infiltrate more towns to spread their cancer.
If you don't care about Wal-Mart then shop there, just don't complain when your job is outsourced and your forced to work there and enter the ever-downward spiral that is the Wal-Mart cycle.
Tags: Wal-Mart<, WalMart, explanation, the why, the how
Monday, December 05, 2005
Ten Five Ways to "Fix" Wal-Mart
So I thought I'd take a few minutes and relate what Wal-Mart is and represents to me and, hopefully, that will help explain why I will never spend another dime of my money in any of their stores (unless they completely remake the company in a more ethical image but that would cut into the bottom line and they'll never do it).
Wal-Mart is an enormous company with more power at its fingertips than, most likely, the majority of the world's countries. They certainly make more money than alot of countries. But, instead of using their bulk and power to make the world a better place (which is, truth be told, not their job or their mission) they use their power to weaken America, they use their power to keep people poor, they use their power to exploit neighborhoods and towns, they use their power to do nothing but pursue every single buck they possibly can.
And they have a long track record of crossing ethical and legal lines. From forced overtime without pay to cooking the books so that it looks like they have more full-timers than they do (defining a 28 hour work week as full-time does not a full-time job make), foisting their healthcare expenses on the local governments of their monster stores, making applicants perform some silly physical exercise to discourage fat people from applying, the list goes on and on and on.
I realize that large corporations have large problems. But they can afford to and should be leading by example and not by exception. They could use their energy to make the American people stronger, they could use their power to help force reform on the healthcare industry rather than sweeping their problems under the rug's of the localities they inhabit. They could be a responsible corporate citizen but instead they focus on the bottomline and dismiss the rest as inconsequential.
Well, people like me don't think its inconsequential. I vote with my wallet and make sure that Wal-Mart never sees a penny of my money. I also make it known that I will not accept gifts purchased at Wal-Mart. Nor will I support in anyway people who shill for them (that's you Beyonce and Garth not that I care for either of your musical styles anyway). Its a small thing but it makes me feel better as I'm not supporting a company that could be so much better but isn't because of greed. And I do not have any desire to fuel their greed or their efforts to infiltrate more towns to spread their cancer.
If you don't care about Wal-Mart then shop there, just don't complain when your job is outsourced and your forced to work there and enter the ever-downward spiral that is the Wal-Mart cycle.
Tags: Wal-Mart<, WalMart, explanation, the why, the how
Monday, December 05, 2005
No, I'm not talking about spaying the behemoth (can you imagine the size of the clippers?), nope, instead the link is to Fast Company's Ten Ways to Turnaround Wal-Mart and presents Wal-Mart from its strengths to its weaknesses (engaging in a culture of shout-them-down rather than figuring our a more equitable solution).
So here's theten, er, five (for now) ways to fix Wal-Mart (who, if I had to bet, don't think they need "fixing" since they make money hand over fist). My comments are in italics and the emphasis is mine.
1. Stop defending and start examining. Begin a transparent process of looking into how the business has grown, in part, on the backs of the people it serves.
2. Fire your consultants. The last thing you want are fiercely partisan media manipulators.
3. Leverage your size to help your 1.6 million employees in unexpected ways. The public views you as resisting health insurance benefits because you are cheap and evil. Turn that around. Imagine the radical impact you could have on the marketplace and your brand optics if you focused your ruthless cost-cutting skills on HMOs, forcing them to crumble under the same margin pressure that you so regularly exert on vendors.
4. Talk to the unions. You've spent years fighting and villainizing them. That's a horrible mistake. It's time to think about the impossible: a solution that would let the unions in. Personally I think this is probably a bad idea as it would spook investors way too much and the stock might tank.
5. Support mom and pops. One of the more dramatic moments of the High Cost documentary is testimony from small-town business people feeling Wal-Mart's grip around their neck. It's part of the anti-Wal-Mart folklore, and guess what, it's accurate. Nobody likes to think about the little guy getting ground into hamburger by corporate entities and Wal-Mart's got a long history of this, it'll take some serious culture shift to stop doing this and figure out a way to support them while still making a buck.
All of these are well elaborated on and I've gotta say, they could do this, it would cut into their earnings per share but they could do it and they'd be a better and stronger company in the long run. I don't see Wal-Mart doing any of these but they could and should.
What do you think Wal-Mart should do to repair its tarnished and dirty image?
Tags: fix, Wal-Mart, Fast Company
So here's the
1. Stop defending and start examining. Begin a transparent process of looking into how the business has grown, in part, on the backs of the people it serves.
2. Fire your consultants. The last thing you want are fiercely partisan media manipulators.
3. Leverage your size to help your 1.6 million employees in unexpected ways. The public views you as resisting health insurance benefits because you are cheap and evil. Turn that around. Imagine the radical impact you could have on the marketplace and your brand optics if you focused your ruthless cost-cutting skills on HMOs, forcing them to crumble under the same margin pressure that you so regularly exert on vendors.
4. Talk to the unions. You've spent years fighting and villainizing them. That's a horrible mistake. It's time to think about the impossible: a solution that would let the unions in. Personally I think this is probably a bad idea as it would spook investors way too much and the stock might tank.
5. Support mom and pops. One of the more dramatic moments of the High Cost documentary is testimony from small-town business people feeling Wal-Mart's grip around their neck. It's part of the anti-Wal-Mart folklore, and guess what, it's accurate. Nobody likes to think about the little guy getting ground into hamburger by corporate entities and Wal-Mart's got a long history of this, it'll take some serious culture shift to stop doing this and figure out a way to support them while still making a buck.
All of these are well elaborated on and I've gotta say, they could do this, it would cut into their earnings per share but they could do it and they'd be a better and stronger company in the long run. I don't see Wal-Mart doing any of these but they could and should.
What do you think Wal-Mart should do to repair its tarnished and dirty image?
Tags: fix, Wal-Mart, Fast Company