To mark the occasion of Wal-Mart's upcoming annual meeting, Wal-Mart Watch has posted
its version of a Wal-Mart annual report. It's 24 pages long in .pdf format, has two solid pages of very small endnotes and really should be considered the definitive statement on just what Wal-Mart is doing to this country.
While I knew a lot of what's covered in it already (as I have followed Wal-Mart very closely in recent months), Wal-Mart Watch did surprise me more than a few times with what they found. While I think every Wal-Mart hater should read the whole report for ammunition to convince others not to shop there, I'd like to quote a few of the things I learned from the report to give you a taste of it.
First, on worker pay:
Dismissing the Century Foundation's numbers and other studies, Wal-Mart executives and public relations professionals inflate income statistics claiming that full-time workers "average" $9.68 and hour for a 35-hour workweek. Even with their inflated numbers,
which include highly-paid executives and Wal-Mart managers, an annual pay of about $17,600 leaves an "average" worker with a family of four substantially below the $19,157 federal poverty line, according to the
New York Times.
[Footnotes omitted in every quotation here, emphasis always in original.]
Next, on unions:
Wal-Mart's opposition to unions is so great it assigns a "Union Probability Index" to each store based on anonymous surveys of workers. The company officially says the index is for "Unresolved People Issues," but when it goes too high, management sends in a special team of managers to gear up for an effort to root out pro-union activity.
New hires are often showed two videos. The first is general information about the company and the second is about why Wal-Mart should be union-free. Jon Lehman, a former store manager, told Bloomberg News that two dozen people with headsets at Wal-Mart headquarters tap into calls and e-mails from stores around the country to see whether anyone is talking about unionization.
And lastly, on sweatshops in developing countries:
Wal-Mart doesn't want the U.S. buying public to know that its famous "always low prices" are the product of human misery. While it loudly proclaims that its global suppliers must comply with a corporate "code of conduct" to treat workers decently, it strictly prohibits the disclosure of any factory names and addresses, hoping to keep independent sources from witnessing the "code" in operation.
Just go read the whole thing, and tell your Wal-Mart shopping friends, neighbors and family what you've learned.
JR