Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad.  From the Morning Sentinel (ME) (via Wake-Up Wal-Mart):

A Lebanon man alleges he was fired last month by the local Wal-Mart because he refused to dress up as the store's Santa Claus.

A spokesman for the retail giant denied the claim, which was filed this week with the Maine Human Rights Commission on behalf of 27-year-old Christopher Nolan.

In his complaint, Nolan said he thought it was a joke when he was asked on Dec. 8 to fill in as the store Santa Claus at the Wal-Mart on Main Street. He said his co-workers were laughing.

Nolan, who described himself as an atheist who does not believe in Christmas, said he laughed as well and then declined. "I said, 'Uh, no way,'" he said in an interview last month.

When the subject is Hillary Clinton, the discussion occasionally turns to my chosen expertise, Wal-Mart.  It certainly does in this article in the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Clinton once worked for the retail giant, whose labor practices are reviled in union circles. Serving on Wal-Mart's board in Arkansas, she apparently never voiced objection to the company's union-busting tactics and anti-union philosophy.

Today, she has distanced herself from Wal-Mart and remade herself as an ardently pro-labor politician.

Clinton's campaign views her failure to advocate for labor back then, which it has not disputed, as ancient history. She left the board in 1992 when her husband was running for president.

The campaign believes Clinton's current positions, not her past, are what counts.

Yesterday, I brought you this link to the anti-union brainwashing section of a Wal-Mart employee orientation video that (presumably accidentally) ended up online.  Then, I  started fisking it.  Today, I'll finish with the fisking.

First thing though, I have to repeat a bit of dialog here to get you the context of the conversation:

On Monday, somebody found a link to a Wal-Mart orientation video on the web site of Paul French and Company, a production company that films these videos for Wal-Mart.  To say there was interest in would be a tremendous understatement.  By the time I found it two days later, it had 631 Diggs.  If you read Barbara Ehrenreich's classic Nickeled and Dimed you know why.  As she explains:

"For sheer grandeur, scale, and intimidation value, I doubt if any corporate orientation exceeds that of Wal-Mart.  I have been told that the process will take eight hours, which will include two fifteen minute breaks and one half-hour break for a meal, and will be paid for like a regular shift."  

Perhaps the most important part of this process, is Wal-Mart's anti-union indoctrination.  At the end of her attempted brainwashing, Ehrenreich concluded:

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

Many thanks to Damien Sullivan for directing me to this study by Zenith Management Consulting (.pdf) on Wal-Mart's not-so-low-prices.  The key concept any Wal-Mart shopper needs to understand is the "opening price point," which Zenith defines as:

a very low-priced high velocity item placed in a highly visible spot in each store section.  This creates a perception that since the first item is so very low-priced, the other items in the section are as well.

In fact, Zenith found:

Spare me the jokes about how Whole Foods rips everybody off who shops there, OK?  My guess is that a lot of Whole Foods customers read this site and will want to read this story.  It's adapted from a post at our Wal-Mart blog, the Writing on the Wal.

As I've explained before, Whole Foods Markets wants to take over its competitor, Wild Oats.  The Federal Trade Commission is trying to stop it.  I happen to be a Whole Foods shopper, and while I don't like paying their almost-universally high prices, their argument for the merger made sense to me.  Here's Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, before his lawyers demanded that he stop blogging:

From Newsweek:

19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be "volunteering" their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country’s labor laws.

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

Truth on the Market took me to this post from Hodak Value which takes what now seems to be the basic conservative/libertarian position on the Human Rights Watch Wal-Mart report:

Today is International Workers' Day throughout the socialist and communist world, including the Daily Kos, who took this opportunity to slam Wal-Mart. They noted that Wal-Mart was investigated by Human Rights Watch, noting that:

   Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental group based in New York, is best known for scathing reports on political issues such as the Rwandan genocide and the Congo's use of children in its military.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times, writing for tomorrow's paper, gives Wal-Mart a great big May Day present courtesy of Human Rights Watch:

In its first study of how an American company treats its workers, Human Rights Watch asserted yesterday that Wal-Mart’s aggressive efforts to keep out labor unions often violated federal law and infringed on its workers’ rights.

Human Rights Watch, which typically focuses on rights violations in Burundi, North Korea or other foreign countries, said that when Wal-Mart stores faced unionization drives, the company often broke the law by, for example, eavesdropping on workers, training surveillance cameras on them and firing those who favored unions.

"While many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus," the human rights group wrote.

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal

Here's the Hotline's blog summarizing part of tonight's Democratic Presidential debate:

Williams asks [Hillary Clinton]: Overall, is Wal-Mart a good thing or bad thing for the United States of America.? Clinton: " It's a mixed blessing. It brought goods intro rural Arkansas and gave people a chance to stretch the dollar further. As they grew much bigger, they have raised serious questions about ... [corporate] responsibility."

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

When Wal-Mart announced it was making a big move into organic food last year, I was convinced that they were going to run all the good producers out of business and doom all of us who care aboout what we eat to their cheap organic crap.  It turns out I was wrong.  As Reuters explained recently, organic food at Wal-Mart appears to be a washout, at least by Wal-Mart standards:

Organic was expected to be the next big food trend after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and others threw their weight behind the products, but many executives said this week that overall, consumers are not yet clamoring for such fare.

"It was a big push a year ago," Alan Jope, Global Food Group Vice President at Unilever Plc, said at the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago this week. "Wal-Mart asked everyone for organic (food). At the end of the day consumers buy benefits and it's not exactly clear what the benefits are from organic. They might end up being niche propositions."...

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

Wal-Mart has a new survey out today.  From the AP:

Two years into a union-led campaign against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., only a fraction of 1 percent of American consumers have stopped shopping there because of negative publicity, according to a poll commissioned by Wal-Mart and made public Wednesday.

This might have been believable in some circles, but reality intruded just two days ago and naturally Wal-Mart's response is to lie like a rug:

Fresh off the PR Wire from Wal-Flack Central:

    Wal-Mart announced today that it has terminated a Wal-Mart systems technician for intercepting text messages and recording telephone conversations without authorization.

   The disciplinary action is the result of an internal investigation that began on January 11, 2007 when an individual used the Wal-Mart open door policy to express concerns about the recordings. The audit committee of the company's Board of Directors was notified on January 12th and on Saturday, January 13, attorneys for the company notified the U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

On February 14, 2007, Vice-President Dick Cheney promised to protect workers' rights.  Stop laughing, I'm not making this up.  This is part of his speech before a breakfast with the National Association of Manufacuturers:  

America is also a country that takes very seriously the right of men and women to work, and to organize within the law. The American labor movement has a proud history and has long reflected a basic principle of our democracy: fair elections decided by secret ballots. This principle will be put to a test in Congress this year. It's important for everyone in the debate to remember that secret ballots protect workers from intimidation, and ensure the integrity of the process. (Applause.) Beyond that, if workers do decide to form a union, they and their employer should be able to negotiate without having terms forced on them. Our administration rejects any attempt to short-circuit the rights of workers.

This is a bit beyond me, but as the self-appointed Wal-Mart tracker here I feel duty bound to bring it to your attention.  It's from the Wall Street Journal (via Wal-Mart Watch):

   As the world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pays billions of dollars a year in rent for its stores. Luckily for Wal-Mart, in about 25 states it has been paying most of that rent to itself—and then deducting that amount from its state taxes.

   The strategy is complex, but the bottom line is simple: It has saved Wal-Mart from paying several hundred million dollars in taxes, according to court records and a person familiar with the matter. And Wal-Mart is far from alone.

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.

The AP reports on yet another instance of Wal-Mart paying big bucks to its employees for breaking the law:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay more than $33 million in back wages to thousands of employees after turning itself in to the Labor Department for paying too little in overtime, according to an agreement announced Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department.

Wal-Mart said the department's review of its overtime calculations also found it had overpaid about 215,000 hourly workers during the last five years. The company said it will not seek to recover any overpayments.

Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, start here.

Today, I'm completing an analysis of Wal-Mart's "clarifications" of its new computerized scheduling policy.  Let's begin with a real "up is down, black is white" point:

•     Most of our cashiers love the new scheduling program because it means that there are more registers open when more customers shop our stores, and because their schedules are now more predictable.

Cross-posted from the Writing on the Wal.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, start here.

Yesterday, I began to discussWal-Mart's new computerized scheduling policy by looking closely at Wal-Mart's "clarifications" in a press release from last week.  Today, I'll continue with the points from from their release:

•     The scheduling system gives preference to full-time associates, that is, it gives full-time associates their preferred hours first before going to part-time associates.   This is in direct contradiction to Mr. Blank’s claim that the system fills shifts with the most number of part-time associates to reduce costs.