Fact-esque

Wal-Mart Spends $2M Fighting $7K Fine; Obama Admin Mystified

Although why they should be defies explanation.

The fine arose from an incident wherein a WM employee was trampled to death in Long Island two years ago during the insanity of the day-after-Thanksgiving bargain shopping.

Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

***

Wal-Mart's all-out battle against the relatively minor penalty has mystified and even angered some federal officials. In contesting the penalty, Wal-Mart has filed 20 motions and responses totaling nearly 400 pages and has spent at least $2 million on legal fees, according to OSHA's calculations.

OSHA assessed a relatively modest $7,000 fine ($6-7K being the amount corporate-owned courts have decided is what a human life is worth [see decisions after Imperial Sugar and BP Houston explosions, as well as various mine disasters, all due to corporate negligence and a refusal to follow safety procedures because they were "too expensive" and interfered with profits]) but Wal-mart isn't having any and the poor old regulators can't figure it out. What's the big deal? Well, it's all right here:

Talx: Making Sure Laid Off Workers Don't Collect Unemployment

Wall Street loves it when a company lays off workers. To them, it doesn't mean the company is in financial trouble, it means the company obviously hired more people than it needed and is clearing out the "deadwood". They call it getting "lean and mean" and they reward companies who do it by paying more for that company's stock, which makes the executives and investors richer.

Layoffs would make execs and invests even richer than they do now if there was just some way to avoid paying those pesky unemployment insurance fees. If those damn lazy bastards they just got rid of couldn't sit around on their fat asses enjoying the easy life on the company's dime, then the company could put that money where it naturally belongs - in the pockets of its execs and invests, not paying the rents for the trashy little apartments all those bums live in. But it's such a time-consuming business, stealing thousands of penny-ante unemployment claims, that it's almost not worth the effort.

Enter Talx (pronounced "talks"), a company that promises that for a very reasonable price they'll fight all those unemployment claims and save you $$millions$$. And they do. (Via Jim Hightower)

Unemployment: 6 to 1 and Rising, So Where's Main Street's Bail-Out Bucks?

We now have a Labor Dept that doesn't fuck with numbers as much as Elaine Chao's used to, and as a result we're getting a fairly grim picture.

Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.

And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls.

“There’s too much uncertainty out there,” said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor economist at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. “There’s not going to be an upsurge in job openings for quite a while, not until employers feel confident the economy is really growing.”

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that the point of Obama's promises during the campaign? To jump start the job market a la FDR so people would have money to spend, thus bringing the economy out of the oligarchic doldrums?

WalMart Crushed

I haven't been following WalMart closely enough lately but this headline caught my eye.  CostCo (good guy relative to other big box competition) is crushing WalMart:

Costco customers are spending more and coming back more often than they do at BJ's Wholesale and Wal-Mart's Sam's Club.

On average consumers visit Costco 2.8 times per month, compared with 2.37 visits a month on average at Sam's Club and 2.1 visits a month at BJs, according to the new Main Street Spending Index compiled by Geezeo, a personal finance Web site that helps consumers track their spending.

Kar-ma.

Bad Economy Makes WalMart Grin

With consumer confidence in the tank, Target has upscaled its image right into a decrease in same store sales.   On the other hand, WalMart, always happy to see the U.S. economy hit the skids, has outperformed expectations with a 2.8% jump in same store numbers.   Typically, CostCo is doing well, with a 9% jump, but that didn't meet analysts expectations and so they lose.  Rule Number One of business analysis and reporting: CostCo never does well enough.

McGovern the...Turncoat?

Apparently, while I was on vacation last week George McGovern - who I've been on the fence about for  years - embarassed himself with an editorial in the WSJ attacking EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act), and in the process repeating every tired right-wing argument from the Ken Mehlman Anti-Labor Handbook: the "secret ballot" nonsense, the "new economy that changes everything" myth (also known as "the 9/11 meme") wherein the crashing of 2 planes into 2 towers 7 years ago is the reason workers shouldn't be asking for raises and should be grateful to be paid the minimum wage.

TMiss was disappointed in him. According to Rick Perlstein, so were a lot of other people.

Last week the talk of our progressive blogosphere, and with good reason, was the Wall Street Journal editorial by 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, the Pope of Principled Liberalism, arguing the right-wing line on the Employee Free Choice Act, liberals' most promising strategy in a generation to make joining a union easier and more fair.

It was creepy. It was embarrassing.

***

It argued:

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

And it was all bullshit.

As Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Budget Priorities, explained to me in an email, "If anyone is really that hung up on the 'secret ballot' crap then they should be asked why they aren't upset by the fact that current law allows unions to be decertified by card check. The only change with the Employee Free Choice Act is whether card check recognition is at the discretion of the employer of the worker. In other words, it changes absolutely ZERO about whether the right of workers to organize is determined by secret ballot or not. The only thing it changes is who gets to decide the manner of certification, workers or employers."

Anyone who was disappointed in McGovern for this doesn't know him. It was, unfortunately, entirely in character.

Wal-Mart Loses Class Action Suit. Again.

As regular readers know, I've been following the progress of some of the (many) class action, discrimination, negligence, and damage suits filed against Wal-mart. (For background on the company if you don't know what WM is, or shits-and-giggles if you do, read TMiss' brilliant tirade tearing a new one for a WM apologist of the most fawning kind.) Well, one of them was just decided, and like all the others, Wal-mart lost.

A judge has ruled against Wal-Mart in a class-action lawsuit, saying the discount retailer violated state labor laws more than 2 million times, including cutting worker break time and "willfully" allowing employees to work off the clock.

(emphasis added)

I just want to stop here for a moment to give you time to absorb and process what that number means.

Is Andy Stern's Relationship with Wal-mart's Lee Scott Too Cozy?

Last week, Wal-mart Watch sent me an email in which they vehemently disagreed with the statement in the NYT that SEIU president Andy Stern's burgeoning relationship with Wal-mart CEO Lee Scott was likely to make WMW back off a little.

Look at our campaign's track record. This year, you've continued to spread our message, making WakeUpWalMart.com one of the largest grassroots movements in America. 427,000 grassroots activists have joined our campaign, a supporter base larger than the population of Miami.

Your overwhelming support for maltreated Wal-Mart workers like Debbie Shank and Olga Sanchez nearly crashed our web servers. Just this year, you've sent hundreds of thousands of emails to newspapers and politicians. Frankly, you've done more to change Wal-Mart in the past few months than we have space to mention.

The real story wasn't told in today's article....

Maybe not but the article itself (reprinted online by WMW) asks some legitimate questions about Stern's influence over WMW (the union pays for it) as well as the possible effects of Stern's increasingly cozy tete-a-tetes with Scott.

Over the last several months, a confidential report has circulated within the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores, proposing sweeping changes to its employee health care plans.

It looks like a typical corporate planning document, but it is not. The nine-page report, written by an Emory University professor, Kenneth E. Thorpe, was commissioned, paid for and given to Wal-Mart by its longtime foes, the Service Employees International Union, and a group the union finances, called Wal-Mart Watch. They are known for attacking the chain, not cooperating with it.

But after waging an aggressive public relations campaign against Wal-Mart for three years, the company's full-time, union-backed critics, who once vowed never to let up, are putting down their cudgels.

Shrill condemnations and embarrassing leaked documents are giving way to acknowledgments of progress -- and, in the case of Wal-Mart Watch, free advice.

"It's fair to say we have been less in-your-face," said David Nassar, the executive director of Wal-Mart Watch, which had hammered the company in stinging newspaper advertisements and provocative reports with titles like "Shameless: How Wal-Mart Bullies Its Way Into Communities Across America."

The health care plan itself is on hold. The Thorpe Report is "circulating" and there are rumors to the effect that Wal-mart is actually going to build its next proposal around Thorpe's recommendations but until WM actually shows us a draft (at the very least) it's a good idea to withhold judgment on it. Scott has a long-time history of nodding yes yes yes to get critics off his back but then going right on with his standard anti-union, anti-worker, anti-safety, anti-living-wage policies. If he has finally decided to bite the bullet and offer something real in the way of employee health care, fine. We'll be the first to cheer. But - we ain't holding our breath.

What's far more troubling are the rumors circulating about the way Stern has responded to Scott's demands for a cease-fire from his critics. And it's true that WMW seems to have pulled up its skirts a bit. Looking at my emails, they have gone from sending out a bulletin every week or two to barely one a month. I received none at all in January and April when negotiations were taking place between Stern and Scott.

That doesn't prove anything and we'll have to wait to see if indeed the pace of criticism falls off markedly over the long term. But otoh, it makes some sense to assume that Stern might have had to promise fewer attacks and less scathing criticisms of Wal-mart in order to win the healthcare concession from Scott. It also makes sense that if he is the major (or perhaps only) funder of WMW, they might have to lay off for awhile, too, or go out of business altogether.

Here's where I think the rubber meets the road: if the new health care plans are significantly improved over the last version (almost anything would be, so the word "significantly" is key here), then giving Scott some breathing room is justifiable. If they are not, if the changes are cosmetic or illusory, that would mean that Scott has successfully manipulated Stern and WMW into an unwarranted truce, and tricked them into getting WM some badly-needed rest from criticism and some Good Press without the workers getting very much in return. Wouldn't be the first time he's pulled that one.

This is a bit of inside baseball, perhaps, but since everything WM does or doesn't do ends up being copied by the rest of corporate America, what they do is important to watch and evaluate.

Stay tuned for further development. We now return you to your regular programming.

Guess Where I Was Last Night.

The quality of the video is the pits but you can get an idea of what the scene was like on ground outside the National Constitution Center for last night's debate.   Every time I'm on the ground either at a candidate appearance or at a protest, I am reassured that the primary should go all the way to the Convention.  It's insane to think that this giant exercise in Democracy is  anything but great for the country. 

The True Majority Iran Mobile fit right into the Peace and Justice Circus.  We were able to march around Independence Hall, which was a terrific feeling - very much the opposite of what Thomas experienced when he greeted impeachment activist, John Nirenberg, in D.C.   

I was skeptical about the value of the circus theme because it leaves us so completely open to the usual criticisms, but the debate - with it's media circus - happened the same day that the Ringling Bros and Barnum and Baily circus came to Philly so the temptation was too great to resist.  In order to appreciate how well the theme of circus fit in with the themes of Peace and Justice, you probably have to have heard Bob Smith of the Brandywine Peace Community and the lead organizer of the event, speak.  He called us Jesters for Justice and reminded us that non-violent civil action with a sense of humor as well as a sense of purpose is never a bad thing.  As for gravitas, anyone watching the circus parade learned more about current challenges facing the country than most of the people who watched the debate last night.  We didn't mention Rev. Wright or Bosnia even once.   So, you know, who were the clowns?

As for the campaigns, Clinton won the visibility challenge with about four times as many people standing opposite the debate site.  I tried to get them to hold my signs ("Invest in [Clean Energy, Health Care, Real Security] Not War in Iraq") but they were locked down on-message.   You'll see that the Wake Up WalMart crew was standing near the Obama crowd.  One of those nice people gave me a shirt off his back, so now I have a Wake Up WalMart t-shirt to wear around town.  Success!

There's much better video of the evening at the Daily News' site.   They got shots of the Free Tibet crowd, which was about a hundred people - very impressive.  As far as I know, the Daily News was the only outlet to cover the protests.

And now, to prove my commitment to the event, here's what I looked like.   I'm the one on the right.

Wal-mart Tapes: For Sale to the Highest Bidder

There's an old saying that what goes around, comes around. There are a few others along the same lines, like, ye'll reap what ye sow and what goes up must come down. Or, as the late, great Lowell George wrote, "Be careful what you say on the way up 'cause you could meet the same people on the way down."

You're wondering why I've come over all sweet revengey on you when none of the monsters we've discovered in the past 7 yrs - Bush, Cheney, John Yoo, James Inhofe, Donald Rumsfeld, etc etc - is facing any accountability whatsoever. Not so. Wal-mart is about to be hoisted on its own petard. So to speak.

About 15,000 videotapes of Wal-Mart executives at work and at play over the past 30 years have suddenly become available to the public thanks to a series of blunders by the retail giant, which paid too little attention to the company it hired to make the tapes before abruptly terminating their relationship two years ago.

The company, Flagler Productions Inc, depended on Wal-Mart for 90 percent of its revenue at the time the plug was pulled in 2006, and had just moved into a new 20,000-square-foot building in its home base of Lenexa, Kan.

At first Flagler thought it was facing bankruptcy, but then realized the footage it was sitting on could be a goldmine. It offered the tapes to Wal-Mart, but the retail giant was willing to pay just $500,000 for the lot, and Flagler turned the offer down.

Now they are available -- for a price n to researchers, labor rights campaigners and lawyers looking for dirt of all kinds. It's turning into quite a lucrative business.

Yes, kids, videos of the dirt-makers making dirt are for sale to the highest bidder - the highest, that is, who isn't Wal-mart. And who might be bidding? Lookee lookee.

A Kansas City lawyer representing a 12-year-old boy who suffered extensive burns when a gasoline can bought at Wal-Mart blew up in her face was astounded and delighted to find footage of employees making jokes about their gasoline cans blowing up at a Christmas party.

The lawyer, Diane Breneman, is hoping to present that footage in court to challenge Wal-Mart's claim that it couldn't have known the gasoline cans it sells "presented any reasonable foreseeable risk."

Another lawyer pursuing a multibillion-dollar sex discrimination lawsuit has found clips of Sam Walton, Wal-Mart's founder, and other top company officials lamenting the lack of women executives -- sentiments that the lawyer believes bolster his argument that Wal-Mart knew of the problem but failed to act.

Oops. Starts to make the mere $half-mil WM offered look a bit on the cheap side, don't it?

But wait. WM isn't the only one to be smarting. Attachment to the Great Satan doesn't look good on a supposed liberal's resume, and this one is liable to be on YouTube minutes from now.

The archive also includes footage of Hillary Clinton, who served on Wal-Mart's board from 1986 to 1992, praising the company to the skies -- a position she has since sought to mute.

"I'm so proud of this company and everything it represents," Clinton said at a store opening in Arkansas in 1991. "It makes me feel real good about what we've been able to do."

Like what? Remember, dear old Hil used to be a corporate lawyer. Wal-mart's corporate lawyer, for one. Did she help them crush another attempt to unionize? Is that what she's "so proud of"? Or slam workers trying to get the healthcare she now says (during a campaign) she wants them to have? Is that what makes her "feel real good"? Because it couldn't be for creating the health care she didn't create or increasing the safety of workers that didn't increase or forcing WM to pay the living wage it still doesn't pay. So what, exactly, is she so proud of?

But the big payoff is going to come in the proof they can provide (and have already begun providing only days after they went on the block) that Wal-mart is everything it has spent a small fortune in PR trying to claim it isn't: a bunch of greedy, unscrupulous liars who despise their own workers and train managers to rip them off to keep costs down.

Among other crimes.

The next time a WM spokesperson denies that Wal-mart did something underhanded, shady, or just illegal, immoral and unethical, we'll be able to shift into the videos to see for ourselves.

This can't be good for them. Send your favorite WM exec a carton of Pepto-Bismal. S/he's going to need it.

Oh, and btw: you can get in on the act, too. For pretty short bread.

Flagler is now cashing in, charging $250 a time for video research, and there are plenty of takers.

I don't know about you but Flagler is going in my Bookmark file. Permanantly. I'm saving my pennies for the first one as we speak.