In their heyday, they were a constant thorn in the side of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville, the world’s largest retailer.
Walmart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart maintained active websites, criticizing the company for driving smaller competitors out of business and setting a low bar for wages and benefits.
Today, the two union-funded groups are one, under the Walmart Watch banner. Last month, they launched a new website and the group says it intends to actively oppose Wal-Mart’s planned move into bigger cities with smaller-format stores.
“This is Wal-Mart’s big push right now,” said Will O’Neill, spokesman for Walmart Watch, which is supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. “We do look to serve as a resource in those markets where Wal-Mart is trying to enter.”
Wal-Mart says it can bring fresh foods and jobs to socalled food deserts in urban markets where access to a broad selection of groceries is limited. Last month, the company also joined first lady Michelle Obama at an event in Washington to announce plans to reduce the amount of salt and sugar in food products and to eliminate trans fats in the products it sells.
Walmart Watch, based in Washington, operates with a staff of fewer than 10. In addition to its own efforts, O’Neill said, Walmart Watch seeks to call attention to the work of other organizations such as American Rights at Work, which promotes collective bargaining efforts, and Change to Win, whose mission is similar.
Erin Johansson, researchdirector for American Rights at Work, co-authored a report with University of California at Santa Barbara history professor Nelson Lichtenstein released last month titled “Creating Hourly Careers: A New Vision for Wal-Mart and the Country.”
Johansson said the organization has been studying Wal-Mart since 2003, trying to measure its impact on union representation in the grocery business. In an interview, she cited longshoremen and janitors as occupations that have become careers for some as a result of collective bargaining.
“There’s no reason the same thing couldn’t happen at Wal-Mart. Why can’t they lead on this point?” she said.
Lichtenstein, director of the Center for Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at UCSanta Barbara, also is the author of the book The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.
He said Wal-Mart’s response to the organized criticism helped change the public perception of the company. Among those moves, he said, was supporting the healthcare overhaul legislation that President Barack Obama championed.
Wal-Mart’s health-care benefits are not substantially different from those at other large retailers, Lichtenstein said.
Dan Fogleman, a Wal-Mart spokesman, declined to address specific criticisms raised in the American Rights at Work report or about Walmart Watch’s renewed activism.
“As always, we’re focused on helping our customers save money, creating jobs and giving back to local communities across the country,” he said.
Bob Bruno, professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the labor-funded Wal-Mart opposition was only “somewhat successful.”
The company’s employees saw some “minimal” wage gains and less costly health plans, “not major advances.” And he noted that Wal-Mart has reached agreements with some construction trade unions as it prepares to enter urban markets.
The deep recession played a role in easing the activism on the part of unions, Bruno said, shifting their efforts to preserving jobs - “the fact that, during bad economic times, any job is a good job.”
During the recession and the health-care debate, he said, labor organizations set aside a key part of their agenda, the Employee Free Choice Act.That proposal would enable unions to establish a bargaining unit without an election if more than half the members of the proposed unit signed union cards.
Bruno said unions missed an opportunity to present the act as part of the economic recovery package.
“What’s missing in this economy is not profitability, cash, interest, but effective demand. The working class just doesn’t have the means to buy,” he said.
Patricia Edwards, retail analyst with Trutina Financial in Bellevue, Wash., said the critic groups did help change Wal-Mart.
“The bigger impacts on retail in general have come out of more shareholder activism than these groups,” she said. “But I do think they had an impact on Wal-Mart. They actually brought shareholder value in a lot of cases.”
She credits the critic groups with moving Wal-Mart to adopt better environmental practices such as recycling cardboard and installing LED light bulbs, moves that saved the company money in the long run.
“It’s good for the bottom line,” she said.
George Whalin, who runs Retail Management Consultants in Carlsbad, Calif., said that although the groups failed to halt Wal-Mart’s growth, their efforts led to Wal-Mart improving its treatment of employees and being more flexible about where they build stores.
“They’ve gotten better at how they do things,” he said.
Business, Pages 63 on 02/20/2011