Wal-Mart’s Detractors Come In From the Cold

[Amerigo Vespucci]

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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/business/05walmart.html

[geckosfeet]

1. If it improves working conditions for Wall-mart employees I am all for it.

[Sherman A1]

2. Absolutely

There is a time to make the point in a public forum and there is a time to talk privately. The goal is to make things better for everyone and that will not happen overnight and it will only happen with a carrot & stick approach.