All posts by WakeUpWalmart

Wake Up Wal-Mart Blitzes California Tomorrow

This holiday season, millions of Californians will gather with their families and reflect about what good they’ve done this year.  Millions of Californians will also flock to Wal-Mart to purchase cheap, Chinese-made toys and are poisoned with dangerous levels of lead, chlorine arsenic, cadmium and bromine.

So this holiday season I’m working with Wake-Up Walmart and Change.org to urge Wal-Mart to take dangerous products off its shelves before we read headlines about toddlers poisoned by lead and arsenic.   We’re launching a be push in CA tomorrow and I want to encourage all of you to join our rally – or even just sign the petition – if you can.

We’ll be at these locations tomorrow:

10 am – noon – 1540 West Foothill Boulevard, Upland, CA

2 PM – 4 PM  – 80 Rio Rancho Road, Pomona, CA                    

And just to give you an idea of the chemicals that we’re urging Wal-Mart to get off its shelves:

Lead – Lead is used in lead-acid batteries, bullets and shot, and is part of solder, pewter, fusible alloys and radiation shields.

Arsenic – Arsenic and its compounds are used as pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and in various alloys.

Cadium – Cadmium poisoning is an occupational hazard associated with industrial processes such as metal plating. Inhalation can result in chemical pneumonitis and pulmonary edema.

Bromine – Bromine is a reddish-brown volatile liquid. Bromine vapors are corrosive and toxic.

And these chemicals are in Wal-Mart toys!!!

Wal-Mart’s sales of these toxic products aren’t inevitable.  With massive economy of scale, it could very easily pressure manufacturers into making products safer.  But instead it’s pressuring suppliers to cut corners on safety so they can cut costs and rake in profits.

Of course, the government is turning a blind eye.  So that’s why it’s up to activists like you and me to do something good this holiday season and make an impact.  Take 30 seconds to sign this petition that will then be sent to Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duck – it’s that easy!

And try to stay away from Wally World! Here’s to your health…

Fuzzy Math that Would Make Enron Execs Blush

Who would you say is the most repugnant corporation in American corporate history?  Is it Enron, who gave record amounts to the Bush-Cheney machine and bankrupt millions of investors?  Halliburton, the shameless war profiteer?  Or Wal-Mart, the company that has done more than any other to drive down wages in America and has set a new low for how it treats its employees?  

It’s a tough choice.  The competition is fierce.  But lately I think Wal-Mart has been giving the others a run for their money, especially when it comes to cooking the books, deceiving the public with smoke-and-mirror statistics, and generally screwing over citizens and taxpayers.  It’s no secret that Wal-Mart treats its employees horribly, but Progress Ohio has uncovered troublesome data showing that the retailer is costing the Buckeye State taxpayers tens of millions on health care and welfare.  

You see, Wal-Mart claims that only 2.6% of their workforce and their dependents rely on Medicaid – that appears to be a flat-out lie. If Wal-Mart’s figure is correct, we would expect only 1,385 Ohio employees to be on Medicaid.  However, more than 15,000 of Wal-Mart’s Ohio employees and their dependents are on the program.  Unless Wal-Mart’s Medicaid enrollees have 10 dependents each, Wal-Mart’s official number is suspect beyond reasonable doubt.

That’s a lot of dough in a state that is under a lot of economic stress.  Wal-Mart makes billions each year and Ohio is suffering mightily, yet Wal-Mart would rather enrich executives (4 out of 10 of the richest Americans are Waltons) and send billions to China rather than provide decent benefits to hard working Americans in Ohio.  What is wrong with this picture?

If this concerns you as much as it does me, please join me at WakeUpWalmart.com  to help get our priorities straight in Ohio and America once again.  

The Ohio Benefits Report has been altered from the original publication. Appropriate changes were made to this diary to reflect those changes on Oct. 6, 2009.

Wilderness Walmart Fight Rages On

Here’s an idea: Let’s build a shopping mall on the National Mal in Washington, or even better, how about a McDonalds on Half Dome in Yosemite Park? Don’t these sound like good ideas? Well if you’re saying NO, then you probably agree that they make about as much sense as the proposal to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the grounds of the Wilderness Civil War Battlefield.  Robert Duvall agrees also and spoke out earlier this year:

Just last week, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, and six nearby residents filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Orange County. The suit challenges the August 2009 approval of Walmart’s proposal to plant a massive super center unacceptably close to the historic battlefield.

Video is via the Civil War Preservation Trust, and there is more after the fold:  

For those of you who don’t know about the Wilderness, it was a famous Civil War battle near Chancellorsville, Virginia. 3,700 Americans died there. To put that in perspective, about 2,000 Americans died on the shores on Normandy. The Civil War was certainly a grisly chapter in our history, but we owe it to our ancestors to not allow Wal-Mart to build a chapel to cheap Chinese crap on their graves.

I’m doing some work with Wake Up Wal-Mart to make sure that this store is never built, at least not here. You may not have a problem with Wal-Mart (although if you’re like me, you might have an issue with degrading worker treatment), but it’s high time that we set our priorities straight in this nation and stand up against GOP-allied mega-corporations treading on us.

Please join in me in fighting the Wilderness Wal-Mart and visit wakeupwalmart.com for the latest on the fight.

Labor’s Labor Day Challenge for Wal-Mart

This Labor Day, Wake Up Walmart, along with a large coalition of labor, environmental and community groups, are challenging Walmart to live up to their PR promises and join us in supporting the American Values Agenda for Change at Walmart.

To help with the effort, Wake Up Wal-Mart is airing two TV ads in major cities.  Check out the first here and the second below the fold:

The coalition includes: AFL-CIO, Change to Win, Sierra Club, Campaign for America’s Future, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, National Consumers League, AFSCME, American Rights at Work, Communications Workers of America, Interfaith Worker Justice, LIUNA, National Labor Coordinating Committee, Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Auto Workers, United Farmer Workers and United Steel Workers.

The American Values Agenda for Change at Walmart issues a direct challenge to Walmart in five key areas: worker rights, quality jobs, equal opportunity, corporate responsibility and a healthy environment and lays out the next steps for how the coalition, led by the UFCW, will hold Walmart accountable for those challenges.

Help Needed Defeating Wal-Mart on Battlefield

Last week Virginia’s Orange County Board of Supervisors vote to approve the building of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter within the historic boundaries of the

Wilderness Battlefield – and one of the most significant battlefields of the Civil War.  The Civil War Preservation Trust has been fighting Wal-Mart on this location for over a year – seeking an alternative location and compromoise – and after last week they desperately need everyones help to stop Wal-Mart from moving forward and opening the door to further destructive development.  

Even State Senator Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, has written a letter to the president and CEO of Wal-Mart pleading with him to move the location off the historic battlefield.  Wake-Up Wal-Mart is helping in this fight and you can too by also writing a letter on the Civil War Preservation Trust’s website and also help spread the word yourself.

More from Blue Virginia and the Washington Post below:

Lowell at Blue Virginia has reasonably asked on the location:

Maybe I’m missing something here, like the (supposedly) urgent need to build retail right on top of a battlefield where 145,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought and more than 29,000 were killed or injured. Can’t this store be located a mile down the road or something? What do you think?

Seems like a sensible question – just not to Wal-Mart.  The Washington Post further reports that:

[Civil War Preservation] Trust president Jim Lighthizer called on Wal-Mart to reconsider its decision to build within the footprint of the Wilderness Battlefield, near Fredericksburg, pointing to what he called, “nationwide anger generated by its proposal.”

“The ball is now in Wal-mart’s court,” he said. “It’s in the corporation’s best interest to work with the preservation community to find an alternative site. …We are optimistic that company officials will see the wisdom of moving somewhere else.”

That doesn’t sound likely, according to Wal-Mart regional spokesman Keith Morris. In an interview he said, “Two years ago, the county decided this site was one where growth should occur. We have looked at alternative sites and there are other sites but they require rezoning. There is no guarantee the county would approve another site.”

Morris pointed to the county planning commission’s second and little-noticed Aug. 20 4-3 vote that reversed a decision of the night before, when that commission deadlocked on the issue. A deadlock is considered a negative vote. Morris said that second vote was an indication of the county’s strong interest in seeing the store built at the proposed site.

There is a possibility that the Trust, as the lead organization of the Wilderness Coalition, will turn to the courts and appeal the board’s decision. Officials are debating their next step now.

Again, please help by writing a letter on the Civil War Preservation Trust’s website and spreading the word online.  

Thank you.

The Steroids Era and Wal-Mart

When we look back on The Steroids Era in baseball, we’re going to see a bunch of players who broke the rules and grew to an unnatural behemoth size, and how the people who were supposed to provide oversight either turned a blind eye or even encouraged it.

Well, if you think about it, wasn’t our economy in sort of a similar Steroids Era?  Real estate prices were pushed to unsustainable levels, Wall Street raked in unhealthy and astronomical profits, and our SUV’s looked like they had a case of elephantitis.

The poster child for the Excess Economy was Wal-Mart, the king of suburbia that built Big Box Supercenters anywhere it could find cheap land, introduced oversize shopping carts for its Canyero-driving customers, bought cheap goods in bulk from China, and was the darling of Wall Street.

Like in MLB, the oversight into Wal-Mart’s unprecedented behavior didn’t exist.  Bush was Bud Selig.  So while Wal-Mart may have broken records, it left an ugly legacy on the American economy by destroying small towns, short-changing workers, and selling out American vendors in favor of China.

I’ve had enough with The Steroids Era, and so that’s why I’m doing some work with Wake Up Wal-Mart this summer.  Like in baseball, it’s time to reform the system and restore American tradition in our economy.  Join us if you’re sick and tired another so-called “record breaker” juicing the system.  

I’ve had enough with The Steroids Era, and so that’s why I’m doing some work with Wake Up Wal-Mart this summer.  Like in baseball, it’s time to reform the system and restore American tradition in our economy.  Join us if you’re sick and tired another so-called “record breaker” juicing the system.  

Labor Violations, Bogus Standards in WalMarts Chinese Supplier Factories – via China Labor Watch

In a new investigation from the China Labor Watch (CLW), “Wal-Mart’s Road to Sustainability: Paved with False Promises?”, the CLW reports on the Wal-Mart’s extreme exploitation of foreign factory workers – amongst many other egregious acts they’ve detailed.  

The CLW has found, as a result of investigations from April to June of this year, that violations at one of Wal-Mart’s suppliers, the Huasheng Packaging Factory, include:

• Elaborate system to cheat Wal-Mart audits.

• Some workers make only $0.51/hour, 60% of the minimum wage.

• Poor working conditions: workers inhale large amounts of paper particles and other debris.

• Twelve workers live together in cramped dorms

• Workers not paid overtime wages.

• During busy period, workday is 11 hours or 77 hours per week, and overtime is mandatory

Please help us by taking action and voicing your concern about Wal-Mart, and please continue reading for more from CLW’s press release.

This is merely the latest, and one of the most grievous, examples of Wal-Mart saying one thing and doing another, in their long running anti-labor track record.  Americans cannot continue to support the world’s largest retailer while it remains in support of some of the world’s worst labor standards.

CLW has also written a letter (pdf) to Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke, and you can read their full report here (pdf).  

CLW also reports that recent violations at another facility, the Hantai Shoe Factory – who they began investigating in July of 2008, also include:

• Overtime only paid up to Wal-Mart’s limits. When overtime surpasses the limit, extra wages are not paid until the following month.

• Workers forced to lie to Wal-Mart inspectors.

• 5 hours overtime daily. If workers request not to work overtime once, they will be denied any overtime for a month.

• Disguised layoffs to avoid paying severance payments to workers. Workers are abused by management or switched to undesirable jobs until they quit voluntarily.

The CLW’s press release goes on to conclude:

“These issues represent only a portion of the problems CLW has discovered in these two factories. In nearly 10 years of investigating Wal-Mart’s Chinese supply chain, CLW has identified these same violations at the majority of Wal-Mart’s suppliers. In terms of labor violations, Hantai is one of Wal-Mart’s better factories and Huasheng is one of its worse, yet no where are Wal-Mart’s standards actually met.

As the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart has the ability and responsibility to implement higher standards. CLW Executive Director, Li Qiang, stated, “Wal-Mart’s Social Responsibility standards are merely a public relations gimmick and have not actually been implemented; they are a cost-free way to improve public perceptions of Wal-Mart.”

Although Chinese workers lack recourse against abuses suffered in Wal-Mart’s supply chain, the world can condemn Wal-Mart’s unethical behavior.

The China-U.S. Economic and Strategic Dialogue, which opened in Washington today, will focus on economic, environmental and security cooperation. CLW calls on senior officials of both governments to encourage multinational companies to improve labor conditions in their supply chains and promote effective implementation of China ‘s Labor Contract Law.”

Labor Violations, Bogus Standards in WalMarts Chinese Supplier Factories – via China Labor Watch

In a new investigation from the China Labor Watch (CLW), “Wal-Mart’s Road to Sustainability: Paved with False Promises?”, the CLW reports on the Wal-Mart’s extreme exploitation of foreign factory workers – amongst many other egregious acts they’ve detailed.  

The CLW has found, as a result of investigations from April to June of this year, that violations at one of Wal-Mart’s suppliers, the Huasheng Packaging Factory, include:

• Elaborate system to cheat Wal-Mart audits.

• Some workers make only $0.51/hour, 60% of the minimum wage.

• Poor working conditions: workers inhale large amounts of paper particles and other debris.

• Twelve workers live together in cramped dorms

• Workers not paid overtime wages.

• During busy period, workday is 11 hours or 77 hours per week, and overtime is mandatory

Please help us by taking action and voicing your concern about Wal-Mart, and please continue reading for more from CLW’s press release.

This is merely the latest, and one of the most grievous, examples of Wal-Mart saying one thing and doing another, in their long running anti-labor track record.  Americans cannot continue to support the world’s largest retailer while it remains in support of some of the world’s worst labor standards.

CLW has also written a letter (pdf) to Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke, and you can read their full report here (pdf).  

CLW also reports that recent violations at another facility, the Hantai Shoe Factory – who they began investigating in July of 2008, also include:

• Overtime only paid up to Wal-Mart’s limits. When overtime surpasses the limit, extra wages are not paid until the following month.

• Workers forced to lie to Wal-Mart inspectors.

• 5 hours overtime daily. If workers request not to work overtime once, they will be denied any overtime for a month.

• Disguised layoffs to avoid paying severance payments to workers. Workers are abused by management or switched to undesirable jobs until they quit voluntarily.

The CLW’s press release goes on to conclude:

“These issues represent only a portion of the problems CLW has discovered in these two factories. In nearly 10 years of investigating Wal-Mart’s Chinese supply chain, CLW has identified these same violations at the majority of Wal-Mart’s suppliers. In terms of labor violations, Hantai is one of Wal-Mart’s better factories and Huasheng is one of its worse, yet no where are Wal-Mart’s standards actually met.

As the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart has the ability and responsibility to implement higher standards. CLW Executive Director, Li Qiang, stated, “Wal-Mart’s Social Responsibility standards are merely a public relations gimmick and have not actually been implemented; they are a cost-free way to improve public perceptions of Wal-Mart.”

Although Chinese workers lack recourse against abuses suffered in Wal-Mart’s supply chain, the world can condemn Wal-Mart’s unethical behavior.

The China-U.S. Economic and Strategic Dialogue, which opened in Washington today, will focus on economic, environmental and security cooperation. CLW calls on senior officials of both governments to encourage multinational companies to improve labor conditions in their supply chains and promote effective implementation of China ‘s Labor Contract Law.”

Will Walmart live up to their PR on Health Care this time?

There has been a lot of talk this week about the surprising move by Walmart to publically support President Obama’s health care reform plan, supposedly positioning themselves as a leader in the fight to bring health care to all Americans. As we mentioned in a post on our blog yesterday, this might be easier to swallow if Walmart had any history of leading by example. Instead, they usually do just the opposite.

Given Walmart’s long record of trying to build a positive reputation on ineffective work-arounds to health care coverage for employee, the recent revelations about sacrificing quality for cheap perescription drugs, and their deceptive PR campaign that severely overstated their workers’ health care coverage, it’s not hard to understand our skepticism. [get the details in the extended entry]

Despite all of their feel-good rhetoric, the reality is that nearly half of Walmart’s 675,000 employees – not to mention hundreds of thousands of children of these employees – remain without health care. The situation is not much better for the employees who are covered by Walmart’s plan, as highlighted by a Baltimore doctor in a letter to the editor in the Baltimore Sun. The submission details just how bad that coverage is for patients and doctors. Here is a short excerpt:

“I have several Wal-Mart employees as my patients. I can in all honesty declare that Wal-Mart, a wealthy corporation, for years got away with providing its employees no health care coverage at all or the type of coverage from which doctors could barely eke out payments.

Out of pocket expenses for patients are outrageous with this coverage. Hand me a Wal-Mart health insurance card, and I will let out a spontaneous sigh of exasperation because I know from experience what lies ahead is a runaround for meager compensation after I have delivered all the services.”

 

While we would love to think that Walmart has seen the light and is onboard to help every American attain the health care they deserve, we tend to agree with this fed up doc that “Wal-Mart is an image conscious opportunist.”

Stay up to date with the campaign against Walmart’s destructive policies at www.wakeupwalmart.com

Walmart’s $4 Drugs Coming From Indian Company Whose Products Have Been Banned In US and Canada

Walmart, in one of their worst ways of prioritizing prices above qualities to date, turns to a foreign drug supplier, Ranbaxy Laboratories, LTD, who has repeatedly been investigated by the FDA and the DoJ for “inadequate” safeguards against contamination, falsification of records and submitting false information to the FDA.  

On top of that, just eight months before the FDA inspected Ranbaxy’s Paonta Sahib plant and found significant violations, Walmart awarded the company a “Supplier Award” for improving shipping times and performance.

In a new report on our website, we detail their multi-year spanning violations, DoJ investigation, Congressional Investigation, and list out all of the drugs made at the facility in questions.  Additionally, we detail their recent violations below.  

2009 Violations

In Feb 2009, the FDA halted a review of importation applications for generic drugs manufactured at Ranbaxy’s Paonta Sahib plant owned by Ranbaxy Laboratories, LTD, the Indian generic drug manufacturer, “due to evidence of falsified data.” According to the FDA press release, Ranbaxy “falsified data and test results in approved and pending drug applications.” Not only were seven different examples of false statements made by Ranbaxy to the FDA in their warning letter – this was the third time the facility had run afould of fed Food and Drug laws.  

The FDA did include a caveat in its release, stating that the agency “has no evidence that these drugs do not meet their quality specifications and has not identified any health risks associated with currently marketed Ranbaxy products.”  But just a week after the FDA announced it was halting review of Paonta Sahib applications, Canada announced it was “quarantining” all drugs produced at the Paonta Sahib plant.

2008 Violations

Previously, in September 2008, the FDA issued warning letters to Ranbaxy regarding “significant deviations” from FDA standards for the manufacture of drugs sold in the United States. According to an FDA press release, the agency also banned the importation of any Ranbaxy drugs produced at the company’s Dewas and Paonta Sahib plants.

According to the release, the Dewas plant’s cross-contamination prevention program was “insufficient.” These programs are designed to prevent cross-contamination between different types of drugs. The plant also used “inadequate” sterilization procedures and performed “inadequate failure investigations.” According to the FDA release, failure investigations are performed “to address any manufacturing control or product rejection to determine the root cause and prevent recurrence.” The Paonta Sahib plant had “inaccurate” records regarding cleaning and maintaining of its equipment and “incomplete” records.

Deborah Autor, director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, announced that the “severe violations” had led the FDA to ban importation of drugs from these plants and to deny any new drug import applications for drugs manufactured at these plants.

Before the warning letters were sent and the sanctions put in place, Ranbaxy had the opportunity to rectify the problems at the Dewas and Paonta Sahib plants; however, the company’s “response failed to adequately address multiple, serious deficiencies.”

Again – please read our full report at Wake-Up Wal-Mart.