From an original post from my friend Big-E's article titled: Target; the Impact of Bad P.R.
I have this point to offer.
Openly gay satellite radio host: Michaelangelo Signorile, from The Gist, presented an argument that went beyond the conversation of this apology. The apology was aimed directly at Target employees and completely ignored everything and everybody else.
Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said:
"While I firmly believe that a business climate conducive to growth is critical to our future, I realize our decision affected many of you in a way I did not anticipate, and for that I am genuinely sorry," Steinhafel wrote.
As others have observed, there is notably no mention in the apology of Target denouncing support for Emmel or removing any portion of the donation, a move several of the protesters have called for.
Minnesota Republican Gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer and his fellow Republicans have one real goal with our economy. Reduce salaries so that corporations can make larger profits. I call this the Wal-Martization of our economy. The NY Times weighed in on this topic back in 2003:
The 70,000 grocery workers on strike in Southern California are the front line in a battle to prevent middle-class service jobs from turning into poverty-level ones. The supermarkets say they are forced to lower their labor costs to compete with Wal-Mart, a nonunion, low-wage employer aggressively moving into the grocery business. Everyone should be concerned about this fight. It is, at bottom, about the ability of retail workers to earn wages that keep their families out of poverty.
Grocery stores in Southern California are bracing for the arrival, in February, of the first of 40 Wal-Mart grocery supercenters. Wal-Mart's prices are about 14 percent lower than other groceries' because the company is aggressive about squeezing costs, including labor costs. Its workers earn a third less than unionized grocery workers, and pay for much of their health insurance. Wal-Mart uses hardball tactics to ward off unions. Since 1995, the government has issued at least 60 complaints alleging illegal anti-union activities.
So it's no surprise that Tom Emmer wants to slash server salaries so that owners can make more money. It's been the Republicans economic plan since Reagan. Bust unions and force workers to take low/no benefit jobs with crap salaries. They still believe in the trickle-down economics.
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.
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:
(I have support the preservation of civil war sites that can not be replaced. Wal-marts are easy to find. - promoted by Grace Kelly)
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:
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.
This is rather unconvincing. After years of bad reputation for its shoddy healthcare offerings, Walmart is trying to pretend it cares about healthcare reform.
One of the most consistent defenses of Walmart is that it has succeeded because it simply delivered what customers wanted and that if you don't like it, just don't shop there. But Firedoglake has a great piece up this week that explains how even the non-Walmart shoppers are not only affected by Walmart, but are actually paying in many ways to subsidize it:
Well into his fourth decade of song-crafting prowess, and his third of life as a household name, Bruce Springsteen now stands at the pinnacle of singer-songwriter achievement: first sharing a stage with the Father of American Folk Music at the We Are One Concert on the National Mall, then rocking out a set of blue-collar anthems a scant two weeks later at the Super Bowl.
The Boss has earned it. From his rebuff of Reagan's ham-fisted "Born in the U.S.A." co-opt, to his protest of Amadou Diallo's sanctioned murder by performing "41 Shots" in Madison Square Garden, Springsteen has made it clear that his is the music of the oppressed, the dissatisfied, the American underdog- making his misstep with Wal-Mart all the more confounding.
This December, Wake Up Wal-Mart is going all out with our annual Holiday Campaign to awaken America's largest retailer to its responsibilities. Here is a peek at our second TV ad for 2008's holiday season:
Titled Wal-Mart: America Just Can't Afford It Any Longer, the ad focuses on the hidden costs of shopping at Wal-Mart:
A lot of my posts here pertain to corporate responsibility-- most specifically and most often, with the halting attempts of America's largest retailer to fully grasp and embrace the meaning of that term, especially as it pertains to its employees, here in Minnesota and around the country.
This is because of my association with Wake-Up Wal-Mart and my dedication to the group's agenda.
Generally in this pursuit, I oscillate between a tone of detached snark and one of outraged derision toward the company, so I've been fairly described as having "an axe to grind."
But I've been speechless since Black Friday. No snark, and it's hard to even muster outrage. There was a great thread on Daily Kos on the events of that day, and since that point we've learned that the name of the brave deceased worker is Jdimytai Damour.
It's been a week, and I still don't know what to say, but Meghan Scott of Wake-Up Wal-Mart has issued the following statement:
Supposedly, the company is specifically focused on facilitating the needs of mothers.
Walmart's silly, pandering, new "Eleven Moms" campaign-- consisting, no kidding, of 19 rather than 11 bargain-hunting, values-beaming women bloggers-- will probably serve its intended purpose of buoying the brand through the upcoming holiday season.
But to peel back the facile PR facade-- to examine real real stories of women's experiences at Walmart's stores-- is to see something else entirely:
Heather Silvis says she felt bullied when Wal-Mart associates told her she could not breastfeed her baby in the store on Two Notch Road.
Walmart's hometown newspaper, the Northwest Arkansas Morning News, has an interesting article up today about Walmart executives meeting with 200 of their cronies at a conference and outlining their plans for 2009. It could be a watershed year for progressives, but the Bentonville behemoth has some plans of its own and they ain't pretty.
So I thought I'd go through each one of Walmart's plans and translate some of their PR spin - or wipe the lipstick off the pig, if you will. All stats and figures are compliments of WakeUpWalmart.com, with whom I do some work.
In a brilliant, stunning move indicating their mastery of the PR field, America's largest retailer has just released a press release, the real meat of which is how good they are at press releases... press releases that are so transparently phony that my cat rolled his eyes at me when I read it aloud.
The thing is, they release press releases about their policies all the time-- about as often as they proclaim that they're ~rolling back prices~ or ~helping you live better~ or whatever truckload of utter crap they're using for a slogan these days.
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.
