The Empire Strikes Back
Having apparently grown weary and wary of the out all assault upon it by increasingly well-financed, organized, and motivated groups, Wal-Mart has deciced to counter-attack.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is enjoying its best publicity in years as even its harshest critics laud the retailer's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. But Chief Executive Lee Scott isn't resting on his laurels just yet. For years, Wal-Mart largely ignored its image problems as customers flocked to its stores and its growth seemed nearly unstoppable. But the company acknowledges that it can no longer dismiss increasingly vocal and well-organized groups that are having some success in blocking its U.S. expansion, particularly in urban areas.
And now, Scott has started to drop hints about a secret spin strategy to counter a union-backed, anti-Wal-Mart media blitz that he says is not going to go away. Scott -- who says his job is to defend Wal-Mart's reputation from those who contend the world's No. 1 retailer pays poverty-level wages and drives competitors out of business -- wouldn't divulge details of the new public relations plan, but he has stressed its importance.
"It is not a matter of Wal-Mart just needing to hire public relations people," Scott said in a recent speech. "This is a significant issue that we face and has to be dealt with ... internally, in the company, without allowing our plans to be public." He estimated that Wal-Mart's critics are spending $25 million on what he calls the largest and best-financed campaign in history "directed at slowing this company down."
There is good reason why Scott may not be ready to show his hand: Wal-Mart critics have become particularly adept at spinning anything the company does in a negative light. For example, after donating millions in cash and truckloads of goods for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Chris Kofinis, one of the organizers of the "Wake Up Wal-Mart" campaign financed by the union of United Food and Commercial Workers offers only begrduging praise intimating that it shows the company is "capable" of doing good and inferring that it has suspect motives:
If Wal-Mart chose to do the right thing everyday, they wouldn't need a super-secret public relations strategy.
Evan when 11,000 people line up for 400 jobs at a new Wal-Mart in Oakland, CA, Kofinis suggests that this is bad too:
"Wal-Mart has long underestimated the serious concerns American people have about how they treat their workers, the community and the negative impact they have on the nation," he said. "As long as they continue to ignore that, the reality is they're going to have growing opposition at the local, state and national level."
In reality the opposition coming from Wake Up Wal-Mart and from Wal-Mart Watch is motivated as much by self-concern and self-preservation as it is by concern for the workers, the community, and the nation. Both organizations are funded in large measure by some of the country's largest and most vocal labor unions, and supported by a rag-tag band of other anti-business, environmental, and "economic justice" groups. What the former want is clear- to unionize a signficant part of the workforce of the nation's largest private employer. Doing so would be a tremendous coup as it would provide them with the legitimacy and, more importantly, a steady revenue stream with which to then take on others in the industry. They probably believe that unionizing Wal-Mart could help them reverse the declines in union membership that have plagued almost every major US union in the last 25 years. As such, investing $25 Million to get their foot further in the door is just that, an investment, and one that they hope will pay off in spades, shovels, brooms, and rakes.
The supporting fringe organizations play an important, albeit secondary, role. Most provide little or no money or material support outside of their specific locales. Instead, they are useful for creating the illusion that there is widespread and broad-based opposition to Wal-Mart. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are mostly along for the ride. In exchange for showing up at meetings or public events where media with cameras will be present, they are given a share of the table scraps. That money, in turn, will be used to pay their rent-a-mobs and to fund their other special interests, interests ranging from river clean-up, solidarity with Haiti, voter registration, and abortion, farm workers' and minority rights. Nice work if you can get. Better work if you can get someone else to do it and give you the money. Wal-Mart is right to fight back and to not reveal how it will do so until a time and place of its choosing.