WakeUpWalMart.com is about Americans joining together in common purpose to change Wal-Mart. There is only one force powerful enough to change the #1 Fortune 500 company in the world – the American people.

WakeUpWalMart.com is about giving Americans the tools to empower themselves to change the world’s largest employer. We are Wal-Mart’s customers and we have the power to make Wal-Mart live up to its responsibility to its employees, our families, our communities and the nation.
We are 145,000 Americans and growing. We are grassroots leaders, community groups and activists who have woken up to the high costs of Wal-Mart and recognize Wal-Mart’s negative impact on our jobs, our wages, our health care and our communities.

We will be a vehicle through which millions of Americans can join together, from neighborhoods all across our nation, to harness the power of our consumer behavior and use it to reform a company. America’s largest corporation must reflect America’s values.

WakeUpWalMart.com is your campaign. It is a grassroots movement which will represent the best America has to offer.

On the surface, nothing seems awry. These aren't my politics but, like all people who uphold the ideals of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of the press, I celebrate the right of citizens and consumers to organize efforts to improve civic, political, and economic life. That said, I do find disturbing the groups blatant misrepresentation of its origins and sources of support. I find it peculiar that only if you read all the way to the very bottom of the page do you find out that the effort is organized by a labor union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, a union currently struggling to organize Wal-Mart workers.

Now, of course, none of this is a crime. However, one does need to ask why it is that the banner across the top of the WUWM site reads "Join America's Campaign to Change Wal-Mart" instead of something that is a little closer to the truth, something like "Join the UFCW's Campaign to Change Wal-Mart" or "Join the UFCW's Campaign to Unionize Wal-Mart." At least that would be open and honest. They won't do that, however, because they rightly believe it would work against them. Why? Perhaps they read the Economist's poll of 2000+ American citizens published in February of this year. One of the questions on that poll was "Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?" The results, as shown below, were compared to answers given in 1991, and 1997, and in the case of 2005, broken out by political affiliation [click on it to see full details]]

So, again, I find it curious that the UFCW website prominently promotes its efforts to "change" Wal-Mart, including bright bold links to its WUWM efforts while the WUWM does not reciprocate in kind. Perhaps WUWM thinks that putting its union affilation front and center would alienate the half of the population that already disapproves of unions and would probably not excite the remaining 20% that are indifferent about them. The effect would no doubt be even more negative among those who vote Republican.

And as if this were not enough, today a regular reader provided me a link to a Washington Post article by Joel Mowbray that casts considerable doubt on the objectivity of both the pollster in question, John Zogby of Zogby International, and the labor union chief who commissioned it. Here are some extended excerpts:

In recent years, Mr. Zogby has pocketed roughly $90,000 to serve as an expert witness for individuals suing Wal-Mart, according to testimony he gave in a deposition last year in an Arizona case. Nowhere is Mr. Zogby's prior work on behalf of plaintiffs mentioned in the press release announcing the poll results.

During a 45-minute phone interview for this column, Mr. Zogby willingly acknowledged when asked about his work on behalf of the various plaintiffs. He repeatedly requested that the column reflect his honesty, which shows that he understands the relevance of his past work.

Which raises the question: If he implicitly concedes that his testifying for people suing Wal-Mart is relevant, then why wasn't that disclosure in the announcement of the poll results?

And then there is this:
Without the Zogby magic dust sprinkled on the poll, most would see it as yet another grenade lobbed at Wal-Mart by the unions, who have, thus far, failed to push the retailer's million-plus employees into their ranks. The tantalizing prospect of landing billions in new compulsory dues has sprung Big Labor into action, crafting a campaign to give Wal-Mart a black eye and, they hope, forcing the retailer into submission.

Near the end of phone interview, [Union head] Mr. Kofinis became quite agitated and yelled, "You can't say that the poll isn't objective!" But given the facts, it would seem better to ask: How can anyone say it is?

Now, clearly Mr. Kofinis does not understand what the word "objective" means. And that fact alone tells us much about the shape of what we have seen and will see in this conflict. As I mentioned elsewhere, the anti-Wal-Mart effort is one of bleeding the company white by a thousand paper cuts. They have no one thing to make the company capitulate. What they do have, however, is the ability to generate an endless stream of unrepresentative anecdotes, pseudo-objective poll results, agenda-driven research studies, misleading press releases, hackneyed populist rhetoric, and hyperbolic bluster, thereby creating the impression of a groundswell of resistance to Wal-Mart.

It's a classic where-there's-smoke-there-must-be-fire strategy. The truth is that nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, a highly-organized, narrowly-focused, politically-aware group of labor activists and their sympathizers, all of whom are anxious to create the impression that they speak for millions of Americans, have got themselves ahold of some very good smoke machines. That's not to say that nothing is aflame, however. There surely is. Someone's pants are on fire.

A prediction: the UFCW and others will not change their tactics. Unless we see a retraction before the end of business on Monday, then I have to assume that they have committed themselves to continuing their bare knuckles brawl with Wal-Mart and the smoke-and-fire, smoke-and-mirrors, smoke-filled-backrooms strategies for winning it. All of this is sad because neither the union nor its members are well-served by this approach. Nor is the reputation of pollsters exactly burnished by close assocation with these blatantly misleading behaviors. It isn't Wal-Mart that needs to wake up here.
Note: PunditGuy's analysis of this situation, The Cost of Poll$, ended with the almost the same line as mine. We came up with them independently. I guess this is an example of similar minds thinking alike ;-)
Also on this blog:

The Political Dimensions of the War on Wal-Mart and Five Forces Analysis of Wal-Mart and The Economic Impact of Wal-Mart and The Empire Strikes Back and the Wal-Mart Archive

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