By E. J. Montini,
Arizona Republic
January 31st, 2008                              [back to top]    

Early on a Tuesday morning in August, 41-year-old Steve Turner drove to the Wal-Mart at 83rd Avenue and Union Hills in order to get an oil change for his car. What happened after that was explained most succinctly by his wife, Karen.

"It took them about 20 minutes to service the car," she said. "It took nine hours before we found my husband's body in a bathroom stall."

Earlier this week, Karen talked about that terrible day. It's not something she wanted to do. She'd waited a long time to contact me because she had been hoping that someone affiliated with the corporate giant would have replied to a letter about the tragedy that had been sent to Wal-Mart officials on her behalf.

"But I've received nothing," she said. "I don't blame them for my husband's death. It's tragic, and my son and I will have to deal with it. But it's not their fault. However, what happened after Steve died was a horror and should happen to no one ever again. What if the next person, unlike my husband, could have been helped if they were found sooner?"

Steve Turner was an airline mechanic. The day that he went to the Wal-Mart he was scheduled to work a shift beginning at about noon. He got to the store shortly before 8 a.m. and called Karen to ask if there was anything that she wanted him to pick up while he was there.

"We said that we loved each other and that was it," she said. "Then, when I didn't hear from him by noon, I knew something was wrong. He was never late."

Karen went to the store and asked employees to help her search for her husband. One of the first places they checked was the bathroom. She said that a custodian had the door blocked for cleaning and told her the room was empty. She would learn later that her husband had died in one of the stalls of an aortic dissection, a weakened blood vessel that ruptured. It's the same condition that killed actor John Ritter.

"Steve showed no signs of anything being wrong," she said. "I was told that he probably died suddenly at 8:30 that morning."

Karen called the police. She roamed the store for hours. But it wasn't until 5 p.m., when another janitor mentioned that a customer seemed to be spending the afternoon in the bathroom that she rushed in and found Steve's body.

Attorney Douglas Belknap later wrote a letter for her to Wal-Mart officials. It reads in part:

"I do not 'represent' Karen in the usual sense and I do not intend to file a lawsuit. Karen simply wants to make sure that someone at Wal-Mart's corporate level understand the excruciating mental anguish she suffered as a result of almost unbelievable set of circumstances that she hopes Wal-Mart will prevent from recurring."

That was in September. When she didn't hear back, she contacted me.

"What if the next person has a stroke or a heart attack and no one thoroughly checks every place in the store?" she said. "Or worse, what if something bad was happening to a child?"

I contacted Wal-Mart's corporate offices and e-mailed them another copy of Karen's letter. I haven't heard back. Maybe company lawyers are wary of Karen when she says that she's not filing a lawsuit. Maybe they're uncomfortable saying that they're sorry for her loss or that they will put procedures in place to assure more thorough store searches. Who knows? Maybe it just takes a long time for anything to get done in a corporation as large as Wal-Mart. Even a letter.

Karen's son is 5. She was hoping to show him correspondence from Wal-Mart when he's older as a way of explaining what happened. It's still possible a note of some kind will arrive.

In the meantime, I'm hoping this will do.

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Wal-Mart expands RFID requirements

By VICTOR GODINEZ
The Dallas Morning News
Wednesday, January 30, 2008                              [back to top]    

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is looking to accelerate its RFID rollout, and once again the Dallas area is at the heart of the effort.

The company is requiring all suppliers shipping products to its Sam Club's distribution center in DeSoto to start applying the radio tags to their pallets starting today.

If they don't, Wal-Mart will charge the suppliers $2 per pallet to do it for them, the company informed them in a letter earlier this month.

"I think everyone recognizes that it's the future of how products are going to move through the supply chain, and not just at Wal-Mart, but everywhere," said Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley.

Wal-Mart and radio frequency identification vendors say the new timeline – with additional distribution centers around the country coming online later this year – highlights the fact that the wireless technology is working as intended, cutting down on out-of-stock problems and boosting sales.

And it's another sign that the Dallas area is one of the major centers of RFID development and implementation.

Dean Frew is president and chief executive of Carrollton-based Xterprise Inc., which helps other companies, including many Wal-Mart and Sam's Club suppliers, implement RFID systems.

Mr. Frew said the new timeline for shipping RFID-tagged pallets to the Sam's Club distribution center will definitely help Wal-Mart, although the payoff for the suppliers themselves might be a bit further off.

"There's clearly a benefit for the suppliers," he said. "Is it as immediate as they would like to see? No, probably not.

"But you can't ignore the fact that if they're able to keep the shelf stocked more efficiently, in the end suppliers are going to benefit as well."

RFID technology includes a paper-thin tag with a tiny chip and antenna. When in range of a wireless scanner – at a loading dock in a warehouse, for example – the chip is activated and transmits a small burst of data about the product it's attached to.

The goal is an automatic electronic inventory system that can track when products come in the warehouse, when they get shipped to stores, and, eventually, when they get sold off the shelf.

After the DeSoto distribution center ramps up, suppliers will have to add four more Sam's Club distribution centers – including one in Dayton, Texas – to their list by the end of October, and then 17 more by the end of January 2009.

The DeSoto facility will also be the first Sam's Club distribution center in the country where suppliers will be required to tag every case on a pallet (Oct. 31, 2008) and then every single item that makes it on to store shelves (Oct. 31, 2009).

The timelines should remove any confusion that suppliers have about what they need to do, Mr. Simley said.

"A lot of suppliers of Sam's were asking for some clarity," he said. "What do you want us to do and when do you want us to do it by?"

Making DeSoto the launching pad for that effort makes sense.

The Dallas area's reputation as a top spot for RFID technology can be traced to a variety of sources, from technical work done by researchers at Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. to Wal-Mart's own RFID pilot program, which started in the region.

The area is home to scores of RFID-focused start-up firms, while the Metroplex Technology Business Council is trying to brand the Dallas-Fort Worth region as the "RFID Hub."

The annual RFID World convention has been held in Grapevine for several years, although the 2008 event is being held in Las Vegas

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Wal-Mart Will Shake Up Apparel Unit; Layoffs Set

By Michael Barbaro,
New York Times
January 30th, 2008                          [back to top]    

In a major revamping of its sluggish clothing business, Wal-Mart Stores will shut two divisions at its headquarters in Arkansas, eliminate dozens of positions and move dozens more to New York City.

This will be the first time in years that Wal-Mart, a company renowned for growth, has laid off a significant number of workers at its headquarters.

The overhaul, which has not been made public, is intended to revive one of the weakest departments in Wal-Mart’s 5,000 stores: men’s, women’s and children’s apparel, a $30 billion business for the retailer.

Over the last several years, under the direction of Claire Watts, the top clothing executive, the company experimented with somewhat more upscale collections. Wal-Mart created new divisions to spot trends and to design apparel.

But customers largely rejected the new looks — and, in July, Wal-Mart pushed out Ms. Watts. Today, it is emphasizing what executives call “key items,” like basic, brightly colored T-shirts, over outfits from clothing collections.

The shift effectively overturns the strategy and structure put in place by Ms. Watts. In an internal announcement Tuesday, the company said it would close its product development and sourcing divisions, a company spokeswoman, Linda Blakley, confirmed.

As a result, dozens of positions will be eliminated, Ms. Blakley said. The company would not specify how many, and other details remained sketchy Tuesday.

“We will do everything we can to minimize the impact” of the job eliminations, Ms. Blakley said, like offering workers different jobs within Wal-Mart.

The work handled by the two divisions will be shifted to different units, called buying and brand merchandising. The buying unit will be based at Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.; brand merchandising will be in New York City. As many as 30 workers will move to New York City from Arkansas.

“We wanted a structure where roles were clearer and we can get merchandise into stores as quickly as possible,” Ms. Blakley said.

Bill Dreher, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, said Wal-Mart had recognized the previous strategy’s problems.

“They had tried to overreach — on their own, with little expertise or credibility in fashion. It was not bound for success,” he said. “Now, their aspirations in fashion are much more modest.” The reorganization, he added, “is a big deal, because it means Wal-Mart can finally get apparel right.”

Ms. Blakley said Wal-Mart wanted to “present key items with authority” and “make big bets in apparel where the growth is.”

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Big Business Backs Health Insurance

Associated Press
01.30.08                                           [back to top]    

NEW YORK - As presidential candidates push their plans to makeover the nation's health-care system, some of America's largest employers presented their own suggested fix Wednesday.

Every adult American should be required to purchase health insurance coverage for themselves and their children on a tax-advantaged basis, but it shouldn't be incumbent on business owners to offer or pay for it, according to the National Business Group on Health, or NBGH, a non-profit association of nearly 300 large employers, including General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people )

Instead, the NBGH is advocating that individuals who purchase their own policies should be given the same tax advantages as workers under employer-sponsored group health plans, which the NBGH says is the main reason why many American families covered by these plans have access to affordable coverage. Employers who offer group health insurance can write off these benefits for tax purposes, and the money doesn't count as taxable income for the employees.

By contrast, an employee who purchases their own coverage - because their employer doesn't offer health benefits - must pay income taxes on it. Since 2003, the self-employed can take a tax deduction when they take out their own coverage.

But to achieve universal coverage, states and federal governments need to work together with insurers and employers to develop insurance options that meet the medical needs and budgets of American families, according to the NBGH which sets out 20 conditions that would need to be met to meet such a goal.

"With health costs continuing to rise, a weak economy and the number of uninsured Americans growing at an alarming pace, the need to reform our health care system is at an all-time high," said NBGH President Helen Darling.

"Achieving successful health reform, however, is a tremendous challenge that will require individuals, health care providers, insurers, employers and governments at all levels to take on shared responsibility. No one group can or should bear full responsibility," she says.

Proponents of individual mandates say they respond to concerns about uninsured people who receive treatment when they're sick but pass on its cost to taxpayers or individuals with insurance. Requiring everyone to have coverage will strengthen and stabilize insurance risk pools by including more healthy people - who are the most likely to risk going without insurance - eventually driving down the costs for all, they say. However, critics say implementing an individual mandate could be costly and impractical as it would require new layers of bureaucracy to enforce.

Some 177 million Americans get their health insurance through their employers, making job-based coverage the most common source of coverage. Large companies continue to view health benefits as a key tool for recruitment and retention and 98 percent of firms with over 200 workers offer health coverage to employees, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute. However, the cost of annual premiums has almost doubled since 2000 to $12,106 for family coverage and $4,479 for an individual, damaging corporate competitiveness in the global economy.

NBGH said its members want to maintain their voluntary role in providing health insurance, but are opposed to any mandates that would require them to provide it or else contribute to the cost of it, an option known as "pay or play."

"Mandating employers to offer coverage or requiring them to pay the government is very harmful to working families and our economy because it will only force employers to eliminate jobs, move more jobs offshore, stunt future job growth, or raise consumer prices," says Darling.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Wal-Mart gets its bank - in Mexico

By Carolyn Whelan,
CNN Money
January 29th, 2008                      [back to top]    

For years, Wal-Mart tried to enter the U.S. banking business, but it gave up in 2007, pulling its application after endless outcries from domestic retail banks. Now it's found a more receptive audience south of the border. In November, Wal-Mart de México opened its first consumer bank, Banco Wal-Mart, in Toluca; the company plans to launch 80 more by the end of the year.

Toluca , a sprawling industrial town near Mexico City, seems like an unlikely place for Wal-Mart's maiden push into banking. But there, in a strip mall, beside a bakery and a beauty parlor, Norma Pacheco is mulling a Wal-Mart account. "I'd use it to pay for my Wal-Mart purchases," says Pacheco, a 42-year-old engineer. "The brand gives me confidence."

Pacheco isn't the client Wal-Mart de México is ultimately after. Mexico's biggest retailer, with 668 stores, wants to crack the low-income market in a country where just 24 percent of households have savings accounts, compared with 55 percent in Chile. Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) plans to boost sales via debit cards, later ease users into more profitable services like insurance, and make money on interest-rate spreads. Early signs are promising. Héctor Aguila, the bank's manager, says that about 40 percent of the new clients who have signed up at dedicated desks in the store since the bank's November launch have never had an account of any kind.

Wal-Mart's mission is to lure newcomers with easy instructions and entry points, like minimum balances of less than $5 and no commissions, compared with $100 minimums at competing banks. (But interest rates are only 1 percent, half what most banks pay, and Wal-Mart's annual rate for consumer loans is 75 percent.) The retailer, which opened three branches in Toluca, plans to have as many as 80 by the end of the year, before an even bigger push in 2009.

Wal-Mart is also eyeing the $23 billion remittances market - the amount sent home every year by Mexican immigrants in the U.S. Because it forged a cut-rate deal with MoneyGram (MGI), Wal-Mart is outpacing the overall growth in the money-transfer market, says Robert Dodd, an analyst at Morgan Keegan, but its share remains tiny. The retailer says it has no plans to revisit the U.S. bank market soon, though Jan Smith, managing director of InfoAmericas in M iami, says Mexico is "a good dress rehearsal."

Wal-Mart isn't the first bank to court Mexico's low-income earners. In 2002 appliances retailer Grupo Elektra started Banco Azteca. Today it has nearly 1,500 branches and more than seven million savings accounts. A spinoff from microfinance firm Compartamos followed in April with similar services and an IPO that was 13 times oversubscribed. But Wal-Mart's broad appeal, high traffic, and low fees give it an edge, analysts say.

The retailer's entry into Mexican banking follows reforms by the Calderón administration, which wanted to make it easier for low-income earners to open accounts. Now other big banks may try to get in on the action. Says HSBC (HBC) corporate accounts manager Julius Cardoza: "We're curious about Wal-Mart's strategy."

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Wal-Mart to Cut Prices on Some Items

Associated Press
01.29.08                                              [back to top]    

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Tuesday it will cut prices on thousands of items to lure shoppers struggling with the weak economy.

The retailer said it will roll back prices by 10 percent to 30 percent on a range of products, particularly Super Bowl snacks, fitness items and home products. The store said it will offer no interest for 18 months on purchases of $250 or more with a Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) credit card.

The store also said it would include a $100 gift card with the purchase of a $1,296 Phillips 42-inch LCD HDTV.

The company said the latest price cuts will be detailed in its latest home circular.

Wal-Mart shares rose 4 cents to $48.75 in premarket trading. The shares closed at $48.71 Monday.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

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SunPower Installs First Wal-Mart System

Associated Press
01.28.08                                   [back to top]    

CHINO, Calif. - SunPower Corp. has finished installing the first of seven solar-power systems for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. at one of the retailer's California locations, the companies said Monday.

The 390-kilowatt system has been installed at a Sam's Club store in Chino. The seven systems will have a total annual generating capacity of 4.6 megawatts.

A one-megawatt plant running continuously at full capacity can power 778 households each year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. There are 1,000 kilowatts in a megawatt. Solar technology has lower capacity since its power generation is constrained by availability of the sun.

Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) installed the SunPower (nasdaq: SPWR - news - people ) system using the solar-product maker's Access program, which allows entities to purchase solar electricity through a long-term agreement instead of purchasing the systems to be installed.

Wal-Mart has plans to install solar panels at about 22 of its stores and distribution centers in Hawaii and California. It expects the stores to save on utility bills starting the first day of each system's operation and estimates the systems will reduce its annual greenhouse-gas emissions by 8,000 to 10,000 metric tons.

SunPower shares rose $1.31, or 1.8 percent, to $74.60 in premarket trading after closing Friday at $73.29. Wal-Mart shares closed at $48.09 Friday.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Sentencing Set for Wal-Mart's Ex-No. 2

Associated Press
01.26.08                                        [back to top]    

FORT SMITH, Ark. - Former Wal-Mart executive Tom Coughlin will be sentenced again for fraud and tax evasion next month without the health exam requested by federal prosecutors, a judge ruled.

Coughlin had cited health problems, including heart trouble, when he was sentenced in 2006 to 27 months of home detention. He had faced a possible sentence of more than 28 years in prison and fines of $1.35 million.

Last year, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the sentence was too lenient and sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson.

In an order Thursday, Dawson said a health exam would delay Coughlin's Feb. 1 sentencing and cause him to spend in more time in home detention without credit.

Coughlin was second in charge at Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people ), the world's largest retailer, when he retired in 2005. He was accused of stealing gift cards and having the company cover the cost of other items, for a total loss that Wal-Mart estimated at about $500,000. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion in 2006.

In addition to home detention, Coughlin was fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution. Officials say Coughlin has paid those sums.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Wal-Mart outlines vision as 'company of the future'

Reuters
Thursday January 24                       [back to top]    

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc must be a "company of the future" that embraces advances such as electronic health records or hybrid cars to drive down costs, keep prices low and tackle issues the government may not be able to solve, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

"We live in a time when people are losing confidence in the ability of government to solve problems," said CEO Lee Scott, according to a copy of a speech provided to the media.

"But at Wal-Mart, we don't see the sidelines that politicians see. And we do not wait for someone else to solve problems that might hurt our business or affect our customers in a negative way."

Instead, Scott said Wal-Mart will use its heft as the world's largest retailer to push for changes in health care, energy consumption and sourcing.

Scott was scheduled to deliver the speech at a meeting for U.S. store managers held in Kansas City, Missouri.

It built on a speech he delivered in October 2005, when he first outlined Wal-Mart's environmental efforts. While the goals, such as one day using only renewable energy and creating zero waste, are seen as a way to help the environment, they are also meant to help Wal-Mart cut costs.

Many of the goals Scott outlined on Wednesday were aimed at helping Wal-Mart strip out excess costs and promote low prices at a time when its core lower-income shoppers are being squeezed by a deteriorating housing market, higher food and fuel costs and a credit market crunch.

"We see our customers having to choose between filling up their gas tanks or buying food and medicine and clothes," Scott said, adding that, in the United States, out-of-pocket energy costs for working families have doubled over the past decade.

"These families now spend an estimated 17 percent of their monthly income on energy. Somebody has to do something."

He added Wal-Mart is working with its suppliers to make the most "energy intensive" products in its stores 25 percent more energy efficient within three years.

He also said that, by 2010, the retailer wants all its flat-panel TVs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.

On the health care front, he said Wal-Mart will partner with doctors to increase the number of electronic prescriptions that it fills in the United States to 8 million by the end of year. That would mark a nearly 400 percent increase in e-prescriptions filled at Wal-Mart, he said.

Wal-Mart will also provide electronic health records to U.S. employees and their family members by the end of 2010.

"These records will be personal, private and portable. They will drive down costs and improve quality and safety," he said.

In the wake of a slew of recalls last year of Chinese-made products, Scott said Wal-Mart intends to be tough with suppliers.

Wal-Mart will only work with suppliers "who maintain our standards throughout our relationship," he said, adding that, in some cases, Wal-Mart may pay more to suppliers that meet its standards.

"Paying more in the short term for quality will mean paying less in the long term as a company," he said.

FAR OUT!

In looking for ways that Wal-Mart could become a retailer of the future, Scott also offered some ideas he said were "completely out there."

For instance, he has been talking with the heads of the major auto manufacturers, asking "if there is a place for Wal- Mart in the hybrid electric or plug-in electric car market, so our customers do not have to spend so much money filling up their gas tanks."

"Maybe there isn't room for Wal-Mart in this right now. But something tells me that there may be some role for us in the future and we are going to continue taking a look at this," he added.

Wal-Mart could also try to provide "ecofriendly energy" to customers.

"Imagine your customers pulling into your parking lot and seeing wind turbines and solar panels, and being able to charge their cars while they shop," he said.

Wal-Mart could then feed the power generated by its wind turbines and solar powers back into the electrical grid.

"Just imagine the impact of our customers being able to buy ecofriendly energy at the unbeatable Wal-Mart price," he added.

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Bill Gates and Wal-Mart want to save the world

Call it Capitalism 2.0: Microsoft's founder and Wal-Mart's CEO say there's got to be a better way.

Andrew Leonard
Jan. 24, 2008                                            [back to top]    

Ten years ago (almost to the day) I thought I was being provocative when I called Bill Gates a "bleeding heart do-gooder liberal," based on a relatively small contribution the Microsoft founder had made to a Washington state handgun control initiative and some grants given by the nascent Gates Foundation to reproductive health and family planning groups. Reporters love contrarian takes on reality, and back then, calling Gates a liberal, even as his company was establishing itself as a global avatar of rapacious capitalism, crushing all who dared oppose it, seemed daring.

So I would not have predicted that a decade later, Gates, channeling Mohammad Yunus, would address the mighty potentates gathered at Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum and tell them, "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well."

The Wall Street Journal has the scoop: Bill Gates "has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism."

Among the fixes he plans to call for: Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. "Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don't fully benefit from market forces," he plans to say....

In particular, he said, he's troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid," he said. "The part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion."

You go, Bill. But in a bizarre manifestation of über-capitalist harmonic convergence, on the same morning that the Journal was hyping its Bill Gates scoop, the New York Times reported that Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, gave a speech on Wednesday declaring that the world's biggest retail chain was determined to drastically change the world for the better, by simultaneously solving the world's energy, healthcare and environmental crises.

Scott's "social manifesto" left no social ill unturned:

It is important for all of us to understand that there are a number of issues facing the world that will profoundly affect our lives and our company. I am talking to you about issues like international trade, climate change, water shortages, social and economic inequities, infrastructure and foreign oil...

We live in a time when people are losing confidence in the ability of government to solve problems. But at Wal-Mart, we don't see the sidelines that politicians see. And we do not wait for someone else to solve problems that might hurt our business or affect our customers in a negative way.

Scott, if taken at his word, proposed a platform even more radical than Bill Gates':

In the next three years, we would like to build a very different system. We believe that there should be one framework of social and environmental standards for all major global retailers. And there should be one third party auditing system for everyone.

That sounds suspiciously like a New World Order agenda. Who would impose this "one framework"? Who would provide the "third party auditing system"? Dare we suggest, the United Nations?

Given Wal-Mart's track record on its treatment of its own employees, it is easier to be skeptical of Scott's promises -- cheap, energy-efficient air-conditioners for the people!-- than Bill Gates'. Gates is clearly devoting the rest of his life to spending his accumulated billions to improve the quality of life for the people living on this planet. Whether that can be done via a "bottom-of-the-pyramid" strategy in which businesses sell products such as cheap skin whitener to poor Indians is very much open to question, but Gates' commitment is not. Meanwhile, Scott's speech rings with all the sincerity one would expect from a major public relations campaign.

But even if you dismiss both speeches as self-serving grandstanding, it's still worth noting the direction in which the rhetoric is flowing. That Lee Scott should feel compelled to pledge that Wal-Mart is going to do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do, signals that the once all-conquering ideology of free-market greed-is-all-we-need-ism is no longer acceptable to tout in polite company.

The world's problems need fixing, and unregulated markets are not up to the job. Bill Gates and Lee Scott said so. Pass the word.

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From Wal-Mart: A social manifesto

By Michael Barbaro
International Herald Tribune
Thursday, January 24, 2008                      [back to top]    

KANSAS CITY, Missouri: Wal-Mart pledged Wednesday to cut the energy used by many of its products 25 percent, to force the chain's suppliers to meet stricter ethical standards and to apply its legendary cost-cutting skills to help other companies deliver health care for their employees.

In a lofty address that at times resembled a campaign speech, the chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, Lee Scott Jr., said that "we live in a time when people are losing confidence in the ability of government to solve problems." But Wal-Mart, he said, "does not wait for someone else to solve problems."

He then laid out sweeping plans for the company on several health and environmental issues, and he hinted that even more ambitious goals might be on the horizon. Scott said, for instance, that Wal-Mart is talking to leaders of the automobile industry about selling electric or hybrid cars � and might even install windmills in its parking lots so customers could recharge their cars with renewable electricity.

With the new commitments, Wal-Mart is trying to cement its reputation as a leader in areas where it was once known as a laggard. The initiatives are the most visible sign to date that Wal-Mart, which spent much of the past decade defending itself against criticism of its business practices, has gone on the offensive.

Since 2005, it has committed itself to a dizzying number of changes, and even some of the chain's critics concede that it has begun to make good on the promises. For instance, Scott said Wednesday that Wal-Mart had sold 145 million compact fluorescent light bulbs, which he said had saved enough electricity to forestall the need for three coal-fired power plants in the United States.

Several experts applauded the new goals, saying they would have an effect beyond Wal-Mart, given the chain's influence over companies that supply Wal-Mart and other retailers. "When Wal-Mart asks, suppliers jump," said Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are positive ripple effects throughout the supply chain."

On health care, Scott said that Wal-Mart would begin working with major American employers to help them manage and pay prescription drug claims, a costly task now handled by companies known as pharmacy benefit managers. He estimated Wal-Mart could save companies $100 million in 2008. That is a relatively small sum in the $275 billion annual American drug bill, but Wal-Mart has a history of refashioning nearly every business that it tackles.

In the address to store managers, Scott said Wal-Mart would try to fill eight million electronic prescriptions in 2008, four times the number filled last year. Such prescriptions are considered safer than handwritten doctors' notes, which can be misread by pharmacists, leading to medical errors, experts said.

And the chain said it would provide electronic health records to all of its United States employees and their family members by the end of 2010. These are intended to give doctors a full survey of a patient's medical history, in part to prevent treatments that conflict with one another.

Ron Pollack, the head of Families USA, a health care advocacy group, said the moves had the potential to "significantly improve quality and reduce the cost of health care."

Given Wal-Mart's size and influence over its peers, Pollack said, the plans "should have a salutary impact on employer-based health care."

Scott said that Wal-Mart, which already promotes energy-saving products in its stores like the fluorescent light bulbs, would begin focusing on additional products that use a large amount of energy, like air-conditioners, microwave ovens and televisions.

Its goal is to work with suppliers to make such products 25 percent more energy-efficient within three years. "We do not know exactly how we will get there," Scott conceded.

Advocacy groups have long argued there is room to cut electricity demand in the United States by improving the efficiency of appliances. Highly efficient appliances are available today, but they often cost more than inefficient ones, and many people decline to buy them even though that would save them money in the long run.

Scott said Wal-Mart was committed to selling energy-efficient products at low prices to make them accessible to its working-class customers.

Horowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council said that in the past, Wal-Mart had successfully reduced diesel use by its trucks and electricity use in its stores. "Now," he said, "they are taking the next step � to look at the energy used to make and operate the products they sell."

Horowitz said Wal-Mart had room to improve, however. Its next goal, he said, should be to stop selling the least energy-efficient products, rather than simply introducing better models.

Finally, Scott committed Wal-Mart to creating a more socially and environmentally conscious network of suppliers around the world. He called on other major retailers to join a global network of retailers and consumer goods companies, led by a Paris organization known as CIES, that is developing socially conscious manufacturing standards.

"We believe there should be one framework of social and environmental standards for all major global retailers," he said.

Scott also said he would press for suppliers in China, which are known for flouting environmental rules, to comply with that country's environmental regulations and would require them to certify that they meet industry standards.

If an industrywide effort falters, Scott said, "Wal-Mart will in fact lead; we will move forward by ourselves."

Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

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Wal-Mart to go "head-to-head" with Tesco

Progressive News Letter                     [back to top]    

Wal-Mart is reportedly set to launch a counter-attack to Tesco's move into the US with its own plans to open smaller grocery stores. The US retail giant is planning to go to head-to-head with Tesco's Fresh & Easy stores in Arizona, according to Financial Times. Wal-Mart is said to have secured leases for four 20,000 sq ft outlets near Phoenix, in and around where Tesco is setting up its own stores. The plans for the so-called Marketside stores are Wal-Mart's first new concept in the US for ten years, the FT said. Officials at Wal-Mart failed to return a request for comment as just-food went to press.

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Taobao's Business Volume Exceeds Carrefour,
Wal-Mart

ChinaRetailNews.com
January 23, 2008                                    [back to top]    

According to the statistics released by Chinese consumer auction website Taobao.com, the company's total business volume was over RMB43.31 billion in 2007, which exceeds the business volume of Carrefour and Wal-Mart and makes Taobao.com one of the largest comprehensive markets in China.

The statistics show that users of Taobao.com reached 53 million in 2007 and the average daily expense for each is RMB817, which increased 45.1% compared with RMB563 in 2006.

A representative from Taobao.com said at a press conference that from when the company was founded in 2003 to 2007, Taobao.com used only four years to realize a total business volume of more than RMB40 billion. While the world's top retailer, Wal-Mart, used 29 years to realize a total business volume of US$40 billion. In China's retail market, Taobao.com exceeded Wal-Mart in 2005, and then exceeded Carrefour in 2006. In 2007 its business volume even exceeded the sum of the two retail companies, according to Taobao. From 2006 to 2007, the quarterly increase of Taobao.com was six times of eBay's.

In 2007, Taobao.com's profit mainly came from daily commodities, IT and digital products. The top ten products are clothes, mobile phones, cosmetics, articles for daily use, household appliances, prepaid phone cards, cameras and video cameras, PC and its accessories, laptops and health products.

Taobao.com is a division of Alibaba.com, one of the largest Internet marketplaces in China, bringing buyers and sellers together for Internet sourcing.

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Wal-Mart Becomes One of the First to Offer Over-the-Counter Zyrtec

PRNewswire-FirstCall
Wednesday, January 23, 2008                       [back to top]    

BENTONVILLE, Ark., Jan. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Wal-Mart announced that the FDA's most recent prescription to over-the-counter (OTC) approved drug, Zyrtec(R) (cetirizine HCl) is now available at select Wal-Mart U.S. stores. Wal-Mart will offer eight different OTC Zyrtec products, including tablets, chewable tablets and syrup in each of its 4,128 U.S. stores by January 23 for prices that will help relieve allergy sufferers of their itchy eyes and runny noses, and save them money.

Zyrtec's maker, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of McNeil-PPC, Inc.,

estimates that OTC Zyrtec will cost up to one third less than the average prescription co-pay for Zyrtec. And, Wal-Mart is committed to helping customers save even more. For example, the 45-count OTC Zyrtec product, which Wal-Mart expects to be most popular among its customers, is available for less than $29.

Employing learnings from its successful June 2007 launch of Alli(TM) (orlistat), the first FDA-approved OTC weight loss drug, Wal-Mart utilized its supply chain efficiencies to get Zyrtec on shelves as fast as possible and keep the product in stock. The product was available in select Wal-Mart stores on Monday, January 21 and will be in all stores nationwide by January 23.

"Many of the country's 50 million allergy sufferers have looked to us for their prescription Zyrtec, and we're sure they'll continue to look to us for the OTC product. In fact, they'll look to us for the lowest price on OTC Zyrtec and we don't plan to let them down," said Dr. John Agwunobi, senior vice president and president for Wal-Mart's professional services division. "Our commitment to making healthcare products more affordable and accessible is no secret -- and our $4 prescription program is only one example. As products go from Rx to OTC, we will work to get them on our pharmacy shelves fast and priced lower than our competition."

Since June 2007, Wal-Mart has saved customers more than $14 million over prescription costs by offering Alli, the only FDA-approved OTC weight-loss product, at a great value. The drug has since become its best-selling OTC diet product. Wal-Mart anticipates similar results with the launch of OTC Zyrtec.

OTC Zyrtec is approved to relieve indoor and outdoor allergy-related sneezing, runny nose, and watery eyes, as well as itching due to hives. OTC Zyrtec is approved to treat these symptoms in adults and children as young as six years old.

Wal-Mart will also sell non-prescription Zyrtec-D(R) (cetirizine HCl, pseudoephedrine HCl), which will be available behind the pharmacy counter.

Wal-Mart will promote the availability of over-the-counter Zyrtec through prominent placement in circulars, Wal-Mart TV, http://www.walmart.com and on billboards.

Copyright 2008 PR Newswire

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Officials May Fire Commission Pilots Who Rejected Wal-Mart Project

judyth piazza
newsblaze.com                                            [back to top]    

Elected officials here are ignoring warnings about a public safety threat from a Wal-Mart Supercenter project and instead have initiated a plan to oust military pilots sitting on a county airport commission which voted in November to oppose the project because of those same safety concerns.

A news conference will be held TUESDAY, 10 a.m. at the Solano County Board of Supervisors Meeting (675 Texas Street), regarding not-too-secret plans to "decapitate" the Solano County Airport Land Use Commission (SCALUC) leadership for political reasons.

The Solano County Board of Supervisors will vote Tuesday on a proposed ordinance amendment to allow firings of SCALUC members without just cause, undermining the regulatory powers and independence of the commission.

The 230,000 square foot Wal-Mart project in Suisun was scheduled for a public hearing Tuesday, but the Suisun City Council abruptly postponed it when they learned thousands of Travis Air Force Base retirees and residents had been alerted to the hearing.

The Suisun City Council said it will override the 5-2 vote of the SCALUC, and the mayor has said they will replace SCALUC chairman John Foster, a decorated military pilot. Region mayors have already announced they will listen to arguments to oust Foster next month.

The SCALUC which includes a number of retired or current pilots and veterans are being supported by CalTRANS, which wrote that it agreed with the conclusions by the commission about the safety factor of the project.

And, a national pipeline safety organization wrote Travis AFB, congressional leaders, Suisun City Council and federal agencies, stating it was "troubling" that a dangerous jet fuel pipeline running near the Wal-Mart has not been addressed in project planning.

Military retirees also fear the encroachment by the city on the base could force Travis, the biggest area-employer, to close, affecting services to 65,000 retirees in Solano County.

Copyright © 2008, NewsBlaze, Daily News

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Wal-Mart Says More Workers Insured

By JON GAMBRELL
01.22.08                                                   [back to top]    

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Tuesday its rate of uninsured employees dropped by more than 20 percent in the last year, fueled in part by its new health care plans for workers.

The world's largest retailer said only 7.3 percent of its workers reported being uninsured, down from 9.6 percent the year before. Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ), which union groups have targeted over health care, said more than half of its eligible employees received coverage under its health care plans, a first in recent reporting.

The company said about 1 million of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million full-time and part-time workers in the U.S. were eligible for health care benefits during its last enrollment period.

Linda Dillman, an executive vice president of benefits and risk management for Wal-Mart, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that the increased enrollment likely came from the company's new health care plan. The plan, which allows employees to customize their coverage, includes premiums as low as $5 a month and access to $4 prescription drugs.

"Everybody in this company is on the same set of plans," Dillman said. Wal-Mart president and CEO "Lee Scott made the same selection the newest part-time cashier at Wal-Mart did."

The Bentonville-based retailer said 50.2 percent of employees took the company's health care coverage. Last year, 47 percent of its eligible employees were covered by its health plans. In 2006, it was 46 percent; in 2005, it was just 43 percent.

Union-led groups have claimed that Wal-Mart skimps on benefits. An internal company memo leaked to unions and the media in October 2005 conceded that the company was vulnerable to criticism because its health plans at the time were expensive for low-income workers with families.

Since then, Wal-Mart has shortened its eligibility period, allowed part-time workers to cover children, lowered premiums and lowered copays for prescription drugs. Scott and other Wal-Mart executives even joined with union leaders last year in calling for "quality, affordable" health care for every American by 2012. Neither side offered any specific proposals, however.

Meghan Scott, a spokeswoman for union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com, declined to comment immediately Tuesday on the retailer's announcement.

The company said a survey of more than 802,000 employees in November showed 22.3 percent of workers were covered under a spouse's policy. Another 9.7 percent received government health care coverage, either from Medicaid, Medicare, state programs or through veterans benefits. Others received coverage from parents, schools, previous employers or personal policies.

State lawmakers have criticized Wal-Mart for allowing its workers to take part of state-funded health care for the poor. A confidential 2006 state study in Washington state showed Wal-Mart had 3,194 workers on Medicaid and the state's Basic Health Plan, more than any other private employer.

Dillman said the retailer had seen a slight drop-off in the number of employees saying they took part in state-sponsored health care coverage, but said the percentages stayed roughly the same.

"We did get some movement off of the plan, but we didn't see much change in terms of the total percentage," Dillman said.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Report: Sears to Reorganize Into Units

Associated Press
01.20.08                                                      [back to top]    

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. - Sears Holdings Corp. plans to reorganize into several companies in another bid to pull the ailing 121-year-old retailer out the doldrums, according to a report published Saturday.

The restructuring could create separate units to manage Sears real-estate holdings and run brands such as Diehard and Craftsman, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Edward Lampert, the hedge fund kingpin and Sears Holdings (nasdaq: SHLD - news - people ) chairman, sees the move as a way to revitalize the company in the face of tough competition from companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people ), the newspaper said, citing unnamed people familiar with the situation.

Details, including which units might run the Hoffman Estates-based company's 3,800 Sears and Kmart stores in the United States and Canada, weren't clear.

Spokeswoman Kimberly Freely issued a short statement Saturday confirming Sears Holdings is "introducing an organizational structure that provides operating businesses with greater control, authority and autonomy." She declined to comment further.

Analysts say the changes contemplated by Lampert - who acquired Kmart in 2003 and Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 2005 - run against prevailing trends where retailers try to craft a single, cohesive business image.

"He's looking to turn it around by using a different approach," said retail consultant Walter Loeb. "I think it's risky."

On Monday, Sears Holdings told investors it would likely post fourth-quarter earnings well below Wall Street forecasts as eroding sales push its profit down as much as 57 percent.

It expects to earn between $350 million and $470 million, or $2.59 to $3.48 per share, for the quarter ending Feb. 2 - far less than the $4.43 per share sought by analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Sears earned $820 million in the fourth quarter a year earlier.

Sears blamed growing competition, a slowdown in the housing market and consumers' credit fears for slumping sales figures.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Five Wal-Mart Supercenters planned for Victor Valley

By BROOKE EDWARDS
January 20, 2008                                            [back to top]  

Five Wal-Mart Supercenters are expected to open in the Victor Valley over the next two years.

Three stores are proposed for Victorville, one for Apple Valley and one for Hesperia. All will be Supercenters, which means they’ll be nearly double the size of a regular Wal-Mart and will sell food, including fresh produce.

In Victorville, the project that is furthest along will be in the Dunia Plaza shopping center on Bear Valley Road, just south of the mall. It will include a Supercenter combined with a Sam’s Club, as well as three additional parcels for future development.

The city anticipates approving the project in either March or April, after Wal-Mart completes their environmental review, said Yvonne Hester, spokeswoman for the City of Victorville. If approved, the center could be open as early as next spring.

The entire project is expected to employ 720 people on a 33-acre retail site. The Wal-Mart portion will be 231,000 square feet and include both an in-store and drive-through pharmacy, a garden center and an auto center.

The second proposed Victorville store would be near the corner of Palmdale Road and Highway 395. The third would be on Ridgecrest, near Spring Valley Lake. Wal-Mart is conducting environmental reviews at the sites, and Hester said both are expected to be approved later this year. This would mean a possible opening of late 2009 or early 2010.

The proposed Apple Valley store would be on the southeast corner of Highway 18 and Dale Evans Parkway, between Thunderbird Road and Civic Center Park. The 260,000-square-foot project is scheduled to be reviewed by the town's Planning Commission in early 2008, according to the town’s Web site.

The Hesperia store will be on the corner of Main Street and Escondido Avenue. Wal-Mart is finishing their environmental review there, said city spokeswoman Kim Summers. She anticipates the project will be approved and they are expected to break ground this fall.

Each store is expected to generate $750,000 per year in local tax revenues according to John Mendez, spokesman for Wal-Mart in Southern California.

Wal-Mart already has regular discount stores in Apple Valley and in Victorville, as well as a distribution center in Apple Valley. The chain’s interest in expanding came from a combination of population growth and requests from customers for more stores, Mendez said.

With the addition of the Supercenters, Mendez says High Desert residents can expect to see prices drop at other major grocery stores.

“When you bring a Wal-Mart Supercenter into the equation, we introduce competition into that sphere,” Mendez said.

This has come to be known as the “Wal-Mart effect,” thanks to a 2006 book of the same title by Charles Fishman.

While this may mean good news for the average shopper, it may prove devastating for the remaining “mom and pop” stores, who will likely not be able to match prices with the largest corporation in the world.

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Norway fund may widen ethics-based investing

By MARK COBLEY ,
Wall Street Journal
January 18th, 2008                         [back to top]  

Norway's Government Pension Fund, one of the world's biggest sovereign-wealth funds, is considering broadening its ethical-investment program after shedding holdings in arms makers, mining companies and U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Norges Bank Investment Management, the Norwegian central bank that oversees the two trillion kroner ($369 billion) Norwegian Government Pension Fund, has begun a year-long review of the fund's ethical guidelines and is inviting comment from nongovernmental organizations and academia.

Investments in tobacco companies, pornographers and the gambling industry are likely to be considered for exclusion, as well as companies from countries that abuse human rights.

"We are global investors," Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said. "We believe social and environmental responsibility creates the best conditions for high, sustainable long-term returns. That is our business."

Ms. Halvorsen also claimed success for the fund's policy of dialogue with companies, saying Norges Bank had been negotiating with a "major global agricultural group" over its efforts to stamp out child labor, and she said the possibility of exclusion had strengthened the fund's negotiating position.

The fund divested itself fully from Wal-Mart in June 2006 over human-rights and labor-rights concerns. Wal-Mart couldn't be reached for comment late Thursday. At the same time, the fund divested its holdings in mining group Freeport-Mc Mo Ran? Copper & Gold Inc. on environmental grounds.

Last week, the fund divested its holdings in three weapons makers. Hanwha Corp., a South Korean group, was excluded because it produces cluster munitions, while U.K. company Serco and U.S.-based Gen Corp? Inc. were targeted because of their involvement with nuclear-weapons production. T he Government Pension Fund was established 11 years ago to diversify the country's oil revenue into stocks, bonds and other investments to preserve it for future generations.

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Wal-Mart Meeting in Canfield

WYTV 33 News
January 16th, 2008                     [back to top]  

Wal-Mart officials made their way into Canfield, to make their case for a one hundred and seventy-six thousand square foot Wal-Mart Super center. The store would go right off route 224 next to route 11. But, so far, Wal-Mart has a lot of convincing to do.

In fact, Wal-Mart officials would not let us go inside the meeting with our camera, and it's no wonder, because the more than two hundred people inside defiantly rejecting the idea of a Wal-Mart coming to their community.

Residents like their "Mom and Pop" stores, and many are concerned about potential traffic and safety hazards.

"Those safety issue arise from an increase in traffic, currently we have twenty-nine thousand cars a day on Rt. 224 between Rt. 11 and Market street. They're going to add thirteen thousand more cars to that. I don't understand how that's going to work, your kids are on a bus, safety forces have to get to our house in a fire truck.", says concerned citizen, Tim Smith.

Still though, Wal-Mart isn't giving up.

"The reason you have law and the reason you have a process like this, is so that everyone gets treated or dealt with fairly, in the same way. So, therefore, this is a zone change request. We will present it to the county, as well as to the township, and we will let them

Wal-Mart's next step is to try to get the land it wants re-zoned for commercial use. Then the company will make an official presentation to Township Trustees.

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Justices Won’t Hear Appeal on Drugs for Terminally Ill

By LINDA GREENHOUSE ,
New York Times
January 15th, 2008                             [back to top]  

A legal battle ended at the Supreme Court on Monday over whether terminally ill patients who have run out of medical options have a constitutional right to try experimental drugs that have not yet received federal approval.

Advocates for patients lost the battle when, without comment, the justices refused to hear an appeal of a ruling by a divided federal appeals court that there is no such right.

The case, which attracted widespread interest and alliances across the usual ideological boundaries, began in 2003 as a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration by a group called the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs. The group was started by the father of a 21-year-old woman, Abigail Burroughs, who died while drugs that might potentially have helped her were still in the investigational stage, unavailable to patients. The drugs were later approved.

The Washington Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm here, was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs claimed, as a fundamental aspect of constitutional due process, the right to choose to take medication of unknown benefit and risk that might potentially be lifesaving. A federal district judge here dismissed the case, but a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2 to 1 in the plaintiffs’ favor, an unexpected decision that gave the case greatly increased visibility.

The federal government then sought review by the full appeals court, which in August reversed the panel’s decision by a vote of 8 to 2.

As it made its way through the courts, the case, Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach, No. 07-444, was the focus of spirited debates about federal policy, medical ethics and individual freedom. The Food and Drug Administration maintained that so much was still unknown after the preliminary small-scale Phase 1 trial of a drug — the point at which the patients’ group sought a right of access — that the drug could not responsibly be made available to patients. Most experimental drugs ultimately fail their clinical trials on grounds of safety or effectiveness.

But the plaintiffs maintained that the question was one of individual choice. “The right of a terminally ill patient, with no approved treatment options, to take some risks on an investigational treatment in an effort to save her life is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty under any reasonable standard,” the plaintiffs’ groups said in their Supreme Court appeal.

The Food and Drug Administration told the court that it was considering whether to offer expanded access to investigational drugs for treatment purposes, but was concerned that such access would make it difficult to conduct clinical trials.

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Toxic Factories Take Toll

By JANE SPENCER
and JULIET YE,
Wall Street Journal
January 15th, 2008                 [back to top]  

Over the holidays, millions of American children received Chinese-made toys powered by cadmium batteries.

Cadmium batteries are safe to use. They are also cheap, saving American parents about $1.50 on the average toy, compared with pricier batteries.

But cadmium batteries can be hazardous to make. In southern China, Wang Fengping worked for years in plants that produced cadmium batteries for the likes of Mattel Inc., Toys "R" Us Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Like hundreds of her colleagues, Ms. Wang regularly inhaled the toxic red cadmium dust that filled the air in the plant.

Now, at 45, Ms. Wang is often too weak to walk. Her kidneys have failed, and her doctors have identified cadmium poisoning as the likely culprit. About 400 other workers at her former employer, Hong Kong-based GP Batteries International Ltd., have been found to harbor unsafe levels of cadmium, a toxic metal like mercury and lead that can cause kidney failure, lung cancer and bone disease.

In recent months, Americans have discovered the dark side of their reliance on cheap Chinese goods. From lead-tainted toys to contaminated pet food, the safety of Chinese products is suddenly an American obsession.

But in China, workers making goods for American consumers have long borne the brunt of a global manufacturing system that puts cost cutting ahead of safety. The search for cheaper production means dirty industries are migrating to countries with few worker protections and lenient regulatory environments.

The nickel-cadmium battery illustrates this trend. Once widely manufactured in the West, the batteries are now largely made in China, where the industry is sickening workers and poisoning the soil and water.

Now, some regulators and companies are taking action. This year, the European Union is banning the sale of nearly all cadmium batteries. A few companies, including Hasbro Inc., are eschewing the battery.

Yet cadmium batteries, a technology dating back to 1899, continue to represent 3% of total battery sales, and are still widely used in toys, power tools, cordless phones and other gadgets sold in the U.S. Besides being inexpensive, they can provide a quick surge of power.

The near-disappearance of the American cadmium-battery industry can be understood from a visit to an overgrown field in Cold Spring, N.Y. Here, the Marathon Battery factory churned out nickel-cadmium batteries for the U.S. military for three decades. After the plant was shuttered in 1979, the cadmium-laden ground became one of the nation's highest-profile superfund sites, sparking a $130 million clean-up and a class-action lawsuit by nearby residents that was settled for millions of dollars in 1998.

As the U.S. and other Western nations tightened their regulation of cadmium, production of nickel-cadmium batteries moved to less-developed countries, most of it eventually winding up in China. "Everything was transferred to China because no one wanted to deal with the waste from cadmium," says Josef Daniel-Ivad, vice president for research and development at Pure Energy Visions, an Ontario battery company.

Today, only two American companies still make cadmium batteries, and they specialize in high-end batteries for use in equipment such as aircraft engines. U.S. laws require them to follow strict guidelines on worker safety and environmental protection.

In China, government standards on cadmium exposure are in line with those endorsed by the World Health Organization. And without question, there are safe cadmium plants in China.

But having rules and enforcing them are two different things. China has dozens of so-called "hot spots" where the cadmium contamination is similar to levels at U.S. superfund sites. More that 10% of China's arable land is contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium, according to the State Environmental Protection Agency, and the metals are entering China's food supply. At least a dozen academic studies in the past two years have found unsafe levels of cadmium in fruit and vegetables grown in Chinese soil. In a study published last year, researchers at the Guangdong Institute of Ecology found excessive levels of cadmium in Chinese cabbage grown in Foshan. The battery industry isn't the only source of environmental cadmium contamination in China, but it is a major contributor.

Often, these risks extend to workers. Last year, at least 20 workers at a Panasonic Corp. cadmium-battery plant in Wuxi were found to have elevated levels of the toxin, and two were diagnosed as poisoned. In 2005, 1,000 workers at Huanyu Power Source Co., based in Xinxiang, Henan, were also found with cadmium exposure. Both Panasonic and Huanyu say they have taken care of the affected workers, providing health care and compensation exceeding the requirements of Chinese law.

Yet these findings didn't necessarily result from corporate or government vigilance. The Panasonic-plant contamination, for instance, came to light after some workers watched a television show about cadmium poisoning -- and got themselves tested.

Protest about contamination at the GP plants has persisted in part because of the determination of Ms. Wang, a GP engineer, to publicize the matter.

Born into a relatively well-off family, Ms. Wang attended university and obtained an engineering degree before hiring on at a newly opened GP factory in the southern Chinese city of Huizhou, a fast-growing center of China's electronics industry. The year was 1995, and GP Batteries, a Singapore-listed unit of Hong Kong-listed Gold Peak Industries (Holdings) Ltd. Huizhou, was a prestigious employer, eventually becoming one of the largest makers of nickel-cadmium batteries in China.

As a machine designer, Ms. Wang worked in the management offices of a walled compound of pink-tiled buildings where some 1,500 women in matching blue smocks worked 12-hour days assembling nickel-cadmium battery packs for toys and other products. GP's clients eventually came to include dozens of U.S. companies including Energizer Battery Co., Proctor & Gamble Co.'s Duracell, Spectrum Brands Inc.'s Ray-O-Vac, Hasbro, Mattel, Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us.

For years, factory workers complained about illnesses -- nausea, hair loss and exhaustion, for instance. But GP management says it wasn't aware of the extent of the cadmium danger. "We knew it was dangerous, but we thought that if it was handled in a reasonable manner you should be OK," says Henry Leung, chief operating officer of GP Batteries. "This is all new for China."

At the factory, Ms. Wang spent the bulk of her time in an office, quietly sketching machine designs. But between 2002 and 2004, she spent long hours in production areas, inhaling cadmium dust, according to a lawsuit filed by Ms. Wang against the factory.

In 2003, some sick workers paid for their own tests at an occupational-disease hospital and learned they had elevated cadmium levels. The news touched off panic on the factory floor, and workers demanded the company pay for cadmium tests. Hundreds of workers eventually went on strike.

GP says it began paying for cadmium checkups in mid-2004, as soon as the region set up facilities that could handle large volumes of cadmium testing. In the initial tests, 177 workers showed levels of cadmium above China's safe-exposure limit, and two qualified as poisoned. Dozens were immediately hospitalized.

Cadmium affects people in radically different ways, so many GP workers with elevated levels aren't sick, but may become so in the years ahead.

Roughly 900 workers quit their jobs, and GP offered cadmium-affected workers one-time exit compensation starting at about $500. GP says the average package was $2,100. Many workers say the compensation failed to cover their medical bills.

GP says it has paid out more than $1 million in compensation and medical care for affected workers and has exceeded the legal requirements. "We want to take care of workers," says GP's Mr. Leung, but he says some workers are feigning sickness to obtain money. "They want to be recorded as poisoned, so people will keep giving them compensation," he says.

Ms. Wang watched on the sidelines as the bitter saga unfolded at her factory. During her nine years at the factory, she rarely had contact with rank-and-file workers, and her $540 weekly salary was nearly triple what they earned. While other workers ate in a cafeteria, Ms. Wang sat in a manager's dining room with table cloths and porcelain dishes.

But in October of 2004, when GP first paid for companywide cadmium tests, Ms. Wang's result came back showing cadmium levels above the safe-exposure limit set by the Chinese government. However, to qualify for continuing monitoring, China's occupational-disease laws require two consecutive positive tests. A second test showed Ms. Wang's cadmium level in the normal range, disqualifying her for assistance.

Three occupational-medicine doctors -- in London, Sweden and the U.S. -- who reviewed Ms. Wang's medical records for The Wall Street Journal say her initial test showed clear indications of kidney damage, a marker of possible cadmium poisoning.

"There's no doubt that in 2004, she had smoking-gun-type indicators of kidney damage, and in a person who works with cadmium, that should not be ignored," says Dr. Arch Carson, an expert in occupational medicine and environmental sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

GP says it relies on medical experts at government-run occupational-disease hospitals in the nearby city of Guangzhou to determine if workers required monitoring.

Having no symptoms, Ms. Wang continued playing badminton and jogging. But in early 2006, she began to feel extremely weak, and suffered headaches. Her skin began to age rapidly, and her eyes became sunken hollows. In November 2006, Ms. Wang was diagnosed at a local hospital with chronic renal failure that doctors said would likely shorten her life.

On Dec. 25, 2006, Ms. Wang approached GP management with news of her diagnosis. She requested that GP send her to the occupational-disease hospital in Guangzhou, which has facilities for treating cadmium exposure.

A stalemate ensued. The company says it was willing to help, but that Ms. Wang refused to follow local legal procedures. Local laws required that Ms. Wang visit a local hospital first, in order to be referred to the main occupational-disease hospital in Guangzhou. The company says Ms. Wang demanded they send her directly to the Guangzhou hospital, in violation of regulations.

In May, Ms. Wang sued the factory for $400,000 in compensation and medical care. To build her case, Ms. Wang used her access to company computers to download files that showed other workers in her department were exposed to cadmium. GP says there is no evidence that Ms. Wang's illness is related to cadmium, and doctors at the Guangzhou Occupational Disease Hospital say her kidney failure doesn't meet the criteria for occupational disease.

By last summer, Ms. Wang's health was failing. According to medical records from a hospital in Nanjing, she was admitted with a fever and a respiratory infection. Doctors there treated her for chronic renal failure, and listed "long-term exposure to cadmium-containing substances" as a possible cause, according to her medical records.

As workers, including Ms. Wang, sought to bring attention to the issue, a public-relations battle erupted. In 2005, GP filed a lawsuit against labor-rights groups representing the workers, charging libel. The case is moving through Hong Kong courts.

On their way to an interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter in August, Ms. Wang and several colleagues were pulled over by police and detained for nearly 13 hours in a Huizhou police station, according to several sources familiar with the incident. A person present at the Huizhou police station says the workers were told they would be charged with treason if they spoke to the media again. The Huizhou government says its police detained no battery workers.

Ms. Wang stopped answering her cellphone after the incident with the Huizhou police. But she began writing a blog to advise victims of cadmium poisoning. A recent post, in Chinese, said, "Basically, occupational disease could be prevented but it costs money. Money is the gold of bosses. And for them, the lives of workers are worthless."

After revelations of its cadmium-battery problems arose, GP quit making them at its plants, and now outsources that production to independent factories in China.

In America, five years after Hasbro stopped using nickel-cadmium batteries, Mattel and Toys "R" Us are yet to follow suit, but say they are exploring alternatives. Wal-Mart no longer purchases cadmium batteries from GP but declined to comment on whether it still uses them in its products.

Mattel says cadmium batteries have some performance advantages over alternatives, such as a better ability to retain a charge when not used for long periods.

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World's biggest retailer giving small stores a go

By STEVE PAINTER,
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
January 15th, 2008                                [back to top]  

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is planning at least two small-format stores and was reported to be pursuing others in the Phoenix area, where leading British retailer Tesco Plc also has entered the market with a small format.

Bentonville-based Wal-Mart is seeking permission to remodel a former Osco Drug store in Tempe, Ariz., Sherry Lesser, senior planner for the city, said Monday. At 16,236 square feet, the store would be far smaller than Wal-Mart's Neighborhood Market grocery stores, at present the company's smallest U.S. format at about 40,000 square feet.

In Gilbert, Ariz., Wal-Mart is seeking permission to change signs at another former Osco location, said Tanya Castro, a planning technician for that city.

Wal-Mart spokesman Amy Wyatt would not confirm the additional locations. "We trial and test different ways to serve our customers all the time and this smaller neighborhood market is an example of that," she said Monday in an e-mailed statement.

A New York-based reporter for the Financial Times, a British newspaper, reported Monday that Wal-Mart had obtained two other former drugstore locations, in Mesa and Chandler. Two messages left with each of those cities' planning departments were not returned Monday.

The Financial Times said the four stores would be called Marketside. Tesco's U.S. stores, averaging about 10,000 square feet, are called Fresh and Easy Market stores and feature fresh and prepared foods.

Tesco, operating five formats ranging from less than 3,000 square feet to more than 60,000 square feet, competes head-tohead in the United Kingdom with Wal-Mart-owned Asda, No. 2 in the market.

Outside the United States, Wal-Mart operates numerous formats, some as small as 1,000 square feet.

Retail experts had mixed views on Wal-Mart's potential move into a small box. The supercenter, Wal-Mart's largest format and the one that propelled the company to its status as the world's largest retailer, can cover more than 200,000 square feet.

"It's difficult to switch formats, especially when you're very, very good at operating one format," said Ryan Matthews, who runs Black Monk Consulting in East Pointe, Mich.

He characterized Wal-Mart's Neighborhood Market stores as "ordinary at best." A move to an even smaller format, he said, is "counter to the economic model. It's new learning, and new learning is expensive." Ben Ball, with Dechert, Hampe & Co., was less skeptical.

"I never, ever count them out," he said. "They're constantly evaluating new formats and new things, to their credit." He added, however, that the economies of scale that benefit Wal-Mart's existing operations won't necessarily fit a small grocery operation that emphases fresh foods and local produce - if that is, indeed, what the company has in mind.

With the small format, he said, "you can't go out and buy 100 million pounds of shrimp at a time." Earlier this month, Wal-Mart hired Jack Sinclair, a former executive at Tesco and Safeway Plc, for the new position of executive vice president of grocery merchandise.

Wal-Mart has faced opposition from unions and community groups for several years as it seeks to penetrate urban markets where it has little presence. A small format in existing buildings, which typically would require only a remodeling permit rather than a construction permit, could open doors that to date have been closed.

Tesco has opened 28 Fresh & Easy stores in California, Arizona and Nevada and will add three more on Wednesday, company spokesman Brendan Wonnacott said.

He said 50 stores will be open by the end of February.

Wal-Mart shares closed at $47.67 in trading Monday, down 5 cents, or 0.10 percent, on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares have traded as low as $42.09 and as high as $51.44 over the past year.

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Early Returns for Wal-Mart Prepaid Card Promising

By William Launder ,
American Banker
January 15th, 2008                             [back to top]  

Eight months after it was introduced, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s prepaid debit card appears to be making headway with the underbanked.

A study released Monday found that one in five consumers earning less than $40,000 a year is familiar with the Wal-Mart Money Card?, a prepaid Visa debit card that costs $8.94 up front plus $4.94 a month in maintenance fees. In addition, one in 10 said they were likely to buy one of the cards from the retailer, according to Synergistics Research Corp., which conducted the study in the fall.

Wal-Mart, of Bentonville, Ark., said Monday that it plans to more than double the number of its stores that sell the Money Card this year, to 1,000. Observers said the Money Card is likely to become a formidable competitor for firms that offer financial services to consumers without traditional access to credit and the banking system.

William Mc Cracken, Synergistics' chief executive, said Wal-Mart's advantage over banks lay in its reputation with low-income consumers, who on average visit Wal-Mart stores almost twice as often as they visit their bank branch. "They are there already for another purpose, and Wal-Mart is viewed in their mind as a low-cost provider," he said. "There is a degree of trust [and] there is a degree of knowledge."

Distrust of the banking system - which is particularly common among Hispanics who may have lost their savings in bank failures in their home countries - tends to make those consumers feel more at ease in Wal-Mart too, Mr. Mc Cracken? said. "They don't feel excluded from the selling process from Wal-Mart because they are underbanked or because they are in the lower-income strata of our economy. They are open to hear the pitch" for the cards, "and they pick it up very quickly. Wal-Mart has that and a traditional bank does not."

David Humphreys, a professor who studies banking and payment systems at Florida State University in Tallahassee, agreed that Wal-Mart's "brand is better known than most bank brands. You just have more experience going to Wal-Mart than going to a bank" as a low-income or underbanked consumer.

Low-income consumers using Wal-Mart's financial services benefit from the convenience offered by check cashers without paying their typically steep fees, Prof. Humphreys said.

Jennifer Tescher, the director of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a nonprofit affiliate of Chicago's Shore Bank Corp., said Wal-Mart's scale and commitment to its financial services business made the Money Card? a particularly good product over competing prepaid cards.

Many prepaid cards offered for purchase and reload at convenience stores, gas stations, and other small retail locations are often ineffective because employees do not know how to sell or reload the products, she said, and the turnover is high. Wal-Mart's dedicated kiosk structure avoids that problem, Ms. Tescher said. "That's really half the battle. Buying it is one thing, but using it regularly is another," she said.

The consumers surveyed by Synergistics, a consulting group in Atlanta, said they liked the Money Card most because it could be refunded if lost or stolen, because it is easy and inexpensive to reload, and because it is available at Wal-Mart. Ms. Tescher said Wal-Mart's $4.94 monthly maintenance fee is toward the low end of monthly fees charged by prepaid card providers.

Wal-Mart waives the fee for consumers who load a portion of their paychecks on the card or deposit $1,000 or more on the card each month. Four in 10 of the consumers surveyed called the waiver a very important feature.

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Infy, Cognizant in fray for mega outsourcing deal from Wal-Mart

Iris News Digest
January 14th, 2008                         [back to top]  

IT major Infosys Technologies (Q, N,C,F)* and Cognizant Technology are in fray for a mega outsourcing deal from the world`s largest retailer Wal-Mart, reports Economic Times.

Wal-Mart is likely to place an outsourcing order in the range of a billion dollar plus.

Meanwhile, it is also been said that Wal-Mart is setting up its own captive center, as part of its IT expansion plan in India.

Wal-Mart also has its own inhouse IT system with proprietary technology on the large scale.

Shares of the company declined Rs 22.1, or 1.38%, to close at Rs 1,580.10. The total volume of shares traded was 724,429 at the BSE. (Friday)

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Worst Stock for 2008: Wal-Mart

By Selena Maranjian,
The Motley Fool
January 14th, 2008                         [back to top]  

The worst stock in 2008? Here's my guess: Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT).

Its shares were trading recently around $45 apiece, not far from where they were way back in 1999 -- nearly a decade ago! Long-term shareholders may grumble less. Those who've held on for the past 20 years have enjoyed an enormous 15-fold increase in their investment.

Why am I grousing about this company? Here are a few concerns:

The company's annual revenues top $350 billion -- roughly a third of a trillion dollars! That's not far from the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia. Why should size matter so much? Well, if a small retailer with $100 million in annual revenues wants to increase them by 10%, it has to generate an additional $10 million in sales. But for Wal-Mart to do the same, it would have to generate more than an additional $35 billion in sales -- which is more than companies such as Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) make in a year.

Then there's how the company compares with competitors Target (NYSE: TGT) and Costco (Nasdaq: COST):

(Graph in original article)

Wal-Mart's revenues are growing slower than Target's, yet it's selling at a higher P/E ratio. Its gross profit margin trumps Costco, but is dwarfed by Target. Costco's revenues per employee tower over the rest of the field. So overall, Wal-Mart's numbers aren't the most compelling.

Wal-Mart has a relatively low-income customer base. When it tried to appease a wealthier clientele, it found it couldn't compete.

And then there's inflation -- in China. Some experts predict that it will cause the price of made-in-China products to rise in the coming year or two and put pressure on Wal-Mart to accept lower margins or pass on the higher costs by raising retail prices.

Wal-Mart is controversial, too. By itself, that isn't necessarily a bad thing -- but when many people protest a company, there might be reasons to think twice before investing in it. Wal-Mart has been criticized for not being generous enough with its employees, for example -- and there are 1.9 million of them, including 1.3 million in the U.S.

The upside I'm not really the Wal-Mart pessimist I seem to be. It pays a respectable dividend of 1.84% after raising it 31% in 2007. And because of its power over suppliers, management can negotiate lower wholesale prices and pass the savings to its customers. I own some Wal-Mart stock because I expect it to perform well in years to come. But Wal-Mart is one stock to avoid in 2008.

At our CAPS service, 2,287 people view the stock bullishly, and 615 are bearish.

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Wal-Mart Names New Head of Asia Division

Associated Press
01.14.08                                             [back to top]  

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday named Vicente Trius executive vice president, president and chief executive of Wal-Mart Asia International.

Trius joined Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) in 1996 as vice president of operations in the international division and most recently served as president and chief executive of Wal-Mart Brazil. Before joining Wal-Mart, Trius worked for Dairy Farm International and Revco Drugstores.

Trius will lead Wal-Mart's retail operations in Asia, which encompass more than 82,000 employees. Wal-Mart has 101 stores in China and operates Seiyu, which has 394 locations in Japan. Wal-Mart also owns a minority interest in the Trust-Mart chain in China, which has 102 retail locations, and has a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises in India.

Hector Nunez will succeed Trius as head of Wal-Mart Brazil, effective Feb. 1. Nunez joined Wal-Mart Brazil in July 2006 as executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

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Wal-Mart Takes On Tesco At Home

Vidya Ram
01.14.08                        [back to top]  

LONDON - Supermarket heavyweights Wal-Mart and Tesco have till now seen Britain as their main battleground, but Wal-Mart is now hoping that its new chain of smaller shops will stymie Tesco's dream to make it big in the United States.

Just two months after Tesco (other-otc: TSCDY - news - people ) launched its Fresh & Easy convenience store chain on the American West coast, Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people )is reportedly preparing to roll out its own version in Arizona.

The "Marketside" stores will be a tenth the size of the usual 200,000 square foot Wal-Mart superstore, and also smaller than Tesco's U.S. outlets, which cover just 10,000 square feet.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart confirmed that the company would begin "trialing and testing" a new format of stores later this year, but did not confirm the details of the report in the Financial Times. "We are always looking for new ways to serve our customers," he said.

Tesco rolled out its stores, located in both residential and office neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and Phoenix last November. (See: "Tesco's Landing") The company has not yet released sales figures for the stores, though last month chief executive Terry Leahy described them as being "very well received by customers." (See: " Tesco Shrugs Off Spending Slowdown")

Tesco has been focusing on a new and largely untapped market for fresh, healthy food and quick service, rather than the traditional food-to-clothing megastores favored by U.S. retailers.

"I think inevitably this move is likely to raise the level of competition," said Sam Hart, an analyst at Charles Stanley in London. But the Fresh & Easy project is still in the very early stages, contributing just a small fraction to Tesco's overall revenue.

Tesco has pledged to spend £250 million ($489.22 million) a year on building its U.S. business and plans to increase the number of stores from 50, this February, to 150, within the next year. It has not yet provided guidance on how much revenue it expects to generate from Fresh & Easy in the long term, though analysts predict the U.S. chain could generate £230 million ($450.2 million) by 2013. Tesco's revenue for the year ending February 2007 came in at £46.4 billion ($90.8 billion).

Wal-Mart was trading down 0.4%, at $47.31, in New York on Monday. Tesco closed down 8 pence, or 1.8%, at 419 pence ($8.20), in London, as investors remained cautious ahead of the Christmas trading statement which the company is due to release on Tuesday.

Though rival J Sainsbury (other-otc: JSAIY - news - people )beat market expectations with its trading announcement last week, the news from the British retail sector has largely been bleak, pointing to a slowdown in consumer spending. (See: " Metro, Sainsbury Give Euro Retailers A Breather")

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Wal-Mart Rethinking Shutdown Of Movie Download Service?

By Paul Glazowski,
Mashable
January 12th, 2008                          [back to top]  

Following all the CES hoopla about the growing number of content partnerships between producers and hardware manufacturers and the like, Wal-Mart might be re-thinking its recent shutdown of its online movie download service. So says Todd Spangler of Multichannel News, who referenced executives of one (unnamed) digital rights management firm as having discussed the issue of “what technologies are required to offer a paid download service” with Wal-Mart representatives. Spangler claims “the retailer’s reps were interested in how to allow downloaded movie files to be burned onto discs for playback.”

What should we make of this revelation? Well, if we look at it objectively, it’s really to be expected of Wal-Mart to want to get in the game once again. Despite having managed a mostly idle movie download center for one year before its closing in December, the company of course has to try to maintain its lead as a primary distributor of media. And if that means resurrecting something long considered dead in the water, so be it.

The thing is, it’s rather difficult to foresee something sprout from the Walton empire that so widely triggers the interests of consumers as far as Web-based services are concerned. Sure, the preeminent global master of the warehousing business is great with hawking tangible goods, both online and off. But when it comes to digital things, it’s playing to a far smaller crowd than, say, iTunes. Even Amazon’s digital marketplace – home to AmazonMP3, and Amazon Unbox - looks to have a better shot at putting together a massively profitable business in the year(s) ahead than Wal-Mart.

And that’s because both Apple and Amazon have long lived out in the cloud. The latter of the two has indeed spent its entire existence selling various items to Internet shoppers. Wal-Mart has…not.

Still, it wouldn’t be appropriate to pass off this slow-to-evolve retailer as unworthy of success in the digital ether. If any sales force in the US – and the world – has a chance to make an significant imprint with relatively little expertise concerning Web, it’s Wal-Mart.

How much credence do you think the story highlighted above has? Let us know. If you don’t care either way, let us know, too.

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Retailers Post Tepid Growth

By Kevin Kingsbury
and Gary McWilliams ,
Wall Street Journal
January 11th, 2008                    [back to top]  

U.S. retail sales last month weakened, especially among clothing chains, but weren't the disaster some predicted. The report capped a year that turned out to be retailers' worst in at least four years and a holiday season that hit a five-year low. Still, a sales gain for the industry as a whole in December -- albeit slight -- lent some reassurance that consumers continue to spend.

The decline prompted a number of retailers, led by Kohl's Corp., to chop fourth-quarter earnings projections. Investors, however, pushed up depressed share prices in a relief rally as January inventories appeared tame and a weak U.S. dollar continues to boost international results.

The results confirmed pre-holiday worries that falling home prices and high gasoline prices would crimp consumer spending. Retail Metrics Inc.'s index of December same-store sales rose a scant 0.4%, compared to a 3.2% gain the previous year. Comparisons, in part, were skewed by December's reporting period having one less week of post-Thanksgiving sales than in 2006.

Lumping November and December together, same-store sales rose a less severe 1.7%, said Retail Metrics. The results weren't uniformly poor and don't include some stronger retailers. "It's generally a bit weak but the sky is not falling," said Stephen J. Hoch, professor of marketing at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Consumer spending has remained resilient and "will hang in there," he said.

Sarah Henry, a retail analyst at MFC Global Investment Management, called the December sales "better than feared." Hardest hit were clothing and high-fashion chains. Ms. Henry said "it was probably as much fashion as the economy. There was a lack of compelling products" in stores. Shares of J.C. Penney Co., Sears Holdings Corp., Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. all rose.

Markdowns at department and clothing chains should benefit January bargain-hunters at the expense of store profits, retailers conceded.

The holiday blog provides a look at holiday-sales news and trends, including how stores are performing, what products are moving and how consumers are faring, from around Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.

J.C. Penney posted a 7.5% same-store sales decrease, greater than its forecast mid-single-digit decline. It said jewelry and big-ticket home goods sold poorly. The firm sees a "mid-single digit" drop this month and forecast earnings in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Feb. 2 near the low end of its $1.65 to $1.80 a share profit expectations.

Macy's Inc.'s same-store sales fell a worse-than-projected 7.9%, due in part to a calendar shift that moved more holiday sales into November. The company forecast a 4% to 6% same-store sales drop this month.

Kohl's reported an 11% fall, versus its forecast for a mid- to high-single-digit drop, and said price slashing would cut fourth-quarter profit by roughly 10%. It now projects per-share profit of $1.30 to $1.34, down from $1.45 to $1.51.

The weakness among clothing and jewelry was offset elsewhere by sales of food, health care and pharmaceuticals. Among major discount chains, Wal-Mart Stores said grocery, electronics and pharmacy businesses gained while home decor and apparel sales slipped.

Wal-Mart posted a 2.4% gain in U.S. same-store sales, compared with its 1% to 3% forecast and said it expects to deliver earnings in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 31 within a forecast range of 99 cents to $1.03 a share. The world's largest retailer projected January same-store sales up about 2%, continuing a gradual improvement.

Target reported a 5% decline in same-store sales on weakness in jewelry, toys and home-goods sales. Still, the results were slightly better than investors were expecting. It said food and health-care items were better sellers. On a calendar adjusted basis, same-store sales fell 0.6%, compared to a late December forecast of a 1% drop to a 1% gain.

The Minneapolis retailer's inventories were in "very good condition" at month's end, but the company said fourth-quarter profit wouldn't match the $1.29 per-share profit of last year. Late Wednesday, it said Chief Executive Robert J. Ulrich will retire May 1 and be succeeded by President Gregg W. Steinhafel.

Costco Wholesale Corp. reported a stronger-than-expected 7% rise in December same-store sales. It posted a 5% U.S. gain, one percentage point of which was due to rising gasoline prices. Same-store sales internationally jumped 16% because of the slumping dollar; excluding that, the increase would have been 5%. Another bright spot was TJX Cos., parent of off-price retailers' Marshalls and T.J. Maxx. It raised its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings view, crediting tight inventory controls and expense management. It now forecasts a per-share profit of between 60 cents and 63 cents, compared with 51 cents a year ago.

Video-game retailer Game Stop? Corp. boosted its fiscal fourth-quarter expectations amid a 45% surge in software sales.

Among those chains hit by falling demand, Limited Inc., parent of Victoria's Secret, posted an 8% drop in same-store sales last month, double the decline analysts were expecting.

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Norway's Pension Fund Drops 3 Companies

Associated Press
01.11.08                                               [back to top]  

OSLO, Norway - The Norwegian government global pension fund has dropped three companies, from the United States, Britain and South Korea, on ethical grounds because of their roles in producing nuclear weapons or cluster munitions, the finance minister said Friday.

The excluded companies are Hanwha Corporation, from South Korea, Serco Group PLC, from Britain, and GenCorp Inc. from the United States.

"These companies produce cluster munitions and nuclear weapons, respectively, and we cannot participate in the funding of this type of production," Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said.

Norway, a major oil and natural gas exporter, sets aside surplus central government revenue in the Government Pension Fund-Global - formerly the oil fund - for foreign investment to avoid overheating the domestic economy of the Nordic nation of 4.7 million people.

The fund is currently worth more than 2 trillion kroner ($377 billion) and is managed by the state, central Bank of Norway.

Since 2004, a national Council of Ethics has routinely reviewed investments by the fund, and, acting on its findings, the finance ministry has so far excluded 27 companies, including such giants as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people ) and Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ) Corp., both of the United States.

The council reviews investments based on a range of ethical issues, including human and labor rights, environmental protects and production of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs.

Norway, a member of the NATO alliance, bars nuclear weapons from its territory in peacetime and has been campaigning against cluster bombs because they often continue to kill and maim civilians long after a conflict has ended.

A finance ministry news release said the fund decided to drop South Korea's Hanwha based on a recommendation from the ethic's council in May and the company's own confirmation by letter that it produces cluster munitions.

The two other companies, Serco of Britain and GenCorp of the United States, were excluded because the ethics council found in November that they participate in the production of nuclear weapons.

Serco confirmed by letter that it maintains nuclear weapons for Britain in a joint venture with the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the ministry statement said. It said GenCorp did not respond to a request for comment, and that it was barred based on the ethic's council's findings that it produces components for nuclear weapons.

The ministry did not disclose the values of shares disposed of in the three companies, and said the sales had been completed before the decision was announced to avoid influencing market prices.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Wal-Mart Dec Comps Rise 2.7 Percent

Associated Press
01.10.08                                              [back to top] 

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Thursday its December same-store sales rose 2.7 percent to outstrip analyst expectations, boosted by brisk sales of food, pharmacy and electronics.

Same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least one year, is an important indicator of retailer performance since it measures sales at existing stores rather than newly opened ones.

Excluding fuel sales, which benefited from higher average gasoline prices, same-store sales rose 2.4 percent. Wall Street expected a 1.8 percent increase, according to Thomson Financial.

At the company's namesake chain, same-store sales rose 2.6 percent, exceeding the Wall Street estimate of 1.6 percent. Sam's Club fell short of analyst estimates for 3.7 percent, delivering a 3.4 percent gain.

"Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people )'s food performance was very strong, which helped drive traffic to other areas of the stores," said Chief Executive Eduardo Castro-Wright.

Total sales in the five weeks ended Jan. 4 added 8.4 percent at $46.6 billion from $43 billion last year. Wal-Mart stores delivered a 5.6 percent increase to $29.7 billion, while Sam's Club stores had 4.3 percent higher sales of $4.94 billion. The weaker dollar boosted international sales, which rose 18.2 percent to $11.97 billion.

For the 11 months of the company's fiscal year to date, same-store sales climbed 1.6 percent and total sales rose 8.6 percent to $348.13 billion.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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SJC Gets Wal-Mart Suit

By Donna Goodison ,
The Boston Herald
January 10th, 2008              [back to top]

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court will hear an appeal of a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart Stores Inc. systematically deprived its hourly Bay State employees of their earned wages and rest and meal breaks.

The lawsuit, first filed in 2001 in Middlesex Superior Court, alleges the mega-retailer illegally altered timecards to decrease reported payroll expenses, including by clocking out employees one minute after they clocked in.

A Superior Court judge decertified the lawsuit’s class-action status and threw out the case, filed on behalf of 65,000 present and former Wal-Mart employees in Massachusetts, in November 2006. The judge, who also excluded the testimony of the employees’ expert witness, said the employees could not rely on Wal-Mart’s payroll records to prove their case without first demonstrating that they are overwhelmingly accurate.

The employees’ attorney, Robert Bonsignore, filed briefs this month arguing the case should be allowed to proceed using Wal-Mart’s payroll system records. Federal and state statutes require those records to be accurate, he said, and Wal-Mart uses them to pay taxes and report its financial performance to shareholders.

“It’s good enough to pay the Wal-Mart family executives millions of dollars in bonuses and . . . it’s good enough to pay the store managers $100,000 or more in bonuses,” Bonsignore said. “But the court says it’s not good enough to pay the employees, period.”

Using Wal-Mart’s paper and electronic payroll records, Bonsignore’s expert witness found that the Wal-Mart employees allegedly were deprived of wages for 10.1 million missed rest breaks from 1995 to 2005.

He also found 21,383 alleged incidents of one-minute clock-outs where employees went uncompensated and that Wal-Mart allegedly realized $423,010 in free labor from employees whose work was not recorded by the system.

Wal-Mart also allegedly inserted 13,572 unpaid meal periods into employees’ records from 2001 to 2005, court documents state. A separate, earlier Superior Court ruling prevented employees from suing for missed meal breaks.

“As a result of its willful misconduct, Wal-Mart’s ill-gotten gains exceeded $25,000,000,” court documents state.

Bonsignore has 35 similar cases pending against Wal-Mart in other states. Wal-Mart employees won a $167 million judgment in California and a $151 million judgment in Pennsylvania for similar claims.

But a Wal-Mart spokesperson said a “great majority” of courts have ruled that wage-and-hour cases aren’t suited for class-action status because “every individual’s circumstances are unique.”

“It is our policy to pay every associate for every hour worked, and any manager who violates that policy is subject to discipline, up to and including termination,” the spokesperson said. “The company has very clear policies on meal and rest breaks.”

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Analyst Cuts Best Buy Rating

Associated Press
01.07.08                                                  [back to top]

NEW YORK - A Bear Stearns analyst cut his rating on shares of electronics retailer Best Buy Co., citing pressure from discounters in 2008 and a cutback in consumer spending on discretionary products.

Analyst Christopher Horvers lowered his rating to "Underperform" from "Outperform" and said in a note to investors he expects factory sales of electronics to drop 50 percent in 2008 and that the slowdown could favor discounters.

"Over the next couple years, we believe the mass merchant, direct and warehouse club sectors will see more favorable share shifts as the velocity of the product cycle slows and commoditization of key products (e.g., TVs) occurs," he said.

He said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people ), for example, is at its best when "the next big thing" is not as significant as "the last big thing" since the store usually discounts items once they have become popular with more specialized electronics buyers. If shoppers want last year's big ticket item more than this year's, they would likely go to Wal-Mart where prices are cheaper.

With fewer products coming into the market, consumers may see past hot ticket items as more interesting, he said.

Plus, with consumers restricting spending in the face of high food and gas costs, Horvers said the entire electronics retailer sector is "positioned poorly" since it sells discretionary items.

Best Buy (nyse: BBY - news - people ) shares fell 23 cents to $47.25 in afternoon trading.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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A North Carolina state judge ruled against Wal-Mart Stores Inc

by Justin Grant
Reuters                                                            [back to top]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A North Carolina state judge ruled against Wal- Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in a tax shelter case where the retailer paid itself rent and later counted that amount as a tax deduction.

Wal-Mart had transferred ownership of its stores to various in-house real-estate investment trusts (REITS), and then cut its tax obligation by taking deductions for rent payments that never left the company.

In a judgment signed on December 31, Emergency Special Judge of Superior Court Clarence Horton Jr. ruled "there is no evidence that the rent transaction, taken as a whole, has any real economic substance," other than for cutting Wal-Mart's taxes.

The judge dismissed the retailer's suit, where it sought a refund of the $33.5 million in taxes, interest and penalties

it paid the state after authorities determined it underpaid by that amount.

"It is particularly difficult for the court to conclude that rents were actually 'paid' when they subsequently returned to the payor corporation," the judge ruled.

Wal-Mart said it hasn't decided on how it will proceed in the aftermath of the ruling, and declined to comment on the case's specifics due to a possible appeal.

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Wal-Mart's round-the-clock strategy bad for workers: CAW

CBC News
January 4th, 2008                                  [back to top]

Retail giant Wal-Mart's decision to expand into round-the-clock shopping does not bode well for workers and their families, a labour leader says.

Marie St. Aubin, a national representative with the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents workers at Dominion supermarkets in Newfoundland and Labrador, said Wal-Mart's move may force other major retailers to follow suit.

"It's really difficult to get retail workers in this province now and the ones that they are retaining are worked to death. They have no family life to speak of," she said.

"Now, to add insult to injury, if they're going to look at staying open 24 hours, I don't know where that's going to put families in the future."

Wal-Mart Canada announced Thursday it will offer 24-hour shopping, seven days a week, at 25 locations in five provinces.

The move marks a major expansion in operating hours for Wal-Mart Canada, which in 2006 introduced round-the-clock shopping in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

That offering, which involved almost 300 stores this holiday season, proved to be a hit with consumers, the company said.

"We have a lot of people that do shift work and [enjoy] the convenience of shopping, so it was mainly on customer request," said Wendy Parsons, who manages one of three Wal-Mart stores in the St. John's area that is participating in the new offer.

The 25 stores are in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Wal-Mart pioneered all-hours shopping at a store in Winnipeg last fall.

Shopper Sandy Collins, who was in a St. John's lineup on Friday to return a Christmas gift, said she had mixed thoughts about the extra hours.

"I guess if you're a shift-work employee, it's probably a great idea," she said. "Personally, I wouldn't want to be here at three in the morning."

Shopper George Lucas, though, was intrigued.

"I work an overnight shift, so it works out good for me, on my lunch," he said.

Wal-Mart Canada says it will abide by local labour laws.

As well, the retailer said it may scale back its hours, if consumer demand does not prove strong enough at individual locations.

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Wal-Mart Names VP for Groceries Business

Associated Press
01.04.08                                                                  [back to top]

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Friday that a former executive from rival retailers Safeway and Tesco has been named its executive vice president of grocery merchandise.

Jack Sinclair, 47, will be in charge of planning, category management and general oversight of Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people )'s U.S. grocery business. He will report to executive vice president and chief merchandising officer John Fleming.

Sinclair was group marketing and trading director at Safeway (nyse: SWY - news - people ) PLC and previously worked for Tesco (nasdaq: TESO - news - people ) Stores Ltd., which is launching a U.S. effort.

"Jack has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the retail food business and I look forward to his contributions as we continue to grow our grocery business," Fleming said. "His passion for people, products and customers will bring new perspective and innovative thinking to our company."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Man claims Wal-Mart fired him for not playing Santa

By Beth Quimby,
The Morning Sentinel
January 3rd, 2008                                     [back to top]

A Lebanon man alleges he was fired last month by the local Wal-Mart because he refused to dress up as the store's Santa Claus.

A spokesman for the retail giant denied the claim, which was filed this week with the Maine Human Rights Commission on behalf of 27-year-old Christopher Nolan.

In his complaint, Nolan said he thought it was a joke when he was asked on Dec. 8 to fill in as the store Santa Claus at the Wal-Mart on Main Street. He said his co-workers were laughing.

Nolan, who described himself as an atheist who does not believe in Christmas, said he laughed as well and then declined. "I said, 'Uh, no way,'" he said in an interview last month.

Nolan said he was surprised when his supervisor called him later to say he had an hour to change his mind. When Nolan again refused to don the Santa suit, he said, his boss brought him into his office and told him he was fired.

"He said, 'We have to do an exit interview,'" said Nolan, who said he worked at the store for three years, most recently as a bicycle assembler.

Nolan provided Blethen Maine Newspapers a copy of his exit interview form that was signed by the store manager and includes the following statement of termination from his supervisor: "Asked Chris several times to dress up as Santa Claus. Repeatly (sic) told me no and then said he would look for another job. Didn't listen to me at all. Told him I would take him out of the system."

Mandi Cotter, manager of the Sanford Wal-Mart, declined to comment on Nolan's allegation. John Simley, a spokesman at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, said the company "can't comment on the circumstances of an associate's termination." He added that the "facts as they're described are not true."

Nolan's lawyer, Chad Hansen, of the firm Peter Thompson & Associates of Portland, said he sent the complaint to the Maine Human Rights Commission on Monday.

Under Maine law, people alleging discrimination must file a complaint with the commission before filing a lawsuit.

The commission will assign an investigator to look into Nolan's allegation. The investigator will then issue a report for the full commission, which will then vote whether there are reasonable grounds to conclude that Nolan was discriminated against. It can take up to two years for the commission to decide whether Nolan's rights were violated.

After six months Nolan could also ask the commission for a "right-to-sue letter," allowing him to take his case to a Maine superior court. At that point the commission would stop its investigation.

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Farmers' to take on Wal-Mart in India

By Krittivas Mukherjee,
Reuters UK
January 3rd, 2008                                  [back to top]

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian farmers and traders, opposed to the entry of private retail giants such as Wal-Mart, are building a chain of superstores as part of efforts to sell their produce directly and stop prices being set by a few big players.

The effort is being backed by authorities in the western state of Maharashtra, which says infrastructure costs for the project could be subsidized.

"It's a viable idea to counter private players, and if everything goes to plan the first of the superstores can come up in a few months," Sunil Pawar, general-manager of Maharashtra's agriculture marketing board, told Reuters.

"We are talking to the farmers' cooperatives and traders and the government is very supportive of the idea."

Fearing the loss of livelihood, traders, farmers and small shopkeepers oppose plans by foreign and local companies to introduce western-style supermarts into India's fragmented $350 billion market, expected to double in size by 2015.

Farmers worry the influx will lead to prices being dictated by a handful of large retailers.

Their protests reflect wider social tensions in the fast-growing Asian giant, where private investment is frequently opposed by traders scared of new retail competition and villagers worried their land will be taken for factories.

Maharashtra's farmers are hoping they can take the fight to the private giants with their superstores and chain of outlets that can sell vegetables, fruits and a range of farm products.

"The idea is to gather scattered sales into a single sales channel through these farmers' malls," said Sopan Kanchan of the Grape Growers' Federation of India. "Unitedly, we can take on the Wal-Marts and Reliances."

UNCERTAINTY FOR GIANTS

With the blueprint ready, farming leaders are getting ready to apply for a 25 percent subsidy on infrastructure costs they are eligible for under a government plan.

Already, building sites are being identified in some of the cities in Maharashtra for the farmers' superstores. "There are about 350 farmers' cooperatives in the state and they have lots of land," Pawar said.

So far, the retail protests have been sporadic but they have forced Reliance Industries (RELI.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), India's biggest listed company, to lay off 1,000 staff and close stores in the north and east.

Foreign retail giants Carrefour (CARR.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) and Tesco (TSCO.L: Quote, Profile, Research) have also shelved investment plans due to the uncertainty.

India does not allow foreign multibrand retail stores, but Wal-Mart (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has agreed to a wholesale venture with India's Bharti Enterprises. They expect to open their first cash-and-carry store this year.

Large companies still account for only 3 percent of India's retail market. Retailers fear protests could snowball in India as politicians feel it could win them votes ahead of general election due next year.

Those against private retail say 40 million jobs will be lost, against the 2 million that modern retail promises to create.

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Home Depot Lobbies to House Banks

Associated Press
01.03.08                                                      [back to top]

WASHINGTON - The Home Depot Inc., the world's largest home improvement store chain, hired the Alpine Group Inc. to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form.

The firm will lobby on the regulation and supervision of industrial-loan companies, according to the form posted online Dec. 10 by the Senate's public records office.

Home Depot (nyse: HD - news - people ), Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people ) and other retailers have sought to operate ILCs, which are federally insured institutions operated by nonfinancial companies that can issue credit cards, make loans and take deposits.

However, the House overwhelmingly approved in May a bill that would prohibit the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from granting new ILC charters to commerical companies, such as Atlanta-based Home Depot. The Senate introduced companion legislation.

Critics contend ILCs would stifle competition and hurt consumers, while supporters say it could help reduce fees and costs for consumers.

Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995. They must register with Congress within 45 days of being hired or engaging in lobbying.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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VIDEOS

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Fighting Wal-Martization 25min. (2005)

A new video by The Labor Video Project 25 min. (2005)

Wal-Mart is now the largest private employer in the United States and has the same impact that General Motors had nearly 50 years ago. This 26-minute video shows why working people and trade unionists are fighting back and what Wal-Mart has in store for the communities it is seeking to build stores in. "Fighting Wal-Martization" is a hard hitting documentary that looks at how the constant price cutting not only drives local small businesses out of the community but how this ends up driving down the living conditions of the very people who shop at Wal-Mart. The video also looks at the healthcare crisis and how Wal-Mart increases its profits by sending it¹s employees to public hospitals to get treatment thereby shifting costs back onto the taxpayer. This video can be used at union meetings, community meetings and on cable TV to get the message out about the Wal-Martization of America and what it means to every working person.

Please mail your check of $20.00 and order form to

Labor Video Project
P. O. Box 720027,
San Francisco, CA 94172

For more info: lvpsf@labornet.org, (415) 282-1908

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices (www.walmartmovie.com)

Independent America: The Two Lane Search for Mom & Pop (www.independentamerica.net)

Big Box Mart (www.jibjab.com)

Garth Brooks Parody (www.walmartworkersrights.org)

"Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" Frontline, PBS Video, (www.pbs.org)
 

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BOOKS

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NON-FICTION

The Case Against Wal-Mart By Al Norman Raphel Marketing ruth@raphael.com

Wal-Mart: The Face Of Twenty-First Century Capitalism Edited By Nelson Lichtenstein The New Press www.thenewpress.com

The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care and Retirement By Jacob S. Hacker Oxford University Press www.oup.com

War On The Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back By Lou Dobbs Viking, a member of Penguin Group www.penguin.com

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age By Allison H. Fine Jossey-Bass www.joseybass.com

Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, By Stacy Mitchell, www.beacon.org www.newrules.org

Wal-Mart: The Face Of the Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein, Published by The New Press www.thenewpress.com

 The Bully Of Bentonville - How the high cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America, By Anthony Bianco, Published by Doubleday
Email: specialmarkets@randomhouse.com

 How Wal-Mart is Destroying America (and the world), By Bill Quinn, Published By Ten Speed Press, Box 7123, Berkeley, CA 94707, www.tenspeed.com (pp. 163)

Slam Dunking Wal-Mart, By Al Norman, Published By Raphel Marketing, 12 S. Virginia Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey 08410, www.sprawl-busters.com (pp. 237)

The Great American JobsScam, By Greg LeRoy, Published By Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94104-2916, www.bkconnection.com (pp. 257)

Nickel and Dimed, By Barbara Ehrenreich, Published By Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 115 West 18^th Street, New York, NY 10011, www.henryholt.com (pp.221)

United States of Wal-Mart, By John Dicker, Published By Jeremy P. Tarcher (Penguin Group usa), www.us.penguingroup.com (pp.257)

The Wal-Mart Effect, By Charles Fishman www.penguin.com

Megamall On The Hudson, By David Porter and Chester L. Mirsky www.trafford.com

FICTION

Death By Discount, By Mary Vermillion, Published By Alyson Publications, P.O. Box 4371, Los Angeles, CA 90078-4371, www.maryvermillion.com (pp. 275)