CHICAGO -- Wal-Mart's publicity offensive to polish the discount retailer's public image may have suffered a black eye with accusations the Arkansas-based corporation used illegal secret funds to spy on workers.
The United Food and Commercial Workers, which has fought for years to organize the 1.2 million employees at the world's largest retailer, filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board Tuesday charging Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with violating federal law by operating an anti-union slush fund to suppress workers' rights to organize.
"The point of the UFCW filing this charge with the NRLB is simple," said union Executive Vice President Bill McDonough. "The UFCW and the American people deserve to know what Wal-Mart knows about this 'union project' and when they knew it."
The union said in a letter to federal regulators "the charge complains that Wal-Mart, acting through officers, employees and agents, including those at the highest levels of management, systematically denied workers their democratic right to exercise a choice of union representation."
Wal-Mart ousted board member and former Vice Chairman Thomas Coughlin in January over questions about use of between $100,000 and $500,000 in company funds for undeclared purposes.
Coughlin, 55, who left the board last month, said the money was used for union-busting activities to keep the UFCW from organizing workers at the company.
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman told the Washington Post the union's charges were "pure fantasy."
The unfair labor practices charge seeks to force the company to reveal how the funds were used. Wal-Mart fired three employees in addition to Coughlin, and the U.S. attorney for the western district of Arkansas is conducting an investigation.
"If, or rather when, Wal-Mart is forced to reveal the use of its secret union busting funds, it will be yet another eye-opener, making commercial workers and consumers worldwide even more aware of the risks of a further expansion of this company," Union Network International, which represents 15 million workers in 900 unions, said on its Web site.
Wal-Mart earlier this year launched a concerted campaign to change the image of "Wal-Martization" from low-wage, poor-benefit, no-healthcare jobs that deny workers' fundamental rights to that of a model corporate citizen.
The existence of an illegal anti-union fund to bribe workers to inform on union organizers and supporters would be a blow.
As the union filed its latest charge, Wal-Mart announced it was donating $35 million over 10 years to finance conservation efforts by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
The donation would be used to protect more than 1 million acres of land, lakes and rivers in New Brunswick, Canada, and Maine, including 54,000 acres of wetlands home to 10 percent of Maine's loon population.
Other conservation projects include 6,000 acres of newly planted forest and wetlands in Louisiana and acquisition of 850,000 acres of rangeland on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will raise a matching $35 million from other partners boosting the overall initiative to $70 million.
U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton praised Wal-Mart for setting "a standard of corporate stewardship that I hope other companies will emulate."
"'Acres for America' demonstrates the power of cooperative conservation and partnership," said Norton. "With its generous contribution, Wal-Mart is empowering the foundation to protect and restore important areas of wildlife habitat that otherwise might never be conserved."
The Wal-Mart Foundation gave away $170 million in 2004.
Less than two weeks ago about 50 conservation and community groups joined forces with organized labor, state lawmakers and academics to attack Wal-Mart's business practices. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott invited about 50 journalists to a hotel near company headquarters in Bentonville, Ala., for a two-day conference to answer charges leveled against the company.
"The rise of Wal-Mart as the world's largest retailer has come at a high cost to our society," said Paul Blank, campaign director of the UFCW's Wake-Up Wal-Mart Campaign. "Traditional organizing campaigns are too limited for a greedy, global company willing to cut its nose to spite its face rather than do the right thing and stand up for people."
Although Wal-Mart sales improved in March, they were still below analysts' projections, and the stock remained depressed. The company, which had $288 billion in revenues last year, agreed to pay $11 million to settle charges that cleaning contractors hired illegal aliens and another fine to settle charges it allowed underage workers to operate dangerous machinery.
Wal-Mart also announced it would close a store in Quebec where workers voted in a union. The corporation said the store was unprofitable.
The 1.4 million-member UFCW has filed more than 370 unfair-labor complaints against Wal-Mart over the last decade for alleged violations of workers' rights.
The union represents workers in local groceries, supermarkets, food-processing plants, packing houses, nursing homes, hospitals and manufacturing plants.