John Simons, former president and chief executive officer of Greeley-based Swift & Co., left the company with a severance package worth more than $7.16 million.
Details of the package were included in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by S&C Holdco 3 Inc., of which Swift & Co. is a part.
The Wednesday filing detailed three payments that include almost $2.5 million in cash and unpaid salary, more than $3.4 million in payment for options Simons had to purchase for 4 million shares of Swift stock, and about $1.25 million paid to Simons for the nearly 1.24 million shares of Swift that he owned. In addition, he was given a six-month consulting contract worth $226,000.
Jim Herlihy, spokesman for Swift & Co., said the "filing speaks for itself."
Simons resigned from Swift on April 14 in a surprise announcement by the company. Simons did not comment on his leaving, but some industry sources indicated it was not his decision.
Steve Kay, publisher of California-based Cattle Buyers Weekly, said the package doesn't surprise him in terms of the money. In fact, it may put the whole situation in a new light.
"It really puts a new light onto his departure," Kay said. "There was a lot of conjecture that somehow the owners of Swift & Co. potentially wanted to make a change or were dissatisfied with his leadership. But he wouldn't have been given a consulting contract" if they were unhappy.
Simons' departure came on the heels of the company's most recent earnings statement Feb. 27, which showed a 6.2 percent increase in companywide sales from the previous year. Just before Christmas, the company laid off 800 employees in preparation for a new second shift to further produce the meat slaughtered from the Greeley beef plant's first shift. Since the announcement, the company has rehired about 400 of the workers based on their seniority.
Also, the company negotiated hard last fall to cut benefits and wages when a contract with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local No. 7 expired. The employees won out in the end with a base-pay raise and benefits package.
Though many employees have returned to work, Simons' "golden parachute" is hard to swallow, said Dave Minshall, spokesman for the UFCW.
"From Local 7's point of view, it is ludicrous for Swift to come in and say they can't afford to pay decent wages and benefits and lay people off when the guy who runs the place walks off with a $7 million nest egg," Minshall said. "That defies reason."
Simons had been in Greeley since 1999 when he was named CEO of ConAgra Beef Co., Swift's predecessor.
During his tenure, Swift & Co. built and moved into new headquarters at Promontory, was involved in a new contract for union workers at its Greeley beef-packing plant and dealt with dropping beef sales following the single case of mad cow disease in Washington state that closed the Japanese and several other borders to U.S. beef.
In 2003, 5,559 people in the United States left for work and never came home.
The year before, 5,534 people suffered the same fate -- leaving empty seats at the kitchen table, bereaved families and co-workers and shoes that often aren't easy to fill by their employers.
While the most recent U.S. government data indicates that non-fatal workplace injuries and illnesses have declined, even one worker dying on the job is unacceptable to most people in the occupational and environmental health and safety community.
That's why April 28, Workers Memorial Day, is an important one.
The United States observed the first Workers Memorial Day in 1989, with April 28 chosen as the date because it marks the anniversary of the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. Workers Memorial Day is a day to pay tribute to those who have perished on the job and a day for safety and health stakeholders to recommit themselves to the mission of preventing all workplace fatalities in the future.
In Canada, April 28 has been declared a Day of Mourning to honor those who have been killed or injured in the workplace. The House of Commons and many provinces and municipalities in Canada observe the Day of Mourning with a moment's silence, while flags fly at half-mast on municipal buildings and provincial and territorial legislatures.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions recognizes April 28 as International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers. The organization said it expected at least 6 million people worldwide to participate in activities commemorating "workers who have died or been injured in the last 12 months by unsustainable forms of work and production."
Here in the United States, it's estimated that more than 306,706 workers' lives have been spared because of the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. But that's of little solace to the loved ones of the 5,559 people who died on the job in 2003 and the estimated 50,000, according to the AFL-CIO, who died from occupational diseases.
In case you forgot .... Today we celebrate Worker Memorial Day, "a day to pay tribute to those who have perished on the job and a day for safety and health stakeholders to recommit themselves to the mission of preventing all workplace fatalities in the future." Worker Memorial Day Honors Those Who Have Died on the Job (Occupational Hazards.com)
"On this Worker Memorial Day we remember and pay tribute to those who have died in pursuit of their livelihoods. We honor their memories and rededicate ourselves to our purpose: to foster safer and more healthful workplaces for all workers in America
Today, we remember those workers who have passed; but, we also renew our commitment to work hard every day to prevent workplace loss of life. We remain steadfast in our mission to bring every worker home safe and healthy every day our nation's workers and their families deserve no less."
WASHINGTON - The union organizing movement against Wal-Mart Stores has all the trappings of a grass-roots political campaign: a snappy Web site, volunteer action list, and an issues-based platform that focuses on wages, health care and retirement security.
If the unionizing campaign at the retail behemoth has a familiar ring, it may be because one of its leaders honed his skills in the 2004 presidential campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Howard Dean approach
Paul Blank was the national political director for Dean, whose strong showing early in the contest was credited to an Internet-based campaign that appealed to young voters and donors disillusioned by big-party politics.
Organized labor led by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is using a similar approach against Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. The company, with sales of $284 billion last year, has embittered unions for years by blocking efforts to organize its more than 1.2 million North American workers, including shutting down a store in Canada where employees were pressing for union representation and closing all its meat-packing operations when 11 butchers in Texas voted to unionize.
"One of the reasons the UFCW hired me is that I had approached them and said look, if you're going to change the largest company in the world, there's only one way to do that," Blank said in an interview. That way, Blank continued, was "to build enough pressure from the bottom up to change Wal-Mart. And in some ways, I believe that's the case in how to change the political system as well."
40,000 signed up
The Dean campaign used the Internet to enlist volunteers, alert supporters to campaign events and neighborhood fund-raising events, and rally young voters dubbed "Deanie boppers." The Internet also became a formidable fund-raising engine for Dean.
Blank says the union has signed up more than 40,000 supporters on its anti-Wal-Mart Internet site in just a few weeks, although the UFCW is not using the Web to raise money. Those supporters include community activists concerned about Wal-Mart's impact on small businesses, environmentalists opposed to "big-box" stores and Wal-Mart workers who want better pay and benefits.
He credits UFCW President Joe Hansen for launching the "Wake Up Wal-Mart" campaign earlier this year, attacking the company on a broad front after 20 years of failed efforts to organize Wal-Mart employees.
"The UFCW has realized that it's not just a worker-based campaign any longer, but it's really America's campaign to change Wal-Mart," Blank said. "So we have shifted the focus from just in-store organizing, which is the traditional union model of store-by-store organizing into a model where we're building a grass-roots movement of Americans who want to change Wal-Mart."
The changes the UFCW and its allies at the AFL-CIO labor federation seek include guaranteed health and retirement benefits and a boost in wages that now average $9.68 per hour.
Wal-Mart offers health insurance and a 401(k) retirement plan to its workers, but the union says the vast majority of employees earn too little to pay their share of medical coverage or to participate in the 401(k).
Wal-Mart's response
The company recently launched its own public-relations blitz to soften its hard-edge business image. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott, speaking at the company's first-ever press conference at the headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., in February, said the company creates stable jobs and is committed to providing a good working environment for employees.
Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for communications, said in a written statement that the company is "willing to listen to people with concerns about health care and other employee issues" and dismissed critics as "simply focused on their own self-interests and narrow political agendas."
But Wal-Mart did not grant a request for a telephone interview to discuss the UFCW's campaign.
Wal-Mart, an American icon that is expanding across the globe, has had its troubles. In recent weeks, Thomas Coughlin resigned as vice chairman amid questions about his expense claims and labor accusations that he helped finance anti-union activities in violation of federal law. A federal grand jury also is reviewing allegations of misspending within Wal-Mart. And the company has recently settled cases involving allegations of child and immigrant labor abuses.
Wal-Mart also faced angry unions and had bomb threats when it shut down a store in Jonquiere, Quebec, where employees seeking to unionize asked a Quebec labor board to intervene. Wal-Mart blamed the closure on poor sales.
Still, the recent stumbles haven't hurt business. Wal-Mart sales continue to grow, although not as fast as that of rivals Target and Costco.
-- Coalition to call on all Americans to join Mother's Day campaign/ Demand Wal-Mart End Discrimination against Women
Members of Congress, former Miss America Carolyn Sapp, former Wal-Mart workers, and representatives of the UFCW's WakeupWalmart.com campaign and AFL-CIO will join together to kick off the "Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart" campaign TOMORROW, Tuesday, April 26th, at 10 AM on Cannon Terrace (House side).
Speakers will highlight Wal-Mart's troubling record of discriminating against its women workers and will call on all Americans to support this grassroots effort to change Wal-Mart. In honor of Mother's Day, the speakers join together in signing the "Mother of all Mother's Day Cards" to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, calling on Wal-Mart to honor and respect our nation's women and mothers by ending the company's discrimination against women.
Who: Linda Chavez Thompson, Executive Vice President of AFL- CIO
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro
Congressman George Miller
Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky
Congresswoman Linda Sanchez
Congresswoman Hilda Solis
Carolyn Sapp, Former Miss America and spokesperson of Women Vs Wal-Mart
Sherry Mullins, Christina Bingham, Kimberly Pain -- plaintiffs in Dukes vs. Wal-Mart, representing 1.6 million former and current female Wal-Mart employees
Background
Approximately 700,000 women work for Wal-Mart which makes the Company the largest private sector employer of women in the United States. Wal-Mart has come under fire for its unfair treatment of its female employees. Wal-Mart is currently part of the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history. Over 1.5 million former and current female employees are suing the company for pay and promotion disparity. At every level, from cashiers to senior executives, Wal-Mart pays its female employees less than their male counterparts. An analysis of Wal-Mart payroll records done in 2003 showed that despite making up 72 percent of the hourly workforce, women only accounted for 33 percent of managers and only 15 percent of store managers. For the same job classification, women earned from 5 percent to 15 percent less than men, even after taking into account factors such as seniority and performance. This equates to nearly 40 cents less per hour for hourly workers or nearly $5,000 per year for managers.
The National Labor Relations Board has ordered a new union representation election at Nebraska Beef in Omaha after citing the company for labor practice violations during a vote four years ago.
The decision upheld a hearing officer's findings invalidating the results of a 2001 election in which workers rejected representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union on a 452-345 vote.
On Wednesday, UFCW Local 271 representatives distributed leaflets outside the meatpacking plant in south Omaha informing workers of the decision and seeking signatures on union authorization cards requesting union representation.
No date has been set for a new election, but it could come as early as this spring.
The labor board found Nebraska Beef described as the country's largest privately held meatpacking plant "engaged in improper interrogation of employees regarding their union sympathies" before the 2001 election and improperly prohibited employees from displaying union paraphernalia.
The board cited a plant supervisor's isolated threat to a worker that he would be fired because he was going to vote for the union as a factor contributing to its decision.
Union officials were elated by the action.
"It took a long time, but we are determined," Local 271 President Donna McDonald of Omaha said. "We haven't given up on those workers. We told them we were there for the long haul."
Early leafleting has generated "a very favorable response from employees," McDonald said.
The leaflets ask: "Are you ready to have a real voice on the job and be treated with the dignity, justice and respect workers deserve?"
Nebraska Beef did not respond to requests for comment.
Although the Omaha company's work force numbers may have declined recently, the plant normally employs 1,100 people and slaughters and processes 2,400 cattle a day.
Court documents filed by the company in 2003 said the plant generated $2.7 million in revenue per day.
The board's decision is the latest in a series of actions directed at Nebraska Beef by federal agencies during the past few years.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture alleged the company failed to correct a series of continuing food safety violations and temporarily removed federal Food Safety and Inspection Service personnel from the plant in 2003.
In 2000, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents raided the plant, detaining more than 200 Hispanic workers who were illegally in the country. The agency indicted a number of mid-level company managers on charges of recruiting illegal aliens and providing them with false immigration documentation.
Those charges subsequently were dismissed by U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, who said INS deportation of the workers prior to adequately documenting evidence from them, or making them available for questioning by lawyers for the defendants, nullified the case.
Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch, a privately-funded organization, criticized Nebraska Beef for alleged violation of labor laws in the 2001 union election.
The company, along with a pork plant in North Carolina and a poultry plant in Arkansas, were cited by the group for high injury rates, excessive production line speed, intimidation of immigrant workers and mistreatment of injured workers.
The union representation election at Nebraska Beef was held Aug. 16, 2001. The original ruling by a hearing officer was issued in January 2002 and appealed by the company to the NLRB.
The union represents nearly 1,000 meatpacking workers in Omaha, according to UFCW. The largest contingent is composed of production workers at the Swift and Co., plant, who voted for union representation in 2002.
Among the largest unionized meatpacking operations outside Omaha are plants in Dakota City, Grand Island and Schuyler.
Retailer, which has gotten $50M in subsidies, has Florida's highest number of Medicaid-eligible workers.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has reaped millions of dollars in government subsidies to expand its operations in Florida, is potentially the state's biggest user of the Medicaid system.
The nation's largest employer and grocery retailer, which constantly battles allegations of substandard employee wages and benefits, has more Medicaid-eligible employees and/or dependents than any company in Florida, according to the state Department of Children & Families.
The company has 12,300 Medicaid-eligible employees in the state -- more than 13 percent of its 92,812 Florida workers.
About 2.2 million Floridians -- mainly low-income families, children, the disabled and the elderly -- are enrolled in Medicaid. The state's Medicaid budget is $14.7 billion for 2004-2005, having nearly doubled from $7.8 billion for 1999-2000.
A national report by a nonprofit watchdog group says the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer has received millions of dollars in government subsidies in Florida.
And accepting subsidies while having so many Medicaid-eligible employees is something "we look at as double-dipping," says Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that wrote the report. "They're hitting up taxpayers in two ways to finance their expansion.
"We're talking about a company that has about $288 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profits," Mattera says. "Why should state or local governments give handouts to this company?"
Wal-Mart officials strongly defend their company's wage and benefits practices.
Dan Fogleman, a company spokesman, flatly denies reports suggesting that Wal-Mart encourages employees to sign up for public assistance programs. In fact, he says such behavior "would be a violation of company policy and one would be terminated if they did it." With its medical benefits, merchandise discounts and vacation policies, "Wal-mart has a very competitive benefits package," says Fogleman.
Subsidized growth
While there is no central source of most companies' government incentives, Wal-Mart's substantial subsidies were reviewed in a report that found the retailer garnered more than $50 million in Florida taxpayer money between 1992 and 2002 to help finance its expansion.
The report, "Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money to Finance Its Never-Ending Growth," was published May 2004 by Good Jobs First.
And Florida isn't alone in giving Wal-Mart taxpayer money to grow while many of its workers turn to public assistance to survive -- it's a nationwide concern, according to several independent reports.
"Wal-Mart commonly seeks subsidies in about one-third of its retail projects," says the Good Jobs First report. Thus, more than 1,000 of its 3,500 stores "may have received public assistance" -- to the tune of more than $1 billion in subsidies.
"The question of whether large sums of taxpayer funds should be used to subsidize the expansion of a company such as Wal-Mart is a serious public policy issue," says the Good Jobs report.
The average wage for regular, full-time hourly Wal-Mart associates in Florida is $9.36 an hour, or $19,468 a year, below the federal poverty level for a family of five.
But the Wal-Mart jobs created with Florida subsidies are higher paying, because they mainly are for Wal-Mart distribution centers, says Scott Openshaw, a spokesman with the state Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development. "Wal-Mart may have Medicaid-eligible employees, but our program is not a kind that creates (those) jobs."
Still, Mattera says that type of reasoning is disingenuous at best.
"The Wal-Mart distribution centers create more full-time jobs, and the wages are somewhat higher than in the stores, but they're still not great jobs," he says. "They are low-paying when compared to other distribution centers."
Openshaw's department currently has an agreement that will give Wal-Mart $5.76 million in tax incentives if the retail giant meets certain conditions. In that deal, Wal-Mart opened two distribution centers in Baker and DeSoto counties, promising to create 1,000 jobs. Openshaw says wages at those centers are 164 percent higher than the area's average wage.
"These jobs offer value for the local communities, and far be it from us to tell them what kind of jobs they should attract," says Erin Heston, a spokeswoman with Enterprise Florida, which facilitates state incentives.
Low enrollment, waiting periods
Yet another report says a typical Wal-Mart store may cost federal taxpayers $420,750 a year in public assistance.
The report, "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart," was done last year by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
While full-time Wal-Mart employees must wait six months and part-time employees must wait two years to enroll in the health plan, the national average waiting period is 1.3 months, says the congressional study. That study also says Wal-Mart employees pay 42 percent of their health insurance premium, compared with the national average of 16 percent.
"Because Wal-Mart fails to pay sufficient wages, U.S. taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab," says the study.
Still another report, done last August by the University of California Berkeley's Labor Center, says that Wal-Mart's workers are paid significantly less than other retail workers and are less likely to have health benefits.
The Berkeley report says reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs such as food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing in California cost taxpayers about $86 million a year.
Retailer: Reports bias
Fogleman, the Wal-Mart spokesman, disputes the Good Jobs First findings.
He says that report is biased because United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which opposes the store's employment practices, paid for half of the report.
"If you do math, you'll see every dollar invested by cities and counties is returned 40 times over," says Fogleman. Nationally, he says Wal-Mart has paid millions in sales tax and billions in local property taxes. "Customers decide with their feet. They can rely on Wal-Mart to provide the value they need."
Fogleman calls the California report unreliable because he says it was fueled by special interests such as labor groups that want to see Wal-Mart employees unionized. He also says Wal-Mart was not contacted to participate in the study or review the findings before it was published.
The University of California Berkeley Labor Center "is largely regarded as a union think tank," says Fogleman.
He does not refute the federal study done by the Democratic U.S. House committee, but maintains that Wal-Mart has "good, solid benefits."
By Joe Hansen, UFCW International Union President - USA Today
April 17, 2005
As America's largest company, with more than $285 billion in sales and more than $10 billion in profits, Wal-Mart has a responsibility to set the standard for customers, workers, families and communities. America's largest employer with nearly 1.3 million workers must reflect America's values.
Wal-Mart is not the victim of globalization, lower wages and lack of health insurance. More accurately, Wal-Mart's business practices created many of these problems in America today. Look at the record.
A company that reflects America's values doesn't pay below poverty-level wages to its workers. At 34 hours per week (full-time at Wal-Mart), the average Wal-Mart associate makes $17,114 per year, well below the poverty level for a family of four.
A company that reflects America's values doesn't have 660,000 of its employees without company-provided health insurance, forcing workers to seek taxpayer-funded public assistance. In fact, in 11 of the 12 states that have disclosed employers who have employees on Medicaid, Wal-Mart tops the list. In Georgia, for example, a state survey found more than 10,000 Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid 14 times the next highest employer.
A company that reflects America's values doesn't ask taxpayers to subsidize its $10 billion in profits. A U.S. congressional study found that Wal-Mart costs you, the American taxpayer, up to $2.5 billion in public assistance. One newspaper editorial titled it, "Wal-Mart Welfare."
A company that reflects America's values doesn't put profits before its people, morality and the law. In the past few months, Wal-Mart agreed to pay a record fine for exploiting illegal immigrants and settled extensive child labor violations. It still faces the largest gender discrimination lawsuit, 1.6 million women, in U.S. history for unfair pay and unequal promotion.
Wal-Mart is not creating jobs in our communities. Wal-Mart's business practices simply exchange decent jobs with health benefits for lower-paying jobs and taxpayer-subsidized health care. The truth is Wal-Mart is forcing good-paying American jobs overseas. Wal-Mart is creating an America of lower wages, no health care and lack of retirement security.
We think it's time for Wal-Mart to wake up.
TAR HEEL, N.C., April 13 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a ruling yesterday finding Smithfield Packing, Inc. in Tar Heel, N.C., and its cleaning contractor, QSI, Inc. guilty of violating workers' rights by threatening, harassing, physically assaulting, falsely arresting, and causing arrests.
"Workers at the company's Tar Heel hog kill and processing plant have been subjected to harassment and mistreatment at the hands of Bladen County Deputy Sheriffs on behalf of the company and now Smithfield company cops since workers began seeking a voice on the job through union representation in 1994," said UFCW Executive Vice President and Organizing Director Bill McDonough
"This is a company with a history of violence against workers in North Carolina," said McDonough. "The American people are becoming more aware every day of what this company does to workers at its Tar Heel, N.C., facility -- and will hold Smithfield accountable. These recent events demonstrate, once again, that the company management at Tar Heel will stoop to any level to abuse workers at the plant."
The UFCW filed charges on behalf of the workers after the company's cleaning contractor began running a scheme in which workers hired on the sanitation crew were promised six-month and one-year raises. Once workers got close, or shortly after, they earned a raise, QSI sanitation supervisors fired them for minor infractions -- then later rehired them at their original starting pay of $6 an hour. When workers discovered that a sympathetic supervisor who had been voicing workers' concerns to management and who had also refused to fire a worker for a minor violation had been fired, they walked out of the plant. QSI promised a dollar raise, among other things, to coax the employees back to work. Approximately a week after workers returned to work, QSI, with the assistance of Smithfield's police force, attempted to fire the supervisors and workers who were part of the original walkout. When workers attempted to walk out again in support of those being fired, the company police attempted to bar them from leaving, causing a riot-like situation.
The NLRB judge ordered Smithfield and QSI to immediately stop their illegal actions and reinstate 14 workers who had been unlawfully discharged. The order also mandates the payment of lost wages, benefits, and any loss of earnings and benefits the discharged workers may have suffered, plus interest.
Smithfield's anti-worker actions in Tar Heel have generated negative attention from Human Rights Watch, an internationally renowned human rights organization. Human Rights Watch has issued two special reports citing Smithfield's record as a perpetrator of workers and human rights' violations: Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards (August 2000) and Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in the U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants (January 2005).
Recently, the NLRB reaffirmed the judge's order citing the company's illegal actions in a 1997 worker organizing effort, including:
-- Smithfield managers conspired with the local Sheriff Department to physically intimidate and assault union supporters.
-- Sheriff deputies -- in riot gear and heavily armed -- stationed themselves at the entrance to the plant on days that civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson and other religious leaders handed out literature with workers.
-- The company planned and instigated a "riot" following the vote count in 1997 that led to false arrests of a union supporter.
-- Smithfield held forced meetings to intimidate and threaten workers for supporting the union.
-- Smithfield paid workers above their normal rate to spy on co-workers and turn in union supporters to management consultants.
-- Smithfield forced a management employee to produce false statements to the Board in an attempt to cover-up anti-union activity.
-- Smithfield threatened to close the plant if the workers chose a union.
-- The Board found Smithfield guilty of illegally firing workers.
The NLRB also overturned the results from the 1997 union election at Smithfield and ordered a new election. The format and location of any future election will be determined by the Board's Regional Director. The 10 illegally fired workers have also been granted reinstatement and back-wages as compensation for their unfair discharges.
The UFCW co-sponsors a worker center in Red Springs, N.C., that serves workers from the Tar Heel plant and surrounding areas with assistance on health and safety issues, immigration, English-as-a-Second Language, workers compensation and social service referrals. For more information on Smithfield go to http://www.ufcw.org/issues_and_actions
The UFCW represents 1.4 million workers, 250,000 in the meatpacking and poultry industries. UFCW members also work in the health care, garment, chemical, distillery and retail industries.
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.
Wal-Mart's new informer hotline and ban on sexual relationships between staff has caused an unprecedented media storm in Germany.
Today's Bild, Germany's largest and most popular newspaper, flashes a full page header on the "Sex Ban for Wal-Mart Employees" and says that the "Retail giant wants to regulate the private lives of its employees".
- "Honesty, respect, fairness and integrity", this is how the US retail giant Wal-Mart formulates its business values, writes Bild on its website.
- In reality, the U.S. supermarket group is leading its employees from the nose. Now, a 28-page "Ethics Code" creates an uproar among its workforce. Wal-Mart wants to sniff around even the love life of its employees, Bild says.
Bild is not alone in expressing a German disgust over the newest Wal-Mart scandal. The whole media landscape in Europe's largest economy is in uproar about the Bentonville-based multinational's lack of respect for its German workers, and for the European culture itself. Once again, world's largest retailer has shot itself in the foot.
Employees are also expected to paint their colleagues in black colours, writes Der Spiegel, Germany's most respected news magazine, telling about the company forcing its workers to be informers. Der Spiegel also tells that the company failed to consult with its works council before issuing these rules, which is a violation against labour laws.
- Management should have consulted with the works councils before issuing their 'ethics code', says Ulrich Dalibor, head of ver.di's commerce sector. - This was not done, which was a clear and serious violation of German legislation.
Ulrich Dalibor also points out that when a company demands ethically correct behaviour from its workers, or others, it has to behave in an ethically correct way itself. - We know only too well that this is not the case when it comes to Wal-Mart, the German commerce trade union leader says.
Wal-Mart has raised eyebrows in Germany by its constant refusal to join the country's employers' associations, and thus subscribing to the industry-wide collective agreements. UNI Commerce affiliated ver.di was, however, able to force the retail giant to declare that it will respect the collective agreement provisions. This took strong pressure from the well organised Wal-Mart workforce, including a series of strikes to warn the management.
This most recent expression of Wal-Mart's disrespect for its German workers does not help the company, which continues to generate important losses from its business operations. The Wal-Mart concept has not travelled well and the US retail giant has not been successful in competing on the European markets.
In the United Kingdom, Wal-Mart lags far behind the highly profitable market leader Tesco, which is known for its social partnership agreement with shop workers' trade union Usdaw and its decent employer performance. When UK supermarket chain Safeway was up for sale, Wal-Mart was in competition but lost to Morrisons, another British retailer.
In Japan, Wal-Mart-dominated Seiyu is equally unprofitable, and was disqualified by authorities from the salvage operation of ailing supermarket giant Daiei, which went to a Marubeni-lead group instead. Most recently, the US retail giant failed to acquire the Carrefour stores in Japan and Mexico, which went to local retailers when the French multinational disinvested from these countries. Wal-Mart was said to have been highly interested in these store chains.
On the North American arena, Wal-Mart is a frequent customer of the legal system, because of its workers' rights violations. Its ambitious and probably very expensive public relations campaigning does not seem to bring much results as the retail giant continues to get bad press on a daily basis. The decision to close the first unionised Wal-Mart store in De Jonquiθre in Quebec, Canada, rather than enter into collective agreement negotiations with UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW caused an uproar all through the continent as well as abroad.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The largest U.S. grocery union has filed a complaint against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., asking the National Labor Relations Board to investigate whether the retailer "bribed" employees to block union activities.
The United Food and Commercial Workers' complaint comes after The Wall Street Journal reported last week that former Wal-Mart Vice Chairman Tom Coughlin may have used undocumented expense payments to fund anti-union activities, including paying union staffers to tell him of pro-union workers in stores
The union said its complaint, filed on Tuesday, asks the NLRB to "aggressively investigate whether Wal-Mart bribed employees to suppress worker support for union representation."
Shares of Wal-Mart, which have fallen about 6 percent in the past month, edged up 0.35 percent to $48.80 after Prudential Equity Group raised its rating on the stock to "neutral weight" from "underweight."
"Wal-Mart's actions seemingly involved the criminal misappropriation of company funds to create an illegal anti-union slush fund," the union said in a statement.
The union wants the NLRB to subpoena any documents from Wal-Mart that might substantiate those charges.
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the union was filing wild charges in hopes that they would get attention.
"There's absolutely no evidence to support any of these charges," spokeswoman Mona Williams said. "The Wall Street Journal reported activity by one individual and it's a quantum leap for the UFCW to try to make this a broader issue.
"I think it's the equivalent of throwing a Hail Mary pass. They're simply going to file the wildest of charges and see if it gets any attention."
In a letter to the NLRB accompanying the complaint, the union said it suspected that Wal-Mart "spread bribes in stores whose workers were actively organizing but abruptly abandoned their activity" in 13 U.S. states.
Wal-Mart is the largest U.S. private employer with more than 1.2 million employees. The company has repeatedly said its policy of open communication with employees means there is no need for a union, but labor groups contend the retailer is vehemently anti-union.
Washington DC Today's Wall Street Journal revealed that former Wal-Mart Board member and Vice Chairman Thomas M. Coughlin, the #2 person at the company, alleges that he operated an illegal anti-union slush fund as part of a company program to suppress the democratic freedom of workers to make a choice for a union voice at work.
The UFCW calls on the company to publicize all documents connected with the U.S. attorney's criminal probe of the Coughlin case
Wal-Mart has already been found guilty of illegally spying, bribing with promotions, firing and intimidating workers. According to the Wall Street Journal, these revelations, if true, mean that Wal-Mart's anti-worker, anti-union program "would represent a criminal offense under the federal Taft-Hartly Act," a federal felony to pay employees to persuade coworkers to abandon support for union representation.
The Journal also reported that Coughlin "is expected to use the 'union project' as part of his defense to the charges about mismanagement of funds."
"We are deeply disturbed by these allegations of Wal-Mart's anti-union activity," stated UFCW Executive Vice President and Director of Organizing Bill McDonough. "These are serious criminal offenses and cast Wal-Mart's systematic anti-worker activities on a much more sinister level. Wal-Mart should not try and cover up its activities but should do the right thing and make all of the documents public immediately."
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (April 6, 2005) - Meijer Stores had the second-most profitable year in its history in 2004 after implementing a sweeping cost-cutting initiative and re-thinking its merchandising. The newly promoted president of the chain told attendees the news at the Western Michigan University Food Marketing Conference here yesterday. "Meijer had tried to cut costs before, but was never able to do it," said Larry Zigerelli, a veteran of CVS and Procter & Gamble who joined Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Meijer two years ago as senior vice president. He said the company is on track to reduce selling, general and administrative expenses by 4% during a two-year span. Construction costs for new supercenters have fallen 27%. The company has also refocused on making its stores easier to navigate and creating more destination departments, while emphasizing the "right products at costs that are proximate to the competition," he said.
WASHINGTON, April 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) announced today it is launching a new grassroots, community-based campaign to wake up Wal-Mart. The campaign's website -- http://www.WakeupWalMart.com -- and the campaign's blog --http://blog.WakeUpWalmart.com -- will be at the center of this new grassroots movement that will lead and revolutionize the national fight to change Wal-Mart.
"This is a new day and a new strategy in the fight against Wal-Mart," stated Paul Blank, the new campaign director for the Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign. "Wal-Mart's greed puts profits before people. Today, we are forming a grassroots movement to empower millions of Americans to ask Wal-Mart to put people first."
The rise of Wal-Mart as the world's largest retailer has come at a high cost to our society. Traditional organizing campaigns are too limited for a greedy, global company who is willing to cut its nose to spite its face rather than do the right thing and stand up for people," said Blank.
"For too long, Wal-Mart's business practice has been to lower our wages, pressure suppliers to ship our jobs overseas, shift their health care costs onto American taxpayers and ask communities to give over $1 billion in subsidies for their expansion," said Blank.
"All across America, consumers and taxpayers are waking up to the high cost of Wal-Mart's poverty wages, reliance on taxpayer funded state health care programs and devastating impact on communities. Wal-Mart's values are not America's values," stated Blank. "There is only one force powerful enough to change the largest corporation in the world, the largest retailer in the world and the largest employer in the world-the American people. We are Wal-Mart's consumers and it is time for Wal-Mart to wake up and start doing what is right for its employees, our families, and our country."
The Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign will give people the tools they need to join together in common purpose in order to change the largest corporation in the world. The campaign will utilize an array of organizing strategies, innovative media, a blog and other internet tools that have been used successfully in previous political and grassroots campaigns.
The website -- http://www.WakeupWalMart.com -- will offer concerned citizens, community leaders, activists and workers an online vehicle where they can learn the truth about Wal-Mart's record, as well as become an active member in this new grassroots movement. The "Take Action" center of the website will even feature a new tool for community leaders to Adopt-A-Store and begin forming community coalitions around every Wal-Mart location in the United States.
The website will also be used to form a new group of current and former Wal-Mart employees called the Wal-Mart Veterans Association. This will be a place for former and current employees to join together and share their Wal-Mart experience.
In addition, the website will feature a blog about Wal-Mart that will be updated throughout the day on news and stories related to Wal-Mart. It will become a vital resource for the millions of Americans who believe Wal-Mart needs to be changed.