From a PR perspective, the disasters on both sides of the Wal-Mart reputation wars are almost like having a new Exxon Valdez crash every day.
This week, the governor of Arkansas ripped into union-backed Wal-Mart Watch by demanding that it disclose details of its operation when asking leaders like him for support. In a scathing letter to director Andrew Grossman, Governor Mike Huckabee declined appearing at the group’s “traveling circus” and then added:
"Wal-Mart spends $7 billion in Arkansas alone purchasing merchandise from over 1,800 suppliers in our state and helping to support over 67,000 jobs. They collected almost half a billion dollars in state and local taxes in Arkansas last year as well, and gave another $22 million to charity. How many jobs have you created? How many businesses do you support in my state? What is the pay scale for your executives and other employees of your enterprise? In the interest of full disclosure, are you willing to share what you are paid and what all other positioning in your organization pay down to the entry level clerks, and going further, would you list the benefits you provide?"
Then he told Mr. Grossman, whose previous gig was raising money for Democratic Senate candidates, that as a “child close to poverty, I personally find your analysis of Wal-Mart smug and condescending.”
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart backed Working Families for Wal-Mart is looking for a new director after civil rights leader Andrew Young basically said that the big-box retailer was giving it back to the Jews, Arabs and Koreans who pushed out neighborhood mom-and-pop stores.
And bloggers like Wall Street analyst Jeff Matthews are having a field day with presidential hopeful Senator Joe Biden’s speech at a union-sponsored anti-Wal-Mart rally, where he ranted that “I don't see any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people. They talk about paying them $10 an hour. That's true. How can you live a middle-class life on that?”
Wrote Matthews in an lengthy response:
“I don’t imagine the woman who vacuums Biden’s nice Senate office every night is being paid a “middle-class” wage. Nor, I would bet, is the guy who starched Biden’s nice, striped, this-will-look-good-on-camera shirt at the dry cleaners getting a “middle-class” wage. But that vacuum lady and that dry-cleaning guy don’t concern Biden precisely because they are not employed by a company that has thus far been unsuccessfully targeted for organizing by Big Labor.”
Touché.
Yep, the Wal-Mart wars are in full swing. But for all the rhetoric bombs and finger-pointing, Wal-Mart still handles some 140 million customers every week representing more than 80 percent of the American population. It’s reasonable to think that many Americans are oblivious to the whole commotion. And it's almost certain that many more are just plain ambivalent about it.
Why? Because in the real workaday world, these millions of people are consumers, not constituents. And consumers go Wal-Mart to get good prices on things they need – not to support a particular political party or public policy agenda.
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