As if we needed more evidence of Walmart's evilness...

[DRoseDARs]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...roundbalkycity

Top Stories - Chicago Tribune

Wal-Mart tries end run around balky city
Mon Jan 12,11:11 AM ET Add Top Stories - Chicago Tribune to My Yahoo!


By V. Dion Haynes, Tribune national correspondent

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Stung by strong opposition in nearly every corner of the country where it proposes a large-scale development, Wal-Mart is taking a new tack here: bypassing local regulators and going straight to voters for permission to build a mega-store.

By introducing the ballot measure, which goes to voters April 6, Wal-Mart hopes to avoid several major obstacles to building its so-called supercenter: environmental reviews, traffic studies, public hearings and especially obstinate municipal officials who until now had the final say.

The Wal-Mart ballot proposal is a byproduct of California's quirky initiative process, which over the years has resulted in controversial laws that slashed property taxes, abolished affirmative action and bilingual education and, in October, ousted Gov. Gray Davis (news - web sites) less than a year after he was elected to his second term.

Indeed, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites), who won the recall election, has threatened to go directly to voters if the California Legislature does not approve reforms in the worker's compensation law.

A rarely used provision in state law allows the exemption for construction projects submitted to voters as an initiative. The thinking is that such projects probably would receive much more public scrutiny than those going through the typical process involving zoning boards and city councils.

"Having 200 people at a [City Council] meeting saying they don't want Wal-Mart is not reflective of the 50,000 people in Inglewood who do want us," said Wal-Mart spokesman Peter Kanelos. "The community is not against us. [The opposition is merely] a special interest group trying to limit competition."

Wal-Mart officials opted to go directly to voters after the Inglewood City Council passed an ordinance banning the construction of retail stores with at least 155,000 square feet that sell 20,000 food items--essentially the definition of a superstore. The council repealed the ordinance after Wal-Mart launched a petition drive against it and threatened to sue the city.

"It seemed rather pointless to go to the council when they said you can't build a store here," Kanelos said. "Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to be denied?"

Would city play role?

The open question is whether Wal-Mart would have to go through the city at all if the initiative were to pass.

Wal-Mart, attempting to answer many concerns beforehand, has filed a 75-page initiative that addresses such issues as economic benefits to the city, design and landscaping, traffic, storm-water runoff and the use of low-flush toilets to save water.

The initiative, according to a City Council analysis, authorizes the entire project without any action from the city.


Some planning experts assert that state law still could require some city review if the initiative passes. Even so, such scrutiny would come after the fact, when the City Council could do little to stop it.

Most citizens wouldn't understand the Wal-Mart initiative, said Stuart Meck, a senior research fellow at the Chicago-based American Planning Association, a professional organization representing 34,000 planning experts around the country.

"You wouldn't know how to examine regulations, you wouldn't know how to read the map, you wouldn't be able to check runoff, lighting and landscaping," he added. "You need [an expert] to evaluate the adverse environmental impacts."

Controversy follows chain

The nation's largest corporation, Wal-Mart has become a lightning rod for controversy, facing criticism from labor organizations about its anti-union policies; charges from human-rights advocates about overseas sweatshops; and complaints from small retailers about being put out of business by the retail giant. In November, federal prosecutors informed Wal-Mart that it is the target of an investigation into the hiring of illegal immigrants.

Now the anti-Wal-Mart campaign is ratcheting up with the company's effort to establish "supercenters" around the nation. At more than 180,000 square feet, the supercenters are 50 percent larger than a typical Wal-Mart and combine grocery products with the usual department store goods.

Disputes over the supercenters have erupted in Medford, Ore.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Albuquerque; Tulsa; Stoughton, Wis.; Liberty Township, Ohio; Hernando, Tenn.; Atlanta; Hudson, Fla.; Union County, N.C.; Hartford, Conn.; and Bangor, Maine.

The battle has been particularly intense in California, where the retailer has announced plans to open 40 supercenters and where 75,000 workers continue a three-month strike against grocery chains in competition with Wal-Mart. The key issue in the strike is the chains' effort to cut wages and benefits to put their prices more in line with Wal-Mart's. On Sunday, a grocery union spokesman said four days of informal negotiations ended without success.

On the offensive

The company has gone on the offensive in Inglewood, seeking voter approval to develop a 60-acre site near the Hollywood Park racetrack.

"I'm a Korean War veteran; I believe in the Constitution of the United States and in competition. Wal-Mart should have just as much right to come to Inglewood as any other company," said Inglewood resident Williem Agee, 74, a Parks and Recreation Department commissioner and an initiative proponent.

"At this point, the Wal-Mart [initiative] would pass without a doubt," he said, asserting that the retailer would not have had a chance with what he called a "pro-union City Council."

David Stewart, president of the Inglewood Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites) who owns a construction company, said: "We need Wal-Mart. We need revenue-generating ventures for Inglewood . . . and viable business opportunities to provide jobs for our kids."

But a community group called Coalition for a Better Inglewood has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the Wal-Mart initiative. It says the initiative is illegal because it oversteps the bounds of the initiative process in taking review authority from the city.

Community opposition

Wal-Mart is "trying to take away the rights of community people" to speak out on the proposal before it is voted on, said Rev. Altagracia Perez, pastor of Holy Faith Episcopal Church in Inglewood and a member of the coalition.

"My hope is the initiative will be taken off the ballot and Wal-Mart will come back to the table and work [with the city] on safeguards," she added.

A handful of developers have gone the initiative route with mixed results. Many of the projects, largely housing developments, have been defeated.

Still, experts say, Wal-Mart has advantages with voters that other developers don't have.

"Wal-Mart has lots of shoppers, employees, distributors and vendors," said Larry Kosmont, president of Kosmont Cos., a Los Angeles-based real estate firm specializing in economic development issues.

"Wal-Mart is a mini-economy unto itself."

************************************************** **

What the Hell is Walmart's problem? Why do its CEOs continue to bully their way around the legal public process? Hell, I believe they considered filing a lawsuit against the residents of a neighborhood here in Reno because they said "No" to an UberWalmart being built nearby.

[Shi Huangdi]

"Why do its CEOs continue to bully their way around the legal public process? "


They aren't doing that. Part of the legal process there includes allowing people to vote on initatives.

[Sprayber]

Yeah god forbid people actually vote on an issue themselves

[CapitanGarlic]

Abandon walmart! Run to the nearest K-Mart, and rejoice in a friendly corporation! We love the consumer, and recent evidence suggests that Hitler would have shopped at Wal-Mart. You don't love Hitler, do you?

[Nubclear]

Walmart is EVIL

[Ben Kenobi]

Not bad. 4th post invokes Godwin's law.

[Ted Striker]

there is no room in inglewood for no wal-mart

let's axe dub-c what he thinks about it

ingleWOOOD up to no good

wal-mart is unstoppable though. cali has held them off but they are making inroads...

i'd like to see some long term studies that show the impact of these stores on the local community...

[KrazyHorse]

Theorem: Long-term effect is bad
Proof: Wal-Mart comes from Arkansas
Look at Arkansas

QED

[Ted Striker]

that is some good doctoral level **** right there

[The Mad Monk]

I thought that the thread would be refering to this:

January 13, 2004
In-House Audit Says Wal-Mart Violated Labor Laws
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

n internal audit now under court seal warned top executives at Wal-Mart Stores three years ago that employee records at 128 stores pointed to extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals.

The audit of one week's time-clock records for roughly 25,000 employees found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day. It also found 60,767 apparent instances of workers not taking breaks, and 15,705 apparent instances of employees working through meal times.

Officials at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, employing 1.2 million people at its 3,500 stores in the United States, insisted that the audit was meaningless, since what looked like violations could simply reflect employees' failure to punch in and out for breaks and meals they took.

"Our view is that the audit really means nothing when you understand Wal-Mart's timekeeping system," said Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for communications. She said Wal-Mart did nothing in response to the audit, saying it always strives to comply with the law.

But missed breaks and lunches have become a major issue in more than 40 lawsuits charging Wal-Mart with forcing employees to work without pay through lunch and rest breaks, and several lawyers and former employees who have sued Wal-Mart said the audit only bolstered their cases. They said that many employees continued to complain of missing meals and breaks.

"Their own analysis confirms that they have a pattern and practice of making their employees work through their breaks and lunch on a regular basis," said James Finberg, a lawyer who has assisted several suits against Wal-Mart. "What this audit shows is against their own company policy and against the law in almost every state in which they operate."

Several lawyers who sued Wal-Mart also noted that over the years Wal-Mart had ordered its employees to make sure to clock out when they took lunch and breaks.

And John Fraser, who ran the federal Labor Department's wage and hour division during the 1990's, called the sheer volume of apparent violations surprising and troubling. "When you find the frequency of this kind of violation in such a large employer, such a pervasive employer, it has to be a source of great concern," Mr. Fraser said.

The audit was conducted in July 2000; a copy was given to The New York Times by a longtime Wal-Mart critic hoping to pressure the company to improve working conditions. Wal-Mart has asked various courts to seal the audit for the last two years — and they have complied — ever since the company gave copies to lawyers who accused it of making employees work off the clock.

The audit, written by Bret Shipley, a Wal-Mart auditor, indicated that time-clock records for thousands of workers showed tens of thousands of missed lunches and breaks. Ms. Williams said employees had probably taken their lunches and breaks but just failed to record them.

She and other Wal-Mart officials also asserted that time-clock records could have been wrong in indicating that minors had worked illegally during school hours. Schools might have been closed on a given weekday, they noted. "The audit that Shipley pulled together doesn't reflect actual behavior within the facilities," Ms. Williams said.

Wal-Mart officials, she said, always tried to comply with the law and repeatedly told employees to take lunches and breaks. Wal-Mart policies state that employees working seven or more hours a day are to receive a meal break and two 15-minute rest breaks. Federal law does not require lunch and meal breaks, but most states do for employees working seven or more hours a day.

Several months after the Shipley audit was finished, Wal-Mart stopped requiring employees to clock out and in for 15-minute breaks. Wal-Mart officials said they eliminated this requirement for their employees' convenience, but Frank Azar, a lawyer involved in the off-the-clock suits, said Wal-Mart did this to make sure no paper trail could show that employees were not taking breaks.

The audit warned that its findings could hurt the company. "Wal-Mart may face several adverse consequences as a result of staffing and scheduling not being prepared appropriately," it stated.

Commissioned to help Wal-Mart executives determine whether employees were taking their meals and breaks, the audit came as the company was facing several lawsuits accusing it of off-the-clock work and failing to give breaks.

Ms. Williams said that company auditors more senior than Mr. Shipley had determined that the methodology he used was flawed. "This audit is so flawed and invalid that we did not respond to it in any way internally," she said.

But several current and former Wal-Mart employees confirmed in interviews that violations of state law on child labor and breaks were a recurring problem at many understaffed Wal-Mart stores.

Leila Najjar said that when she worked for a Wal-Mart in a Denver suburb at age 16 and 17, she sometimes was forced to miss breaks, work past midnight and work more than eight hours a day even though Colorado bars minors from doing that. Time records from a court case showed that her store sometimes forced her to work illegal hours.

During the holidays, Ms. Najjar, a recent graduate of the University of Colorado, recalled, "the store closed at 11 and there were nights we had to stay to clean up until 12:30, 12:45. It was a long day, and I was tired the next day at school. And sometimes, I'd have to work 10, 11 hours on a Saturday or Sunday."

If the same rate of violations were found throughout the Wal-Mart system, that would translate into tens of thousands of child-labor violations each week at Wal-Mart's 3,500 stores and more than one million violations of company and state regulations on meals and breaks.

Company officials said such extrapolations were misleading, noting that many of the seeming time-record problems could be explained by legal behavior.

Wal-Mart employees clock in and out by swiping their identity badges, which the time clock reads electronically. Ms. Williams said employees sometimes forgot to swipe when they arrived at work or when they took lunch. Sometimes, she said, workers missed breaks not because management pressured them but, for example, because they wanted to finish early to take a child to the doctor.

John Lehman, who ran several Wal-Mart stores in Kentucky, said he was sure that large-scale violations on child labor, breaks and meals continued at Wal-Mart. In the months after the company distributed the audit internally, he said, store managers like him received no word to try harder to prevent violations.

"There was no follow-up to that audit, there was nothing sent out I was aware of saying, `We're bad. We screwed up. This is the remedy we're going to follow to correct the situation,' " said Mr. Lehman, who said he quit in 2001 because he was disgusted with the company's treatment of employees. He now works for a union trying to organize Wal-Mart workers.

"Wal-Mart stores are so systematically understaffed that they work minors just like they do adults," he said. "They don't have enough workers to take care of the business. Yes, their prices are low but then the stores are so understaffed that workers often don't have time to take their breaks or lunches."

Maria Rocha, who ran the restaurant inside a Wal-Mart in Dallas, said her workload was so great and the restaurant so understaffed that she never took breaks and often missed lunch. "It was just too busy to take a break," said Ms. Rocha, who quit in October. "There were a lot of customers, and the managers would be mad if you took a break."

Verette Richardson, a former Wal-Mart cashier in Kansas City, Mo., said it was sometimes so hard to get a break that some cashiers urinated on themselves. Bella Blaubergs, a diabetic who worked at a Wal-Mart in Washington State, said she sometimes nearly fainted from low blood sugar because managers often would not give breaks.

As for claims of child-labor violations and stores too understaffed for worker breaks, Ms. Williams said, "In a company that has more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone, I have no doubt that in some individual instances that can happen."

[CapitanGarlic]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Not bad. 4th post invokes Godwin's law.

It cannot happen fast enough, when Wal-Mart is involved.

[DRoseDARs]

By introducing the ballot measure, which goes to voters April 6, Wal-Mart hopes to avoid several major obstacles to building its so-called supercenter: environmental reviews, traffic studies, public hearings and especially obstinate municipal officials who until now had the final say.

God forbid that they should have to face all of the standard litmus tests of whether or not a particular building project is appropriate to build in a given area. God forbid that they should have to prove that their facility won't overburden the local roads. God forbid that they should have to provide suficient evidence that their facility won't harm the local groundwater supply. God forbid that they should have to allow "the people" the proper opportunity and forum to hear about the pros and cons of the proposed building project.

Oh boo-hoo, those mean old municipal officials won't let us build our Big Box. Hmmm...maybe they're trying to look out for other area retailers (smaller businesses) that might actually be harmed by a Walmart nearby, putting them and their employees out-of-business. From what I've seen and read, I'm guessing the Walmart Family Portrait doesn't look much like something out of *Insert Model TV Family Here*. Looks more disfunctional and not really a happy work environment. Perhaps putting smaller businesses isn't such a good thing for an area's economy and workforce...and those nasty, vicious municipal officials realize that.

Shi, I didn't say they were doing something illegal now did I? I said they were bullying their way around. This whole "Well this small group doesn't reflect the desires of the people" arguement is such crap. Why should Walmart, or any other large project, be given the option to do an endrun around safeguards against bad ideas? Most people aren't going to weigh the pros and cons beyond Cheap Prices and Has-It-All-Supercenter. Traffic? Noise? Pollution? Jobs? Treatment of Employees? What do I care? As long as I can by sh!t for cheap! One of the oldest parts of Democracy is/are Town Meeting-type forums, where particular issues can be addressed by all interested parties. "Vote Yes on Such-and-Such Issue" billboards and radio spots do not come close to the quality of real debate forums. The people who go to such forums are the people who educate themselves about the issue and who actually understand the pros and cons. The people who don't go obviously are either too busy or too disinterested to care. We have people who decide what projects get built and where for a reason: they understand what impact those projects are going to have on an area. We trust them to protect our communities from bad building projects. If Walmart can't understand that, it'll use whatever means it can to avoid learning it. And that's bad for any community.



You know what? Fvck it. I'm tired and Walmart isn't worth the energy. There are plenty of other people, both here in the forums and out in the world, who have the time, money, and education to fight Walmart. All I know is that I'm not caught up in the tired "Capitalism=Good; Democracy=Infallible" tripe that many people are so black-and-white about. No Shi, I'm not saying you or anyone else here is one of them, so chill. Walmart is harmful, and it abuses Capitalism and Democracy to suit its needs at the cost of people. That's not ok and it never will be.

Dammit, now I have a headache.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Theorem: Long-term effect is bad
Proof: Wal-Mart comes from Arkansas
Look at Arkansas

QED

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[mrmitchell]

Sprayber

[GePap]

A 75 page proposal? I have looked at zoning maps, and most certainly the majority of voters will have no clue about most of the facts of the case. I know local agencies can move slowly, but if it falls between slow bureaucrats and voters when it comes to who will know how to read run-off maps and zoning texts and so forth, I have to chose the city employees.