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CONTACT: CHRIS KOFINIS (202) 486-6422

NEW YORKER MAGAZINE EXPOSES WAL-MART’S SPIN MACHINE

WAL-MART SPOKESWOMAN DECLARES DEMOCRATS ARE NOT TAKING CARE OF POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS

Washington, D.C. - Today, the New Yorker Magazine published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg which exposes the brutal truth behind Wal-Mart’s multi-million dollar spin machine. The article explains how Wal-Mart and Edelman, the company’s public relations firm, have used a series of cynical strategies and tactics, including manufactured front groups and empty new initiatives, to try and address the company’s faltering public image.

For example, the article describes Wal-Mart’s use of what it refers to as “Astroturf” groups, which are ostensibly fake groups, like Working Families for Wal-Mart, designed to become a front for the company and make it appear that the company has support when in fact none of that support is real.

The New Yorker refers to Wal-Mart and Edelman’s strategy as a strategy of “co-option.” Under the “co-option” philosophy, Wal-Mart essentially tries to ‘co-opt’ players from the areas it is receiving criticism from and then use those players to change perceptions without making substantive changes to its actual business model. One recent example of “co-option” was Wal-Mart’s announcement that it would partner with SEIU President Andy Stern to support universal health care, but would not do anything to provide health care coverage for the 53% of its employees, more than 775,000 Wal-Mart workers and their families, who have no company health care coverage, or stop supporting candidates who oppose universal health care.

Included in the New Yorker article are a series of insights and shocking statements by Wal-Mart officials that help expose how Wal-Mart’s PR spin machine pursues a disingenuous agenda that purposefully manipulates the national media, the public, and our elected leaders in an attempt to salvage its faltering public image.

Here are the highlights:

• Edelman created Wal-Mart’s ‘Jobs and Opportunity Zones’ as a “public-relations maneuver to soften Wal-Mart’s image among minority communities; the entire budget for the program is five hundred thousand dollars over two years.”

• Ironically, while Wal-Mart is more than willing to pay Edelman $10 million a year to do PR, according to the article, it is apparently unwilling to pay an ordinary worker an extra hour’s work (possibly, $10.51 an hour) in order to have that worker speak positively about the company’s open availability scheduling policy. Note: Ironically, this worker seems to be the only Wal-Mart Associate who likes the new policy and has appeared in many other publications on the same topic.

• Edelman’s PR team is divided into three groups: “promote,” “response,” and “pressure.” In light of the Wal-Mart spy scandal, we wonder what the “pressure” group, or opposition group, is really up to?

• Wal-Mart, which contributes about 75% of its political contributions to Republicans, doesn’t think the Democratic Party is taking care of the poor or middle class. According to Wal-Mart Vice President Mona Williams, “Wal-Mart is taking care of the people the Democratic Party says it represents-the poor, the middle class. The Democrats are not taking care of them. We’re like Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.”

• Wal-Mart’s Leslie “I’m not doing this for the money” Dach was paid “three million dollars in stock and a hundred and sixty-eight thousand stock options, in addition to an undisclosed base salary.” No wonder Dach just bought a $2.7 million house in Washington D.C.’s Cleveland Park.

• All TV’s at Wal-Mart’s headquarters are tuned into Fox News.

• Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart’s Vice President for benefits, believes that Wal-Mart’s million dollar executives face the same health care crisis as Wal-Mart’s lowest paid employees.

In response to these new revelations about Wal-Mart, WakeUpWalMart.com released the following statement attributable to Chris Kofinis, communications director:

“Today, Wal-Mart’s own words have helped expose the cynical nature and the hypocrisy behind Wal-Mart’s spin doctors and public relations campaigns. The $10 million Wal-Mart is paying to Edelman has not only been a bad investment, but has hurt the company and done long-term damage to Wal-Mart’s reputation.

While we hate to have been right, it is now clear that every new Wal-Mart initiative - every single one - was just another publicity stunt by Wal-Mart’s PR firm designed to fool the media, the American people, and our elected leaders into believing that Wal-Mart has changed for the better, when in fact it has not.

Sadly, whether it is Wal-Mart’s laughably budgeted “Jobs and Opportunity” zones, its disingenuous support for ‘universal health care,’ or its outright disdain for the Democratic Party, Wal-Mart has failed to fool anybody.

So, as we have said for two years, when Wal-Mart is ready to talk real change, we are ready and willing to meet anytime and anywhere. And, as we prepare to launch one of the most aggressive years of our campaign, we hope Wal-Mart will do the right thing and the smart thing which is to listen to this simple fact - only by working with us and pursuing real, substantive change, will Wal-Mart be able to improve its public image and change its political woes for the better.”