/WalMart

20080325
• WalMart - Employee - Health - Money - "Brain-damaged woman at center of Wal-Mart suit." ... "[Debbie]  Shank suffered severe brain damage after a traffic accident nearly eight years ago that robbed her of much of her short-term memory and left her in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home." ... "It was the beginning of a series of battles -- both personal and legal -- that loomed for Shank and her family. One of their biggest was with Wal-Mart's health plan." ... "Eight years ago, Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan." ... "Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank's long-term care." ... "Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank's medical expenses and later sued for the same amount. However, the court ruled it can only recoup what is left in the family's trust." ... "The Shanks didn't notice in the fine print of Wal-Mart's health plan policy that the company has the right to recoup medical expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit." ... "In 2007, the retail giant reported net sales in the third quarter of $90 billion." -CNN 

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20070815
• US - China - Manufacturing - Market - Baby - Safety - Environmental - Science - Consumer - WalMart - Calif - "Some Baby Bibs Said to Contain Levels of Lead." ... "Certain vinyl baby bibs sold at Toys “R” Us stores appear to be contaminated with lead, laboratory tests have shown, making the inexpensive bibs another example of a made-in-China product that may be a health hazard to children." ... "The vinyl bibs, which feature illustrations of baseball bats and soccer balls and Disney’s Winnie the Pooh characters, are sold for less than $5 each under store brand labels, including Especially for Baby and Koala Baby." ... "Tests this summer, financed by the Center for Environmental Health of Oakland, Calif. [California], found lead as high as three times the level allowed in paint in several styles of the bibs purchased from both Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us stores in California." ... "“These bibs are exposing children to lead in an unnecessary way,” said Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health, a nonprofit agency that for the last decade has been testing consumer products for lead, in an effort to remove them from the market." ... "The bibs were imported for Toys “R” Us by Hamco Baby Products, the same company that made the bibs for Wal-Mart." ... "Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us are jointly controlled by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and Vornado Realty Trust. Hamco is a unit of Crown Crafts." -By Eric Lipton -NYTimes 

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20070801
• Noteworthy - Wireless - Radio - History - Electronic - Tech - Human - Animals - WalMart - Business - Consumer - Civil Liberties - Politics - "Microchips in humans: High-tech helpers or Big Brother surveillance?" ... "City Watcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself -- until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms." ... "The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs -- radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick -- was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said." ... "But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age." ... "Thirty years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the 1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, pets, even racehorses." ... "Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on "contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's "PayPass"). They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items at Wal-Mart and Best Buy." ... ""We're really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America, where every movement, every action -- some would even claim, our very thoughts -- will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington D.C." -AP via -CNN

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20070413
• US - China - WalMart - Microsoft - Computer - Corporation - Worker - Politics - "U.S. Corporations Lobby Against New Protections for Chinese Workers." ... "Labor rights advocates say U.S. multinational corporations have aggressively lobbied to weaken key provisions in a new Chinese law that would expand rights and protections for Chinese workers." ... ""U.S. corporations have used their considerable power and influence there to weaken the labor laws that are being proposed," said Ellen David Friedman, a  U.S. labor organizer who's worked  with developing trade union groups in China.  "They are in essence acknowledging that what they have liked about doing business in China is the very, very cheap labor and the low level of enforcement."" ... "When the Chinese government announced the new labor law last year, American corporate trade groups were quick to object to many of the law's provisions." ... "AmCham [American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai], along with the U.S.-China Business Council, which together represent hundreds of companies doing business in China, including Wal-Mart, Microsoft, General Electric and Dell, argued that the law would negatively impact China's competitiveness and appeal to foreign investors." -By Avni Patel Reports -ABCNEWS.com

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20051223
• California - WalMart - Employees - Business - Food - "Wal-Mart hit with $172.3m lunch bill." ... "A jury in Oakland, California on Thursday ordered Wal-Mart, the largest US retailer, to pay $172.3m to current and former employees, after finding that the company had failed to respect their right to a 30-minute unpaid lunch break." ... "The verdict is the largest penalty of its kind imposed by a court on the retailer in a range of lawsuits that have accused it of deliberately allowing its employees to work unpaid overtime, or to work during legally required breaks." ... "State law in California requires employers to grant its workers the 30 minute unpaid break, or to compensate them if they decline to take the time." -By Jonathan Birchall -FT.com via -MSNBC

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20050805
• - Microsoft - WalMart - "Microsoft hires Wal-Mart exec." ... "A top Wal-Mart executive was named head of sales at Microsoft yesterday in a surprise reorganization of the software company's executive ranks." ... "Kevin Turner, who rose from checkout clerk at the Ada, Okla., Wal-Mart to chief executive of its Sam's Club division, starts work Sept. 8 in Redmond as chief operating officer." ... "Turner, 40, will lead the company's sales, marketing and internal information-systems groups and report to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. He's getting a pay package worth up to $33.4 million." -By Brier Dudley -SeattleTimes.NWsource 

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20050801
• -  -  - WalMart - "Welfare reform opens Medicaid to millions." ... "The expansion of Medicaid to cover the working poor has fundamentally broadened the nation's safety net and changed the lives of low-wage workers in the USA. It also has put enormous strain on federal and state finances and made taxpayers the health insurance provider for millions of workers at Wal-Mart, McDonald's and other low-wage employers." ... "Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program covered an average of 46.8 million Americans a day in 2004, up more than 13 million from when welfare reform passed in 1997. The program covered 61 million people at some time during 2004, nearly 20 million more than in 1997." -By Dennis Cauchon -USATODAY

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20050512
• WalMart - "Dow drops 111 on Wal-Mart profit warning." ... "Stocks tumbled sharply Thursday as a second-quarter profit warning from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. overshadowed strong economic news and a sharp drop in oil prices. The Dow fell more than 100 points for the second time this week." ... "Investors' fears of an economic slowdown were heightened after Wal-Mart missed Wall Street's profit expectations for the quarter and, more importantly, said high gasoline prices have hurt customer spending and will affect the company's second-quarter results." -By Michael J. Martinez -AP via -BusinessWeek

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20050505
• - Mother's-Day - WalMart - " Wal-Mart and critics step up battle over wages." ... "With most of Wal-Mart's U.S. workers earning less than $19,000 a year, a number of community groups and lawmakers have recently teamed up with labor unions in mounting an intensive campaign aimed at prodding Wal-Mart into paying its 1.3 million employees higher wages." ... "A new group of Wal-Mart critics ran a full-page advertisement on April 20 contending that the company's low pay had forced tens of thousands of its workers to resort to food stamps and Medicaid, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. On April 26, as part of a campaign called "Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart," five members of Congress joined women's advocates and labor leaders to assail the company for not paying its female employees more at the company's 3,700 stores across the United States." -By Steven Greenhouse -NYTimes via -IHT.com 

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