Editorial

DSN Retailing Today, July 11, 2005 by Mike Troy

The creation earlier this year of the non-profit group known as Wal-Mart Watch was billed as a landmark event that would provide salvation for the hundreds of poorly organized neighborhood organizations and businesses powerless in their fight against Wal-Mart.

The group's goal announced on April 20 was to force Wal-Mart to change its business practices that harm America. "Our mission is to prod and pressure Wal-Mart into behaving more responsibly toward its neighbors, its employees, our environment and the American business community," Wal-Mart Watch executive director Andy Grossman said at the time.

Nothing wrong with encouraging a company, or better yet all companies, to behave responsibly, be a good neighbor and treat employees and the environment with respect. The problem is, somewhere between the creation of that well-intentioned mission statement and about 30 press releases, the group lost whatever semblance of credibility it may have initially had.

Headlines such as, "Wal-Mart tries to silence whisteblowers," "More tax breaks for the Waltons," "Walton legacy loses luster," "More bad news for Wal-Mart," and "Wal-Mart's dirty tricks," were the tip off.

It's really too bad the group didn't stick with its original goal. Wal-Mart isn't a perfect company, as senior executives freely admit, and with 1.7 million employees there's a lot of opportunity for errors in judgment to be made.

Unfortunately for Wal-Mart Watch it lost the opportunity to play the constructive role implied by its name. It can continue to inundate the media with press releases and badger the company from afar, but the brief window of opportunity it had to establish a constructive dialogue and effect positive change is pretty well stuck shut at this point.

mtroy@dsnretailingtoday.com