Walmart Watch

Walmart Watch, formed in the spring of 2005, was a joint project of the Center for Community and Corporate Ethics, a nonprofit organization studying the impact of large corporations on society, and its advocacy arm, Five Stones. The Walmart Watch group was based in Washington with the claimed goal to challenge Walmart to become a better employer, neighbor, and corporate citizen in order to improve the wages, health benefits, and treatment of workers. One of Walmart Watch's initial attacks against Walmart was setting up an automated phone system that called 10,000 people in Arkansas in efforts to find individuals who would share secrets about the practices of Walmart on their workers. As a result of this automated phone system attack, Walmart Watch created a 24-page report revealing the company's wages and benefits. Walmart Watch's goal was to get the inside scoop on Walmart's practices, in hope that they would be less than respectable, to show the public the "ugly truth" behind Walmart. Backers and funding Walmart Watch was originally funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and was later part of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. According to the Wall Street Journal, Walmart Watch was mainly funded by Five Stones, a 501(c)(3) organization that received $2,775,000 in 2005 from the SEIU. The SEIU reportedly gave Five Stones $1 million in 2004 to start Walmart Watch. Reasons for opposition Walmart Watch obtained a copy of a Walmart draft memo which suggested ways to cut employee benefit costs. Walmart Watch asserted that the memo portrayed workers' wages and benefits as being too low. The memo proposed ways to reduce spending on workers' benefits without damaging the reputation of Walmart. Specifically, one proposal suggested that Walmart begin hiring more part-time workers because they would not be bound to offer the same benefits as they do for full-time workers. This would also help Walmart cut costs by being able to pay workers a part-time wage rather than a full-time wage. Therefore, Walmart Watch took action by exposing this internal draft memo to the public to illustrate the worsening conditions of Walmart employees.