Ad targets employee benefits at Wal-Mart

Bloomberg News
Published December 8, 2006

A union-funded campaign attacking Wal-Mart Stores Inc. accelerated Thursday with the debut of its latest television advertisement in 42 cities, the organization's largest-ever broadcast effort.

The TV spot sponsored by activist group Wake-Up Wal-Mart shows a woman shocked to hear it would take her 1,000 years to make the $17.5 million Chief Executive H. Lee Scott earned in fiscal 2005. Wake-Up Wal-Mart is funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Wake-Up Wal-Mart is spending $1 million for a four-week campaign that calls on the company to boost wages and benefits. The ad will air on network stations in Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis and 39 other cities for about a week, Paul Blank, Wake-Up Wal-Mart's campaign director, said Thursday.

"We are targeting the people who don't yet know Wal-Mart's negative impact, who, if they knew, would look at Wal-Mart a different way," Blank said.

The group is also distributing 100,000 brochures with information about the largest-ever sex-discrimination lawsuit Wal-Mart is facing, involving 1.6 million workers.

"While our critics continue to offer nothing but negativity through these ads, Wal-Mart provides real solutions to the problems facing this country, and Americans see the positive impact we're having," said Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.

Wake-Up Wal-Mart has sponsored events by politicians including Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). They are two possible 2008 presidential candidates who have criticized the retailer's treatment of its workers.

The latest campaign by Wake-Up Wal-Mart comes at a time when sales growth at the company has slowed.

Wal-Mart expects December sales at stores open at least a year may rise between 0 percent and 1 percent. That would be the third month in a row gains failed to exceed 1 percent. Such sales, called same-store sales, are considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.