Bentonville, AR

News that Walmart soon will be removing its "people greeters" from the mouth of every store across America was ironic given how hard it was for Sam Walton to get them there in the first place.

According to Tom Coughlin, Walmart's former COO and Vice Chairman of the Board [who defrauded his company and pled guilty in 2007 to six felony counts of wire fraud and filing false tax returns] Walton had to "throw fits" for a year and a half before greeters were accepted.

"Sam just kept pushing and pushing and pushing," Coughlin wrote in Made in America, Walton's 1992 autobiography. "Every week, every meeting, he'd talk about greeters...Gradually he wore everybody down and got his way."

Walton apparently stumbled onto a greeter at a small Walmart in Louisiana in 1980. The greeter, who Couglin called an"older gentleman," explained to Walton that he had a "dual purpose: to make people feel good about coming in, and to make sure people weren't walking back out the entrance with merchandise they hadn't paid for." 

The manager of that Louisiana Walmart was trying to reduce shrinkage at the store—shop-lifting. "He didn't want to intimidate the honest customers by posting a guard at the door, but he wanted to leave a clear message that if you came in and stole, someone was there who would see it." 

Apparently Walton was smitten with the double-agent role of the greeter: the 'hello' coming in, the 'cop' going out. "Sam thought that was the greatest idea he'd ever heard of." Coughlin remembers. He claims Mr. Sam was vindicated years later when he walked into a Kmart and was welcomed by a people greeter. Now many major retailers post these comedian cops near the front entrance.

Sam Walton himself did not talk much publicly about the cop side of the greeters. In his book. Walton noted that "some of our people greeters...use their high profile positions to have a little fun." Like the greeter in Huntsville, Arkansas who used to dress up in costumes for local folk holidays like Hawgfest. Walton described the greeter as an example of how his company liked to "thrive on a lot of the traditions of small town America, especially parades with marching bands, cheerleaders, drill teams and floats." And Greeters.

But now the fun is over. Sam Walton's "greatest idea" is dead—apparently a victim of the recession—several thousand greeters are coming in from the cold, to circulate around the store, helping customers find cheap Chinese underwear, and other useful functions. 

Thus ends the 32 year run of the Greeter. Like most concepts at Walmart, the Greeter was not what it appeared to be on the surface. Most shoppers at Walmart understood that the smiley folks in the vest with "How May I Help You?" on the back were just disguised members of the loss prevention team at Walmart—a reminder that cheap goods not only attract shoppers, they attract criminals as well.

If, as Tom Coughlin says, Sam Walton wanted to use greeters to send "a warm, friendly message to the good customer," it didn't work. Walmart has been called many things over the years, but "warm and friendly" is not one of them. It's impossible to make a 200,000 square foot superstore with concrete floors "warm and friendly." The Greeter was a contrived, awkward position—a stand-up comedian at a sliding glass door. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO
If Walmart wants to convince the public that it is an inviting place to shop, it can begin by treating its own workers better. Every time Walmart "associates" get their pay check, they are reminded what a disappointing experience it is to put on a Walmart vest. 

Happier employees would truly brighten up the store like no greeter ever could. No need for marching bands or drill teams. Walmart workers need to be greeted with a bigger paycheck—enough to keep their family off food stamps and Medicaid. 

Knowing that Walmart cares more about the people who do its work, would go a long way towards making people "feel good about coming in." 

Coughlin admits that when Sam Walton first tried to push the people greeters idea, "a lot of people thought he'd lost his mind." Looking back, those people were probably right.

Readers are urged to call Walmart Customer Service at 1-800-WALMART with the following message: "Instead of having someone smile at me when I enter your store, how about cheering up your workers by giving them more take home pay. Better paid workers might brighten up the whole store experience."

Bentonville, AR.

If there is a teaching moment for economic injustice—Walmart is it.

This enormous corporation has been built upon the backs of the 99%—the 1.4 million American workers who have been exploited for 50 years to produce the richest family in the United States: the Walton heirs.

The encampments against corporate greed in the financial districts of America could just as well have appeared outside of Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. There is no better example of corporate exploitation in the world.

Who are the Walmart 99%? The temp workers at a Walmart distribution center in Elwood, Illinois who are suing the corporation for 'wage theft.' The hundreds of thousands of female Walmart 'associates' who filed the largest class action gender discrimination lawsuit in history. The Walmart workers who traveled recently to Bentonville with a "Declaration of Respect" seeking affordable health care and predictable work schedules. The 2,500 Bangladeshi women at the Anowara Apparels factory who are paid less than two cents for each pair of Walmart jeans they sew. These are the people who have created the Walmart 1%.

One of Walmart's best-known 1%ers is former CEO, H. Lee Scott, who retired in 2009 at age 62. Scott's compensation that year—counting his salary, bonus, restricted stock awards, options awards, non-equity incentive plan compensation, change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation earnings—came to $30.2 million, or roughly $14,464 an hour. If H. Lee Scott came to work at 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, by 10:15 AM he had earned as much as one of his workers on the sales floor would earn in a year. 

Ironically, it was during H. Lee Scott's tenure that Walmart developed a manual of Standards for Suppliers which insists that Walmart's vendor factories should honor a workers' "Freedom of Association: they must not impose any punitive actions against workers in supporting a union such as threatening, fining, suspending or firing workers exercising those rights. Any action that suppresses freedom of association is prohibited..."

This is the same company that has been sued repeatedly for violations of labor laws, and which has aggressively fought local union organizing efforts in its American stores. "Theoretically, I understand the argument that unions try to make," Sam Walton wrote in his autobiography, "and that associates need someone to represent them... But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have been mostly divisive. They have put management on one side of the fence, employees on the other, and themselves in the middle as almost a separate business, one that depends on division between the other two camps."

Walton's worry was that if there were divisiveness in the worker camp, it would "make it harder... to be competitive, and to gain market share." Everything came down to market share. He noted that any time workers were clamoring for a union, "it's because management has done a lousy job of managing and working with their people." He said if Walmart management involved its workers, "you won't spend all your time and money hiring labor lawyers to fight the union."

Walmart today clearly is doing a lousy job of involving its workers, because it has spent a fortune on union-busting law firms and consultants -- including a nation-wide "labor-relations" campaign to convince its 99% workforce to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress. 

When Walmart announced in October of 2011 a series of cutbacks in its employee health benefits, the 'worker camp' was caught by surprise. "Over the last few years, we've all seen our health care rates increase and it's probably not a surprise that this year will be no different," a Walmart spokesman said. "We made the difficult decision to raise rates that will affect our associates' medical costs. The decisions made were not easy, but they strike a balance between managing costs and providing quality care and coverage." But the company's "difficult decision" was a lot easier to make, because the workers had no seat at the table. This is why workers in the "99% camp" are angry at the corporate power that affects their well-being. How are they supposed to "live better" when they have no say at all in their own working conditions?

The company's justification for this massive exploitation of workers is that it helps 99% of consumers to buy cheap foreign-made goods. Walmart's future depends on the premise that the typical lower middle class consumer's belief in economic justice is no deeper than the dimensions of his or her own shopping cart. 

But the 99% consumers are beginning to realize that companies like Walmart have played a major role in the loss of 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000, and the huge trade deficit with China. Walmart needs a ready supply of poverty-level workers to survive, and the shrinking middle class feeds that monster. 

Over the years, there have been many attempts by Walmart shareholders to force the company to do a better job of taking care of the 99% of the people who create the corporation's wealth. None of these shareholders resolutions were adopted, because Walton Enterprises owns 1.68 billion (43%) of the common shares of Walmart stock. Voting members of Walton Enterprises include S. Robson Walton, Jim C. Walton, Alice L. Walton, and the John T. Walton Estate Trust—the family symbol of 1% America. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO
An encampment by the 99% is sorely needed in Bentonville, because democratization of Walmart's workplace will never happen on its own. Chief among the reforms of this giant corporation would be:

• Grant workers the right to freely associate and form unions
  
• End lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act
  
• Link executive compensation to efforts to narrow the disparity between the wage of hourly workers and top management
  
• Set procurement goals that proactively substitute American-made products for foreign imports, reducing reliance on outsourced goods.
  
• Publish an annual report of political contributions and an accounting of Walmart funds used for political contributions or expenditures.
  
• Add at least 3 hourly employees to the board of directors of the corporation

The beauty of an Occupy Wall-Mart movement is its accessibility to grassroots America. Occupy could take place at any of the company's 4,400 retail stores in the U.S. The company is ripe for neighborhood efforts to trim corporate power, and assert the needs of the 99% who work or shop there. 

In Walmart's case, fighting for economic justice is as close as your next shopping trip.