Clinton Remained Silent As Wal-Mart Fought Unions...?????????

BillCosby · 02-01-2008, 08:41 PM

In other campaign news, ABC News is reporting Hillary Clinton did not once speak up to oppose Wal Mart’s intensive campaign against unionization during her six years on the company’s board of directors. ABC reviewed videotapes of at least four public Wal-Mart board-meetings between 1986 and 1992. A former board member also said he did not recall Clinton ever voicing support for unions during at least twenty private board meetings over the same period. Clinton never denounced the efforts by fellow board member John Tate, who was fond of calling unions “blood-sucking parasites.” Clinton’s campaign biography makes no mention of her time at Wal-Mart.
Obama Raise

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.
Photos
Clinton Was Silent As Wal-Mart Railed Against Unions

Clinton has been endorsed for president by more than a dozen unions, according to her campaign Web site, which omits any reference to her role at Wal-Mart in its detailed biography of her.

Wal-Mart's anti-union efforts were headed by one of Clinton's fellow board members, John Tate, a Wal-Mart executive vice president who also served on the board with Clinton for four of her six years.

Tate was fond of repeating, as he did at a managers meeting in 2004 after his retirement, what he said was his favorite phrase, "Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living."

Wal-Mart says Tate's comments "were his own and do not reflect Wal-Mart's views."

But Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and other company officials often recounted how they relied on Tate to lead the company's successful anti-union efforts.

An ABC News analysis of the videotapes of at least four stockholder meetings where Clinton appeared shows she never once rose to defend the role of American labor unions.

The tapes, broadcast this morning on "Good Morning America," were provided to ABC News from the archives of Flagler Productions, a Lenexa, Kan., company hired by Wal-Mart to record its meetings and events.

A former board member told ABCNews.com that he had no recollection of Clinton defending unions during more than 20 board meetings held in private.

The tapes show Clinton in the role of a loyal company woman. "I'm always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else," she said at a June 1990 stockholders meeting.

Clinton would not agree to be interviewed on the subject but now says she no longer shares Wal-Mart's values and believes unions "have been essential to our nation's success."

The videotapes do show that Clinton used her role to push for more environmentally friendly policies and better treatment of women.

"We've got a very strong-willed young woman on our board now; her name is Hillary," said Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton at a 1987 stockholders meeting in describing Clinton's role in pushing for more women to be hired in management positions.

Critics say Clinton's efforts produced few tangible results, and Wal-Mart is now defending itself in a lawsuit brought by 16 current and former female employees.

"I don't doubt the sincerity of her efforts, but we don't see much evidence that conditions for women at Wal-Mart changed much during the late 1980s and early 1990s," said Joe Sellers, one of the lawyers suing Wal-Mart on behalf of the women.

Wal-Mart declined to comment to ABC News about the lawsuit, but the company has said previously that it is confident it did not discriminate against female employees.

Sen. Clinton has recently sought to distance herself from Wal-Mart.

In a campaign speech last year in New Hampshire, Sen. Clinton said, "Now I know that Wal-Mart's policies do not reflect the best way of doing business and the values that I think are important in America."

Critics say Clinton's efforts produced few tangible results, and Wal-Mart is now defending itself in a lawsuit brought by 16 current and former female employees.

"I don't doubt the sincerity of her efforts, but we don't see much evidence that conditions for women at Wal-Mart changed much during the late 1980s and early 1990s," said Joe Sellers, one of the lawyers suing Wal-Mart on behalf of the women.

more @ source.

MarkMiller · 02-01-2008, 08:52 PM

This argument never fails to make me laugh. I would love to see these videos. Did anyone here see them? All it says is she did not raise her voice about unions. I never says that there were discussions of unions at these meetings.

In Truth the Wal Mart fight against unions was not a big deal until the store began selling groceries and and the chain went national. That's when the unions began their fight to get Mal-Mart to unionize. Clinton was not on the board at that time.

This appears to me just another "Look, see Hilary did fight for the Union" debate that still doesn't actually show a reason that it should have happened to begin with. It's simply trying to link Clinton with anti-union sentiment.

I have been a member of a couple of Unions. I was a shop steward and can say that not everything about unions is perfect for everyone. There are many things that are great about them but this smells of deception to me to be honest.

Hilary Clinton was not on the board of Wal-Mart when the big war against the unions began. that part of this story is blatantly false.

Environment Man · 02-01-2008, 08:55 PM

Unions have crippled America's global competitive nature. They are an anachronism. Good for Hillary. She just has to be a hypocrite to get elected.

MarkMiller · 02-01-2008, 08:58 PM

A link to the actual videos would help.

BillCosby · 02-02-2008, 11:15 AM

The fight against walmart began long before the groceries...

It was fighting w/ walmart long before the lying about stuff made in China w/ made in america labels on them too..............

I guess you can contact ABC & buy a copy of the video or perhaps walmart has them on sale & you can pick them up there....

Quote:

We care, but not that much
Few discount retailers make it easy for workers to unionize. But it's hard to find one that has been more aggressive, brutal, and openly hostile to unions than Wal-Mart. Sam Walton faced his first major union challenge in the 1960s. Two Wal-Marts in Missouri were on the verge of organizing, and Walton called in a lawyer named John Tate to stop them. In 1989, Tate, by then an executive vice president of the company, described the events to Fortune: "I told [Walton], 'You can approach this one of two ways: hold people down, and pay me or some other lawyer to make it work. Or devote time and attention to proving to people that you care.'" Walton soon followed up with a management seminar called "We Care," began to call employees "associates," and introduced a widely-praised profit-sharing plan. Whether satisfaction or fear was at play, no union ever formed.

Since Walton's death, however, the "hold people down and pay me or some other lawyer to make it work" method appears to have gained favor. In 2000, when workers in a Jacksonville, Texas, meat-cutting department successfully voted to unionize, Wal-Mart announced two weeks later that it would be closing its meat-cutting departments nationwide and switching to pre-cut meat. Four of the employees who voted in favor of the union were fired. (The company claims that the timing was coincidental and that the dismissals were unrelated, but a National Labor Relations Board judge disagreed. Wal-Mart is appealing the case.)

A year ago, employees at a Wal-Mart tire and lube shop thought they had enough votes to unionize, but the company fired one of the likely yes-voters and transferred in six likely no-voters. Again, an administrative judge ruled that Wal-Mart's conduct had been illegal, but the goal of blocking the union had been achieved.

And in February 2005, the company announced that it would be closing a Wal-Mart in Quebec, one of only two unionized Wal-Marts in North America (the other is also in Quebec). Wal-Mart claimed the store was losing money, but it refused to release

Quote:

Morning Edition, May 4, 2005 · Wal-Mart is closing a store in a small city in northern Quebec after employees recently voted to unionize. The decision has the blue-collar town -- and the store's employees -- divided over who's to blame.

Workers at the Jonquiere Wal-Mart unionized the store in 2004, becoming the company's only union store in North America. Last week, Wal-Mart closed it. Officials say the location wasn't making money. Opinions in the French-Canadian city range from those who love Wal-Mart's low prices to those who can't stand its labor practices.

Jonquiere has a reputation as a strong labor town, with about two in five workers belonging to unions. But some worry that publicity from the store's closure will make it harder for the city to attract outside business.

The store's closure is one of a growing a number of attempts to unionize America's largest company. The battle to do so now moves to St. Hyacinthe, east of Montreal. That's where another group of Wal-Mart workers won union recognition in January.

EvilMonkey · 02-02-2008, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Zaius

A link to the actual videos would help.

Okay, you asked for it. There's no twisting this lol, she was mrs corporation with out a doubt.

YouTube - Busted on GMA, Hillary Clinton on...

Teri B. · 02-02-2008, 01:46 PM

This is interesting. I've heard a little on both sides of this, and Eric thanks for the video. Here's an article I just found from the N.Y. Times as well:

Quote:

May 20, 2007
As a Director, Clinton Moved Wal-Mart Board, but Only So Far
By MICHAEL BARBARO

In 1986, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, had a problem. He was under growing pressure from shareholders — and his wife, Helen — to appoint a woman to the company’s 15-member board of directors.

So Mr. Walton turned to a young lawyer who just happened to be married to the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is based: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton’s six-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest company, remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career. And it is little known for a reason. Mrs. Clinton rarely, if ever, discusses it, leaving her board membership out of her speeches and off her campaign Web site.

Fellow board members and company executives, who have not spoken publicly about her role at Wal-Mart, say Mrs. Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program, despite being Wal-Mart’s only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said.

Her years on the Wal-Mart board, from 1986 to 1992, gave her an unusual tutorial in the ways of American business — a credential that could serve as an antidote to Republican efforts to portray her as an enemy of free markets and an advocate for big government.

But that education came via a company that the Democratic Party — and its major ally, organized labor — has held up as a model of what is wrong with American business, with both groups accusing it of offering unaffordable health insurance and mistreating its workers.

So rather than promote her board membership, Mrs. Clinton is now running from it, even returning a $5,000 campaign donation from the giant discount chain in 2005, citing “serious differences” with its practices. But disentangling herself from the company is harder than it may seem.

Despite her criticism, Mrs. Clinton maintains close ties to Wal-Mart executives through the Democratic Party and the tightly knit Arkansas business community. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, speaks frequently to Wal-Mart’s current chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., about issues like health care and even played host to Mr. Scott at the Clintons’ home in New York last July for a private dinner.

And several months ago, Mrs. Clinton helped broker a secret meeting between a top Wal-Mart executive and former Democratic operative, Leslie Dach, and leaders of the retailer’s longtime adversary at the United Food and Commercial Workers union, according to several people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so publicly.

The goal of the meeting was to tamp down the rancor between the company and the union, which has set up a group, WakeUpWalMart.com, that has harshly criticized the chain and leaked embarrassing internal documents to the news media, though an accord has not yet been reached.

Mrs. Clinton declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, her spokesman said, “Wal-Mart is now one of the country’s largest employers, and Mrs. Clinton still believes it is important to try to influence the decisions they make because they can affect so many people.”

In Mrs. Clinton’s complex relationship with Wal-Mart, there are echoes of the familiar themes that have defined much of her career: the trailblazing woman unafraid of challenging the men around her; the idealist pushing for complicated, at times expensive, reforms; and the political pragmatist, willing to accept policies she did not agree with to achieve her ends.

“Did Hillary like all of Wal-Mart practices? No,” said Garry Mauro, a longtime friend and supporter of the Clintons who sat on the Wal-Mart Environmental Advisory Board with Mrs. Clinton in the late 1980s and worked with her on George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign.

“But,” Mr. Mauro added, “was Wal-Mart a better company, with better practices, because Hillary was on the board? Yes.”

Mrs. Clinton was not Mr. Walton’s first choice for a woman on the board. That honor belonged to an executive at Nordstrom, the upscale department store. But Nordstrom opposed its employees sitting on a competitor’s board, so Wal-Mart turned instead to the 39-year-old Mrs. Clinton. They offered her about $15,000 a year for her time, generally four meetings a year.

She was a logical candidate: the wife of the governor, a Wal-Mart shareholder — with stock eventually worth nearly $100,000 — and a highly regarded lawyer at the Rose Law Firm, which had represented Wal-Mart in several cases.

But if her circumstances made her a natural choice for the board, her often liberal beliefs did not and she struggled to change the rigid, conservative culture at Wal-Mart, achieving modest results.

Early in her tenure, she pressed for information about the number of women in Wal-Mart’s management, worrying aloud that the company’s hiring practices might be discriminatory.

The data she received would have been troubling: by 1985, there was not a single woman among the company’s top 42 officers, according to “In Sam We Trust,” the 1998 book about Wal-Mart by Bob Ortega.

John E. Tate, who served as a director with Mrs. Clinton from 1988 to 1992, recalled that by her third board meeting Mrs. Clinton had announced “that you can expect me to push on issues for women. You know that. I have a reputation of trying to improve the status of women generally, and I will do it here.”

Mr. Walton appeared relieved to have a woman on the board to deflect criticism, telling shareholders during the annual meeting in 1987 that the company had a “strong-willed young lady on the board now who has already told the board it should do more to ensure the advancement of women.”

Still, the board’s discussions did not translate into significant progress. By the late 1990s, after Mrs. Clinton had left the board, Wal-Mart had added a second female director, but the number of women in senior management remained paltry, according to company records. (Today, 23 percent of Wal-Mart’s top 300 corporate officers are women, but the company is fighting a class-action lawsuit claiming sex discrimination filed on behalf of 1.6 million current and former female employees.)

Mrs. Clinton had greater success on environmental issues. At her request, Mr. Walton set up the environmental advisory group, which sent a series of recommendations to the company’s board.

When it came time to pick members, Mrs. Clinton, who led the advisory group, reached out to at least two colleagues from the McGovern presidential campaign — Mr. Mauro and Roy Spence, who headed an advertising firm in Texas that did extensive work for Wal-Mart.

Under her watch, the advisory group drew up elaborate plans. Consumers would bring in used motor oil and batteries for recycling. Suppliers would reduce the size of their packaging. And Wal-Mart would build stores with energy-saving features.

Wal-Mart executives put much of the program into place. In 1993, for example, they opened an experimental “eco-store” in Kansas, with skylights and wooden beams from forests that had not been clear cut.

One executive derided it as “Hillary’s store” because it was more expensive to build than the average Wal-Mart, but several of its features, like the skylights that cut energy bills by reducing the need for artificial lighting, were widely copied across the industry.

“We were on the leading edge of something that is being mandated now,” said Bill Fields, the head of merchandise at Wal-Mart in the early 1990s who worked closely with Mrs. Clinton on the environmental project.

For Wal-Mart, the largest employer in Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton’s presence had obvious advantages: on matters big and small, the company had the ear of the governor’s wife.

For Mrs. Clinton, being a director at Wal-Mart gave her access to several of the state’s most powerful business executives. In the early 1980s, for example, Mr. Walton was instrumental in building support for a corporate tax program, pushed by Mrs. Clinton, that financed a major education overhaul in Arkansas, a signal achievement of her husband’s governorship.

Though she was passionate about issues like gender and sustainability, Mrs. Clinton largely sat on the sidelines when it came to Wal-Mart and unions, board members said. Since its founding in 1962, Wal-Mart has fought unionization efforts at its stores and warehouses, employing hard-nosed tactics — like allegedly firing union supporters and spying on employees — that have become the subject of legal complaints against the company.

A special team at Wal-Mart handled those activities, but Mr. Walton was vocal in his opposition to unions. Indeed, he appointed the lawyer who oversaw the company’s union monitoring, Mr. Tate, to the board, where he served with Mrs. Clinton.

During their meetings and private conversations, Mrs. Clinton never voiced objections to Wal-Mart’s stance on unions, said Mr. Tate and John A. Cooper, another board member.

“She was not an outspoken person on labor, because I think she was smart enough to know that if she favored labor, she was the only one,” Mr. Tate said. “It would only lessen her own position on the board if she took that position.”

Mr. Tate, a prominent management lawyer who has helped stop union drives at many major companies, said he worked closely with Mr. Walton to convince workers that a union would be bad for the company, personally telling employees when he visited stores that “the only people who need unions are those who do not work hard.”

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said, “Wal-Mart workers should be able to unionize and bargain collectively.”

This isn't going to go away anytime soon, but it seems to me it reflects in both good and bad ways on her, depending on your perspective.

BillCosby · 02-02-2008, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ericgtr

Okay, you asked for it. There's no twisting this lol, she was mrs corporation with out a doubt.

YouTube - Busted on GMA, Hillary Clinton on Walmart

Thnx for the clip...............

They say a pict is worth a thousand words..... A good clip is worth about a million.....lol

Was there ever another women on the wal mart board??? Funny when she left they never found need to fill the seat taken by the first lady???

Forgot to mention in her book about that quality time as first lady of arkansas & walmart..........lol

BillCosby · 02-02-2008, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leftofright

Unions and other policys are simply crutches for the workers that don't want to be graded on performance. Unions would be known as the Borg on Star Trek

So IYO they serve no positive function what so ever.....

& on the bright side those lucky 12 year old girls got a job making clothes for walmart...............

BillCosby · 02-02-2008, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leftofright

We all live by the decisions we make truther.

That is not an answer.......... That is an escape......

DO some unions do some good yes or no........????

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