The Text:<\/strong> This week Walmart shareholders will gather in the retail giant\u2019s Arkansas backyard and re-elect a board of directors charged with guiding the company over the coming years. Walmart\u2019s board\u2014rife with billionaires and industry titans\u2014has recently become a lightning rod for company critics. During their lengthy and high-profile business careers, several board members have faced allegations\u2014from worker exploitation to financial malfeasance\u2014that parallel those facing Walmart itself.<\/p>\nOver the past year, labor activists have targeted board members with dossiers on the Internet and protests around the country, from a hunger strike and vigil by guest workers outside Michele Burns\u2019s New York mansion, to demonstrators placed along the route of a Bay Area marathon to shout messages at Greg Penner as he ran towards the finish line. Over the past week, striking retail workers from the union-backed group OUR Walmart have staged a series of board-focused protests, including one at Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer\u2019s Palo Alto mansion, and another outside her penthouse atop the San Francisco Four Seasons hotel.<\/p>\n
While Walmart\u2019s shareholder meeting won\u2019t kick off until Friday, strikers are already in town. This week they\u2019ll try to win over some of the workers flown to Arkansas by management, and to draw shareholders\u2019 and reporters\u2019 attention to OUR Walmart\u2019s allegations of illegal retaliation and their demands regarding Walmart\u2019s working conditions. They\u2019ll also work to shine light on recent company controversies regarding reported bribery in Mexico and factory deaths in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
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Friday\u2019s meeting also follows a quarterly earnings report that drew some less-than-glowing headlines in major outlets (New York Times: \u201cWal-Mart Sales Go Cold, and Its Shares Feel the Chill\u201d; USA Today: \u201cWal-Mart 1Q profits, revenue disappoint\u201d; Los Angeles Times: \u201cWal-Mart reports weak 1st-quarter sales, blames weather, tax issues\u201d). The United Food & Commercial Workers union seized on the earnings report as the latest sign of trouble at Walmart, along with New York Times and Bloomberg articles suggesting understaffing is driving away customers, and the announced departures of three board members and two executive vice presidents.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Walmart has recently touted the launch of its plan to hire 100,000 veterans over five years; the expansion of a conservation partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation; and a tally of over $1 billion in charitable donations (counting cash and in-kind contributions) in the previous fiscal year. The company did not respond to requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n
In a May 27 e-mail to The Nation, spokesperson Brooke Buchanan called the shareholder meeting \u201ca celebration of our 2.2 million associates who work hard every day so people around the world can live better.\u201d Buchanan said OUR Walmart \u201cis comprised of a few number of people, most of whom aren\u2019t even associates and don\u2019t represent the views of our associates.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll be reporting from Arkansas this week\u2014watch this space for updates starting Thursday. But first, here\u2019s The Nation\u2019s guide to the seventeen current members of Walmart\u2019s board, and some of the controversies they\u2019ve encountered.<\/p>\n
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Three members of the Walmart Board are members of the Walton family\u2014relatives of Sam Walton, the company\u2019s late, iconic founder, whose business philosophy is often touted by the company\u2019s defenders and critics alike. Sam\u2019s son Rob Walton is the board\u2019s chairman.<\/p>\n
Members of the family together control just over half of the company\u2019s stock, and they take up four of the top ten slots on Forbes\u2019s list of the wealthiest Americans. Forbes pegged the family\u2019s net worth at $120 billion last October. Based on Federal Reserve data, the Economic Policy Institute\u2019s Josh Bivens found that the Walton family has as much wealth as the bottom 41.5 percent of US families combined. (That figure factors in the negative net worth of close to 13 million families\u2014no doubt including some of Walmart\u2019s 1.4 million US employees.)<\/p>\n
The Waltons aren\u2019t just sitting on that cash. As individuals and through their Walton Family Foundation, they\u2019ve given generously to a range of causes. That includes long-standing support for individuals and organizations out, in the words of the foundation, to \u201cinfuse competitive pressure into America\u2019s K-12 education system.\u201d Last year, Alice Walton put $1.7 million behind the successful effort to pass a pro\u2013charter school bill in Washington state. In April, three weeks after the release of a confidential memo renewed scrutiny over cheating during Michelle Rhee\u2019s tenure as DC schools chancellor, the Waltons\u2019 foundation announced an $8 million grant to her advocacy group StudentsFirst.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more where that came from. In an e-mail to supporters reported by the Arkansas Times in January, the Walton Family Foundation\u2019s executive director Buddy Philpot wrote, \u201cOur board and staff are proud of how we\u2019ve helped cultivate today\u2019s education reform movement by investing more than $1 billion in initiatives that expand parental choice and equal opportunity in education.\u201d (Yes, that\u2019s billion with a \u201cb.\u201d) The same message pledged that the foundation\u2019s board would \u201cexpand its leadership role in education reform\u201d in 2013. Philpot wrote that \u201cseveral Walton family members are increasing their individual engagement in both philanthropic and political endeavors related to improving K-12 education,\u201d and thus \u201cthe family will be expanding its staff capacity to guide and manage its increasing role in education reform.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Meanwhile, Walmart itself sponsored a CBS concert promoting the film Won\u2019t Back Down, which celebrates the anti-union law known as \u201cparent trigger.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Walton cash backs other conservative causes. Board member Jim Walton provided the majority of the financial support ($75,000) for an Arkansas ballot initiative banning couples who lived together and were not legally married from becoming adoptive or foster parents, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. (The initiative, which a prominent supporter called an effort to \u201cblunt the gay agenda,\u201d was passed by voters but overturned in court.)<\/p>\n
Last October, the UFCW\u2019s Making Change at Walmart campaign slammed Jim Walton on its website for donating $500 to the campaign of Arkansas State Representative Loy Mauch, a member of the League of the South, which advocates secession. Jim Walton then wrote to Mauch to request his money back, saying that he had donated \u201cbecause of your support for education reform in Arkansas\u201d but that he had since \u201clearned about some of your views on other issues with which I disagree.\u201d In response, Making Change at Walmart noted that Mauch\u2019s past statements on education included letters to the editor in 2006 saying that \u201cPublic education is one of the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto\u201d and that \u201cPublic education was forced upon the South during Reconstruction to complete the aim of the radical socialists, which was to destroy Southern conservatism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism found that in the state\u2019s 2010 legislative elections, which swept in the majorities that passed a raft of right-wing bills, Walton family members made up six out of the top fifteen individual donors to the winning candidates (that includes board members Jim Walton and Greg Penner, Sam Walton\u2019s son-in-law). And the Walton Family Foundation was listed, along with Walmart, as a \u201cChairman\u201d-level sponsor of a 2011 meeting of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). While Walmart announced that it was cutting ties to ALEC following pressure from activists in 2012, the Walton Family Foundation has announced no such move.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Greg Penner and two other finance professionals created a PAC called Govern for California, whose declared priorities include changes to public employee pensions and prison sentencing. Govern for California backed former Teach for America official Brian Johnson\u2019s unsuccessful campaign for a California assembly seat \u201cas an education reformer\u201d; Greg\u2019s wife Carrie Penner also donated to Johnson, and gave $222,000 between 2011 and 2012 to the independent expenditure committee of a California education reform group that supported him. Although GFC calls for \u201craising revenues if and when needed,\u201d Penner donated $250,000 in 2006 to oppose a ballot initiative that would have raised taxes on the wealthy in order to fund universal preschool for California\u2019s 4-year-olds.<\/p>\n
While Walmart is the Waltons\u2019 biggest business, it\u2019s not their only venture to court controversy. Greg Penner is a founder and managing director of Madrone Capital Partners, a firm investing Walton money. (According to an investor summary by the financial research company PrivCo, Madrone \u201cprimarily manages the Walton Family\u2019s investments in growth private companies\u201d; the private equity firm DT Capital touts its ties to \u201cMadrone Capital in the US, the investment entity for members of the Walton family.\u201d) Madrone has invested in\u2014and Penner is one of five board members of\u2014Baidu, China\u2019s top domestic search engine, which was started with money invested by the firm Peninsula Capital while Penner was a general partner there.<\/p>\n
A 2006 Human Rights Watch report found that Baidu results for several politically sensitive terms \u201cwere heavily censored in comparison to other search engine results, without a notice that censorship had taken place.\u201d In a 2011 letter, Dick Durbin, the Senate\u2019s second-ranking Democrat, wrote to Baidu\u2019s CEO \u201cto express my serious concerns about your company\u2019s censorship of the internet\u201d; he noted that the company \u201creportedly received the \u2018China Internet Self-Discipline Award\u2019 from the Chinese government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Madrone is also invested in DMB Pacific Ventures, a real estate company whose Redwood City Saltworks project\u2014originally planned to build homes on 1,400 acres of Bay Area salt ponds\u2014sparked local controversy. Following opposition from environmentalists, and uncertainty regarding whether the federal government would subject the plan to Clean Water Act and Rivers and Harbors Act restrictions, DMB withdrew its proposal last year. The project\u2019s website now says that the company is \u201cworking on a revised and \u2018scaled-back\u2019 project.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Walmart\u2019s board, where he chairs the Technology and eCommerce committee, Penner sits on the boards of Teach for America, the (opposite-sex only) online dating service eHarmony, Hyatt Hotels and The Charter Growth Fund, a nonprofit that invests in charter schools. Hyatt has faced coordinated strikes and a national boycott by the hotel union UNITE HERE (my former employer) over allegations of union-busting and unsafe conditions for housekeepers. Reached by e-mail, a Hyatt spokesperson touted the company\u2019s \u201cgreat workplace environment\u201d and \u201coutstanding safety record,\u201d and accused the union of attempting \u201cto pressure Hyatt into imposing unionization on its non-union associates.\u201d (Hyatt heir and former board member Penny Pritzker was recently nominated to serve in President Obama\u2019s cabinet, where she\u2019d join former Walmart Foundation President Sylvia Mathews Burwell.)<\/p>\n
Walmart, the Walton Family Foundation, Baidu and Greg Penner (contacted via voicemail at his Madrone Capital Partners office) did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Two-thirds of Walmart\u2019s current board members\u2014twelve out of seventeen\u2014are current or former CEOs (that includes Arvest Bank\u2019s Jim Walton) . Between them, the CEOs on the board helm or helmed five name-brand US companies (Coke, Pepsi, Yahoo!, Marriott and of course Walmart), an ad agency, an investment fund, an investment bank, the top retailer in Australia and a consulting firm\u2019s retirement think tank.<\/p>\n
The board includes former Walmart CEO H. Lee Scott, who helmed the company during the comparatively weak labor protests of the 2000\u2019s, and current CEO Mike Duke, who succeeded him in 2009 (after stepping down at Walmart, Scott became an operating partner at Solamere Capital, Tagg Romney\u2019s private equity firm). Last year, The New York Times reported that, despite “a wealth of evidence,” “Wal-Mart’s leaders shut down” an internal investigation of the allegations, and “authorities were not notified.” In response, the Justice Department and congressional Democrats launched investigations into the company, and in January, congressional Democrats released e-mails showing Duke being personally informed of bribery allegations involving Walmart de Mexico as early as 2005, while he was serving as a Walmart vice chairman responsible for Walmart International. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how long Duke will stay in his post\u2014citing \u201ca person close to the situation,\u201d Bloomberg Businessweek reported May 7 that Walmart could name a successor \u201cin the coming months.\u201d Walmart\u2019s proxy statement pegs Duke\u2019s total compensation for the last fiscal year at $20,693,545.<\/p>\n
Board member Douglas Daft served as CEO of Coca-Cola from 2000 to 2004. Like Walmart today, Coca-Cola on Daft\u2019s watch faced protests over labor conditions in its international supply chain: students and labor activists targeted Daft over alleged complicity in the violent repression of organizing by workers in bottling plants in Colombia. Following a 2004 fact-finding trip to Colombia, a delegation led by New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate issued a harsh assessment: \u201cThe company denies any involvement in the threats, assassinations, kidnappings and other terror tactics, but its failure to protect its workers even on company property, its refusal to investigate persistent allegations of payoffs to paramilitary leaders by plant managers, and its unwillingness to share documentation that might demonstrate otherwise leads the delegation to the conclusion that Coca-Cola is complicit in the human rights abuses of its workers in Colombia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reached by e-mail, a Coca-Cola spokesperson said, \u201cThe allegations by the anti-Coke campaign activists are simply not true\u201d and that \u201ctwo different judicial inquiries in Colombia\u2026found no evidence to support the allegations that bottler management conspired to intimidate or threaten trade unionists.\u201d She noted that \u201cthese allegations were the thrust of a lawsuit filed in 2001 against The Coca-Cola company in a U.S. District Court in Miami; the company was dismissed as a defendant in 2003.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like some of the controversies facing Walmart, the most serious allegation against Board Member Linda Wolf involved the limits of subcontracting. In 2004, one year before Wolf departed as CEO of the ad agency Leo Burnett, the US Army sued the company for allegedly overbilling the government by $20 million. The suit alleged that the company defrauded the government by claiming wholly owned subsidiaries of the company were in fact subcontractors. CBS reported that then\u2013Chief Financial Officer Eric Martinez ordered an audit, but\u2014according to the lawsuit\u2014was fired by Wolf before he could conduct it. Leo Burnett settled the lawsuit for $15.5 million in 2009. Wolf chairs the Walmart board\u2019s Compensation, Nominating and Governance Committee.<\/p>\n
Christopher Williams\u2019 Williams Capital Group was one of several firms to which, The New York Times noted in 1998, then\u2013New York Comptroller Carl McCall directed state pension fund contracts after receiving campaign donations from executives. Last October, Williams Capital Group announced the opening of a new Sacramento office as part of plans to \u201cbuild upon and further expand our valuable services to municipal enterprises.\u201d In April, Making Change at Walmart wrote to Williams\u2019s potential clients to suggest that Williams\u2019s service as chair of the Walmart board\u2019s auditing committee should give them pause given the company\u2019s Mexico bribery scandal.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most famous CEO on Walmart\u2019s board is Yahoo! executive Marissa Mayer, who took over the tech company last summer. Mayer has drawn a series of headlines over the past year: for her swift return to work after giving birth; for eschewing the label \u201cfeminist\u201d; for eliminating the company\u2019s work-from-home options; and most recently, following criticism, for increasing Yahoo!\u2019s maternity leave.<\/p>\n
As with the controversy over fellow tech exec Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s book Lean In, labor activists have seized on the conversation around Mayer in an effort to draw attention to challenges facing lower-wage women in the workforce. Reached by e-mail, a Yahoo! spokesperson said the company has been \u201cvery focused on making Yahoo! the absolute best place to work,\u201d and declined to comment on Mayer\u2019s role on Walmart\u2019s board, or the allegations against Walmart.<\/p>\n
Labor-backed pressure could help explain why the Walmart board\u2014currently seventeen members\u2014appears about to shrink. Three of the current CEOs on the board are leaving, and Walmart\u2019s pre-convention federal filing doesn\u2019t list any replacements. All three of the departing members\u2014Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson, Breyer Capital CEO James Breyer and Retirement Policy Center CEO Michele Burns\u2014were among those targeted by labor activists for their involvement with Walmart.<\/p>\n
In a message to shareholders in Walmart’s 2013 annual report, board chairman Rob Walton noted that Marissa Mayer and Tim Flynn had joined the board over the past year, that Breyer and Burns had served on the board for over a decade and that Sorenson had recently been promoted to Marriott CEO.<\/p>\n
In a letter to Linda Wolf and other board members prior to Walmart\u2019s 2011 shareholder meeting, the Change to Win Investment Group (a group tied to unions currently backing organizing at Walmart) questioned Breyer\u2019s and Burns\u2019s listing as \u201cindependent directors\u201d on the board. The CTW letter noted that Michele Burns then served as CEO of Mercer LLC, which Walmart had retained to consult on the company\u2019s executive compensation; and that Jim Breyer was a partner in the venture capital firm Accel, a part owner of the social media company Kosmix, which had recently been purchased by Walmart.<\/p>\n
When Burns was appointed as CEO of Mercer in 2006, The New York Times noted that she had \u201cleft a number of shareholders, creditors and employees at her previous employer, the Mirant Corporation, disgruntled over the amount she was paid while the company was in bankruptcy reorganization.\u201d That included $3.6 million in severance following a year and a half in the job. Burns is currently chairing the Walmart Board\u2019s Strategic Planning and Finance Committee; she previously chaired its Compensation, Nominating and Governance Committee.<\/p>\n
Like Walmart, Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson has been a steadfast opponent of organized labor, telling The Economist in 2009 that he opposed the (since failed) Employee Free Choice Act in part because non-union hotels are about 10 percent more profitable than those with unions. The same article reported that if the labor law reform passed, \u201cSorenson of Marriott predicts that his typical employee, a diminutive Hispanic housekeeper with shaky English, will find it hard to say no to the tall, articulate union man who turns up and asks her to sign a card.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Marsh & McLennan Companies\u2014parent of the Retirement Policy Center and of Mercer\u2014declined a request for comment. Breyer Capital, Leo Burnett, Williams Capital Group and Marriott did not respond to inquiries.<\/p>\n
Of the final three board members, one is a consultant and former business school professor, one chaired an auditing company and the last, A\u00edda \u00c1lvarez, is the chair of the Latino Community Foundation of San Francisco and the former administrator of the US Small Business Administration under Bill Clinton. \u00c1lvarez also sits on the board of Progreso Financiero, a financial services company whose investors include Madrone Capital. (The Clintons\u2019 ties to Walmart go back decades. Hillary Clinton sat on the company\u2019s board while Bill was governor; more recently, journalist Charles Fishman reported that ex-President Clinton held confidential meetings with then-CEO Lee Scott regarding how to make amends with the company\u2019s critics.)<\/p>\n
Progreso Financiero\u2019s website touts its commitment to \u201cachieving social good\u201d and offering \u201cunsecured credit to under-banked Hispanic families,\u201d offering the chance for them to \u201cprove that they are, in fact, \u2018pre-prime\u2019, and also very loyal, long term customers.\u201d The LA Times reported in 2010 that \u201cProgreso\u2019s typical 26% interest rate, plus its $50 origination fee for loans, works out to an average annual percentage rate of 36%.\u201d In a 2010 press release announcing Progreso\u2019s new financing from Madrone, Madrone praised Progreso\u2019s \u201cinnovative and socially responsible solution\u201d; Progreso touted its new backers as \u201cworld-class investors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Progreso Financiero did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Always Low Wages: Meet the Billionaires Who Run Wal-Mart by in Josh Eidelson in The Nation. The Text: This week Walmart shareholders will gather in the retail giant\u2019s Arkansas backyard and re-elect a board of directors charged with guiding the company over the coming years. Walmart\u2019s board\u2014rife with billionaires and industry titans\u2014has recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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