Growing opposition frowns on Wal-Mart

WASHINGTON — In a nondescript office blocks from the White House, Paul Blank chats with staffers near the start of another 12-hour workday. The beige walls are plastered with hand-lettered, cardboard signs bearing slogans "Always High Costs. Always" and "Buffy the Wal-Mart Slayer." Despite his 80-hour workweeks, Blank settles into a chair looking energized.

This is more than a job to him, he explains. It's a crusade.

Blank is the campaign manager for the labor-union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com. Behind the scenes at the headquarters office, staffers work at a dizzying pace. Their goal: to reform Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world.

"There is a drumbeat every day that's building," says Blank, who previously worked as political director for Howard Dean's presidential campaign. "The question of whether Wal-Mart is good for America is being pushed to the forefront of a national debate."

As the holiday shopping season goes into full swing, Wal-Mart is facing the most formidable opposition to a retailer since the 1930s, when a campaign was waged against Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea (better known as A&P), which subsequently lost its domination of the retail market. In just the past year, two union-backed groups have formed with the shared mission of challenging the megaretailer's business, labor, environmental and social standards.

Another labor-supported group, Wal-Mart Watch, is housed in a corporate-looking downtown Washington office with plush leather chairs and curving stalks of pale green lucky bamboo in the waiting room. The mostly young staff is dressed in jeans and khakis. The organization has 36 employees, including 14 who work in the field.

Both organizations have gotten or now get funding from labor unions, which have tried unsuccessfully for years to unionize workers at the retailer. Wal-Mart Watch was launched in April by Andrew Stern, a union leader whose Service Employees International Union left the AFL-CIO last summer. The board includes Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and a Republican, Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group, an Alexandria, Va.-based polling group. Partners include such national groups as Sojourners, American Independent Business Association, National Council of Women's Organizations, Sierra Club, Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers International union.

WakeUpWalMart.com is a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union and gets its funding from the labor organization.

Praise and pressure