WASHINGTON – Wal-Mart, the giant retailer under criticism for some of its employment practices, appears to be trying to buy the silence of its civil rights critics, charges Jesse Jackson Sr., president and chief executive of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, based in Chicago .

“Rainbow/PUSH has criticized Wal-Mart openly and publicly and consistently and they've tried to virtually throw money at us,” says Jackson, who has declined donations from Wal-Mart.

“I think they want to leverage our organization. I think they want to leverage us into silence. And, I'm not being self-righteous, but we feel that we ought to be the last one to stand if it comes to that.”

Wal-Mart denies they are trying to buy anyone. “There are two ways to do this. You can give money to organizations to give them the resources that they need to go out and be advocates for economic development and self-improvement,” says Fenimore Fisher, Wal-Mart's national director of diversity relations.

“But there's a whole other side of this that's missing if you don't pay attention to it. That is doing business with those organizations that are run by women and minorities. We take that very seriously.”

An NNPA examination of the company's federal tax 990 forms listing charitable contributions for the past five years shows contributions to Black organizations remained about steady between $325,000 in 2001 and $322,336 in 2002, rising slightly to $402,400 in 2003 increasing more to $689,227 in 2004 and then more than doubling to $1,702,500 in 2005.

Wal-Mart's giving to Black organizations increased by 424 percent over the past five years while Wal-Mart's overall public contributions increased by only 105 percent, from 75,301,122 in 2001 to $154,537,406 in 2005. The largest increase in Black spending came in 2004, when Wal-Mart was hit with the largest workplace bias lawsuit in U. S. history. That was the same year the company formed an office of diversity.

This year alone, the contributions include a $1 million grant to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation for scholarships and internships for Black students; a $5 million grant to the National Urban League to support its workforce development initiatives; $1.5 Million to the United Negro College Fund for emergency assistance to UNCF institutions; and a total of $500,000 to minority journalism scholarship programs at 10 universities including Hampton and Howard universities.

Not all civil rights leaders feel pressed by Wal-Mart. “Wal-Mart has in no ways tried to persuade me with money. In fact, I've had [Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer] Lee Scott on my radio show,” says the Rev. Al Sharpton. “There's where I held him accountable right there face to face. And callers really took him to task.”

As the head of Operation Breadbasket, the SCLC's economic arm under Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson pioneered making corporations responsive to Blacks. But, he has sometimes been accused of “shaking down” corporations. The title of former Wall Street Journal reporter Ken Timmerman's book on Jackson is “Shake Down: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson”.

Yet, Jackson has not only resisted Wal-Mart money, but he returned a contribution of more than $30,000 from British Petroleum (BP) last summer and announced a boycott of the company at his annual convention.

None of the major Black organizations receiving Wal-Mart funds have publicly criticized the $300 billion dollar a-year retail giant as it has mounted a civil rights record with millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements.

National Urban League President and CEO Mark Morial, said, “The National Urban League, we typically don't do that because we feel that our time is better spent connecting people to jobs. We have criticized policies without naming companies,” he says.

“What I have said to them in meetings is that Wal-Mart needs to get a goal of being the champion of diversity. It needs to be the best at everything.”

NAACP President and CEO Bruce Gordon says he has also held Wal-Mart accountable, just not publicly.

Last month, the Chicago City Council failed to override a mayoral veto to establish an ordinance raising the living wage standards by which Wal-Mart must abide in order to expand into the city. Gordon said he met with Mayor Richard Daley in an attempt to stop the veto of the law that would have required so-called big-box stores to pay employees at least $10 an hour plus $3 in fringe benefits by mid-2010.

Illinois ' living wage is currently $6.50, $1.35 more than the federal minimum wage of $5.15.

“Do we take positions and are those positions compromised by the gifts we receive? I don't expect for it to in any way affect the position we take on issues,” says Gordon. He says to receive funding from Wal-Mart while also holding the store accountable “is like having our cake and eating it too.”

Rather than refusing Wal-Mart's money, Morial said civil rights groups should be insisting on more. “I think it's about time that Wal-Mart expands its philanthropy into the African-American community. I welcome it. The grant that we have will help people get better jobs.”

Nu Wexler, spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch, a group critical of the retailer, agrees that Wal-Mart is doing the right thing by making the contributions. “But Wal-Mart's political contributions can't make up for their record of discrimination law suits, EEOC violations, and other race issues,” Wexler says.“These organizations have an obligation to continue to hold Wal-Mart accountable.”

Few Black organizations receiving money have done so publicly.

Wal-Mart, which has 3,500 stores across the nation and a total of 6,500 in 15 countries, has an extensive record of charitable giving but also an extensive record of rights violations. [Editor's note: saying Wal-Mart has "an extensive record of charitable giving" is not false, but misleading -- the company has traditionally donated an exceptionally low percentage of its revenue.]

Wal-Mart, with a total workforce of 1.3 million, boasts of being the leading employer of African-Americans and Latinos in the U. S., but the corporations' 225,000 (17 percent) African-Americans and 139,000 Latinos (11 percent) are among the leading advocates for labor unions that the company refuses and the leading complainants in cases alleging non-payment for overtime and lack of health care and unaffordable health care.

Currently there are 50 wage and hour class action lawsuits pending against Wal-Mart, according to Wal-Mart Watch.

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley adds that the lawsuits and settlements are not as they appear. “When you look at some of the judgments that have come down, you have to know that a good number of them are under appeal for good reason,” Simley says.

Armstrong v. Walmart, a federal lawsuit filed by Tommy Armstrong, a former driver for Wal-Mart's Searcy , Ark. distribution center, alleges that Wal-Mart's 10,000-plus truckers' fleet is less than 3 percent Black. Armstrong, who is Black, claims he applied for the job six years in a row and was turned down every time while given obscure reasons for his rejection. The potential class action suit was filed in Helena , Ark. , in June of last year and is still pending.

Wal-Mart became the subject of the largest workplace bias lawsuit in U. S. history in 2004. The lead plaintiff, Betty Dukes, of Dukes v. Wal-Mart, is a Black woman. In June 2004, Judge Martin Jenkins granted class action status to the 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees alleging that Wal-Mart systematically paid women less and offered women fewer promotions. The case is still in the courts and has yet to be settled. Dukes also has an individual race discrimination claim couched within the lawsuit.

In addition, the Wal-Mart Corporation has paid millions to settle a string of Americans with Disabilities Act Violations, including $6 million to settle 13 lawsuits in 2001 that alleged widespread discrimination.

Last year, Wal-Mart reached a settlement after being fined by the U. S. Department of Labor for violating child labor laws in Connecticut , New Hampshire and Arkansas . The corporation reportedly allowed teens to work in unsafe conditions, including loading and unloading scrap paper bailers, operating forklifts and chain saws. It agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges of the 24 violations.

Concerning complaints about low wages, Simley says many Wal-Mart jobs are not intended to support whole families, but rather for supplemental income. Simley concedes, however, that Wal-Mart is working on wages.

“The way that the allegation has been framed is that we are a minimum wage employer. We are clearly not. We have just raised the starting minimums for 1,200 of our stores in order to remain competitive in labor markets across the country,” says Simley. He says the starting wages were raised an average of 6 percent, affecting 120,000 workers. The average wage, he says, is $10.11 an hour, $4.96 higher than the current federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour.

While NAACP President and CEO Bruce Gordon could not be reached for comment, the NAACP's latest annual corporate report card gave Wal-Mart a C+, the highest of all 45 stores in the retail category. The report ranked in areas of employment, marketing, procurement, community reinvestment and charitable donations.

The Wal-Mart contributions to Black communities is not the first time that controversial contributions to Black organizations have become an issue. For example, the tobacco industry has courted most Black organizations, including the NNPA, and is a major convention sponsor for the National Urban League, the NAACP and other groups. The industry is so entrenched that Shuanise Washington, vice-president for government affairs for Altria, serves as treasurer of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

But Jackson plans to continue rejecting money from Wal-Mart. He said, “I believe that we must be a voice of conscience.”

© 2006 National Newspaper Publishers Association, Inc.

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