Wal-Mart’s candid moments caught on camera

WAL-MART’S internal meetings over the last three decades have been put on display in videos made by a Kansas production company scrambling to stay in business after Wal-Mart stopped using the firm.

Wal-Mart dropped contractor Flagler Productions in 2006. In response to losing its biggest customer, the small company has opened its archive, for a fee, to researchers who include plaintiffs’ lawyers and union critics seeking clips of unguarded moments at the world’s largest retailer.

Those moments, never meant for public display, include a scene of male managers parading in drag at an executive meeting, a clip used by union-backed critics at Wal-Mart Watch for a recent advertisement castigating the retailer’s attitude toward female employees.

“The videos provide insight into the company’s real corporate culture when they’re not in the public eye,” said Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple.

Much of the interest in the candid videos is coming from plaintiff lawyers pursuing cases against Wal-Mart.

“The rarity is that it exists at all,” said Brad Seligman, lead attorney in a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart discriminated systemically against female employees.

“Once in a while you come upon documents that are helpful in a case,” the California-based lawyer added. “What’s amazing about this is that this company has a video record going back many years showing senior management in at times fairly candid situations.”

Seligman said one clip shows Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton in the late 1980s telling the board of directors that not enough women were in management. Wal-Mart denies it discriminates against women and in recent years has published its annual women and minority hiring statistics.

Wal-Mart said it is unhappy with the public airing of its video record.

“Needless to say, we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this after-market in mind,” said Daphne Moore, a spokeswoman for America’s biggest retailer.

She declined to comment on any legal steps the company might be considering.

Flagler says Wal-Mart has no legal power over the videos because the two sides did not sign a contract when founder Mike Flagler was hired in the 1970s to produce Wal-Mart meetings and management conferences.

Flagler co-owner Mary Lyn Villaneuva said they continued producing and filming meetings until being suddenly dropped by Wal-Mart in 2006.

Villaneuva said Wal-Mart has offered to buy the video library for $500,000 (€316,000), but their asking price is $145million (€91.7m).