Human Rights Watch wants a kinder, gentler Wal-Mart. In a
recently released 210-page report, it takes the
giant retailer to the woodshed for its “sophisticated and
determined strategy to prevent union activity at its US stores,”
concluding that while Wal-Mart’s tactics “largely comport with US
law…many workers fear expressing pro-union views or even
questioning Wal-Mart’s anti-union bias.”
Oh my. Wal-Mart doesn’t want to be unionized so it’s fighting
back. And it has the audacity to be “aggressive,” whereas Human
Rights Watch prefers that company management “remain neutral during
union organizing campaigns.” That sounds fair: union leaders
organize and Wal-Mart does nothing.
Given that I have no client in the long-running Wal-Mart wars,
my issue is not whether the union organizing campaign prevails or
fails. Rather, it is a rejection of what’s really at the core of
the Human Rights Watch report and many others like it — the belief
that it is immoral for businesses to defend themselves. The intent
of the report is less to reveal alleged Wal-Mart abuses than it is
to shame the company into submission. Its premise is the
illegitimacy of assertive self-interest when exercised by a large,
profitable enterprise.
I hope Wal-Mart continues to fight back, because far too many
large companies today crumble at the slightest hint of
agenda-driven controversy. It is easy to see why. Anti-corporate
activism, ironically, has become big business. Foundations,
so-called non-governmental organizations, unions and trial
attorneys collectively have literally billions of dollars in assets
to apply to — and gain from — corporate pressure campaigns. The
power struggles between big companies and their detractors are no
longer David versus Goliath, they are Goliath versus Goliath. Very
few CEOs today have the stomach, or the support of their boards, to
commit their companies to fighting costly wars of attrition with
such well-resourced critics. Wal-Mart is the exception in that has
both the stomach and pocketbook to mount a counter-offensive.
Of course, not all companies are innocent as charged and not all
pressure campaigns are baseless. But neither should large companies
allow themselves to become pinatas simply because the easiest way
out is capitulation. In today’s scandal-driven environment silence
equals guilt. Playing defense is for losers. It is eat or be eaten.
Yes, you stick to the facts and you play by the rules. But as one
park ranger once advised, “The first rule of survival is to never
look like food.” And a lot of companies today are looking like an
all-you-can-eat buffet.
My advice for businesses under fire is, first, to distinguish
between a whoops-we-made-a-mistake crisis and an agenda-driven
attack. A crisis requires that you fix the problem and communicate
effectively; an attack calls for a robust counter-initiative.
Second, don’t automatically assign the challenge to your public
relations department. Brilliant as they may be at driving up your
positives, most PR people can’t get their heads around the notion
that not everyone is a “stakeholder” and the answer is not always
more “outreach.” The most applicable discipline in these situations
is electoral politics, not PR.
Third, mobilize your base. Businesses today tend to spend all of
their time appeasing their critics and virtually none nurturing
their supporters — the groups and individuals who believe in free
markets, consumer choice, and technological progress.
At the end of the day, not all corporate-critics deserve their
perch on the moral high-ground, and not all businesses are in need
of a sound public flogging. But unless more of them stand up to
their critics the way Wal-Mart does, the marketplace of ideas
becomes very one-sided. And whose interest does that really
serve?
