After losing its biggest client, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a small Kansas production company trying to stay in business is offering video clips of the world's largest retailer's private meetings to researchers such as plaintiffs' lawyers and union critics.
Wal-Mart dropped longtime contractor Flagler Productions in 2006 and the company has opened its archive, but not for free. Flagler charges 250 U.S. dollars an hour for video research and additional fees for a DVD copy of film clips.
Those moments never meant for public display include a scene of male managers dressed 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," Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple said Tuesday.
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.
"Needless to say, we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this aftermarket in mind," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore said.
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.
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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