CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

Andrew Young Fronts for Wal-Mart: It’s Not About the Money
20 Corporate Crime Reporter 10(1), March 2, 2006

Andrew Young has just become the public face of Wal-Mart.


How much is Young being paid?


No one’s saying.


Not Wal-Mart.


Not Young.


But in an interview with National Public Radio’s Ed Gordon yesterday, Young said – it’s not about the money.

(Before interviewing Young, Gordon reminded his listeners that Wal-Mart also underwrites NPR programming.)


“What of those who are going to say – you are simply now a hired hand?” Gordon asked.


“Fine I mean, you are too,” Young shot back. “And anybody in their right mind gets paid for their services. I’ve never done anything for money. And the money I get I give away.”


Really, he gives it away?


We asked Kevin Sheridan about this claim.


Sheridan works for Edelman and is the spokesperson for Working Families for Wal-Mart – the Wal-Mart front that hired Young’s Atlanta-based Good Works International. (Sheridan said that Working Families for Wal-Mart has no physical office – it’s based out of Edelman and out of Young’s Atlanta office.)


“I don’t know if literally he gives away everything,” Sheridan said, who was with Young in Atlanta when he did the interview with Gordon. “He was talking in a conversational tone. I don’t think he’s taken a vow of poverty.”


But Sheridan too wouldn’t disclose how much Working Families for Wal-Mart is paying Good Works International for its services.


“That’s proprietary,” Sheridan said.


Sylvia Ashley, a spokesperson for Good Works International, did not return calls seeking comment.


“I gave up big salaries to be Mayor of Atlanta," Young said on Gordon’s News and Notes NPR show. “And the Mayor of Atlanta made $50,000 a year for eight years. So I don’t think anybody can say that I’ve done something for the money. My real price is to get Wal-Mart into Africa.”


In an op-ed last week in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Young wrote that “those who have committed their lives to helping the poor believe that if more companies followed Wal-Mart's lead, and provided opportunity and savings to those who need it most, more Americans who are battling poverty would be able to ascend the rungs of the ladder that leads to the American dream.”


But those in the trenches fighting Wal-Mart low wages and anti-union tendencies believe that Young is selling his reputation.


“As soon as I heard about Andy’s deal with Wal-Mart, I said to myself – respectability for sale,” said Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting.


“It shocked me when I heard it,” Laarman said. “He did the same thing for Nike a couple of years ago. I thought Andrew Young had learned something from the disgrace of his outfit working for Nike.”


Laarman said that with Wal-Mart desperately seeking to repair it’s image after a frontal attack from unions and moviemaker Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price) – “for Andy to step up and say Wal-Mart is good for – that’s disgraceful. Respectability is not for sale – ministers in particular need to understand that.”


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