If TNH had a Drudge-siren, this is where I'd use it

Breaking!!! as the man would say.  From the front page of today's (subscription only) WSJ:

Petty Cash: A Wal-Mart Legend's Trail of Deceit

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Last November, Thomas M. Coughlin, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s vice chairman, approached a lieutenant with an unusual request. He wanted Jared Bowen to approve around $2,000 in expense payments without any receipts.  Mr. Bowen, then a 31-year-old vice president, recalls that Mr. Coughlin briefly mentioned the money had been used for a "union project."

Concerned that the request seemed fishy, Mr. Bowen eventually alerted another executive, helping trigger an internal probe. Mr. Coughlin, who retired as an executive in January, abruptly resigned on March 25 from his board seat after Wal-Mart found what it said was a pattern of expense-account abuses and the use of false invoices to obtain reimbursements. Several other Wal-Mart employees also have been fired. The U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas is investigating the matter.

. . . The tale involves another mystery: the "union project." Mr. Coughlin told several Wal-Mart employees that the money was actually being used for antiunion activities, including paying union staffers to tell him of pro-union workers in stores, according to people familiar with the matter. The fake invoices, Mr. Coughlin told these people, were simply a roundabout way of compensating him for out-of-pocket expenses in his antiunion campaign.

If Mr. Coughlin did pay union staffers for information, it would represent a criminal offense under the federal Taft-Hartley Act and ratchet up debate over the retail giant's labor policies. Wal-Mart has vigorously opposed unions since the time of Mr. Walton, who founded the company in 1962. That stance has roiled the retail industry as competing companies with unionized workers have tried to slash wages and benefits in an attempt to keep up with Wal-Mart's rock-bottom prices.  People familiar with the matter say that Mr. Coughlin is expected to use the "union project" as part of his defense to the charges about misappropriation of funds. These people give an explanation that wouldn't necessarily involve criminal activity: The payments went to former, rather than current, union people who had information about union activities at Wal-Mart. Even such payments, if made, could raise legal questions. According to Fred Feinstein, the former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, they could violate the National Labor Relations Act and carry civil penalties.

However, it remains unclear whether any payments were made or whether the union project existed. It is possible that Mr. Coughlin's talk of antiunion work was a cover story to conceal misuse of Wal-Mart funds for personal or other purposes.

If Coughlin did in fact pay off union staffers for info on organizing campaigns, it's criminal -- and the union staffers who took those payments need to be hunted down and arrested, along with Coughlin and any other Wal-Mart execs who particpated in the crime.  That said, the UFCW claims it has no knowledge of the issue.  My wild-ass guess, at this point, is that Coughlin is going to fall on his sword, claim that the "union project" was merely a ruse to launder petty cash embezzlement, and save the company.  But we shall see.  There's a dKos diary on the brewing scandal here.

Comments

[cvcobb01]

Au contraire. The likelihood of Coughlin being prosecuted in the current political environment for "antiunion" activities is probably a lot less likely than for embezzlement or fraud. Certainly it would mean that Walmart was less zealous in going after him, as they might otherwise be if it were true embezzlement.

And with an executive of Couglin's stature and experience at least within his own company, I think the response I have seen most in corporations I have worked in is that if you can't save your job, then salvage your reputation. Otherwise he is in for a long winter of being unemployable at another company in a key position or, if he's retiring for good, of having ended his career in an embarrassing fashion that makes him somewhat radioactive to all of the friends and colleagues he's built up over the years on the job.

So what do you think he'd rather be known for--as an overzealous protector of his company, or a mere embezzler with a new reputation as a rich man who was so greedy he had to cheat the company out of a couple grand here or there?

[Trapper John]

I think he'd rather actually protect the company than implicate it in his systematic anti-union criminality. That's why I say he'll cop to embezzlement -- that way he's the only person under indictment. If he exposes the "union project," the company will feel a lot of heat.

[DHinMI]

Here's my take, and it hinges--admittedly a risky move--on this sentence out of the WSJ article:

The payments went to former, rather than current, union people who had information about union activities at Wal-Mart.

Maybe it's a meaningly semantical point, but I take that to mean former union sympathizers or activists from within the Wal-Mart employees, not the paid organizers of UFCW. However, but floating out there that it may have been staffers of "the union" that were involved, that continues to perpetuate Wal-Mart's story that the union is corrupt and just after their union dues.

Besides, with all the legal and semi-legal means to crush unions already at their disposal, I'm not sure why Wal-Mart would make it a policy to engage in something that would open them up to legal action that could be enforced with sharper teeth than the usual ULP's that the NLRB can't enforce in time to actually have an effect on the organizing drive.