Does your company tape activities around your workplace? If so, you might be interested in a brewing case involving Wal-Mart. The results may range from simple embarrassment to being able to prove bias against women.
It’s time to pick on Wal-Mart again. Really, we here at HRB don’t mean to. But they are the nation’s largest retailer, and when they provide material like this, can you blame us?
In this YouTube age, it’s possible for you to see friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, and – gulp – maybe even yourself in embarrassing if not compromising situations on the Web.
So imagine how Wal-Mart executives must be feeling now that 30 years of company meetings and other activities are for sale from a spurned video company. Some are even trying to use the tapes to prove that Wal-Mart has a bias against women.
Wal-Mart used Flagler Productions for 30 years to videotape internal meetings. Two years ago, the retailer fired the company.
Result for Flagler: Most of its revenue dried up.
Solution for Flagler (and revenge is sweet): Offer 15,000 tapes for sale for $250 per hour plus an additional fee for DVD copies.
Among the tapes for sale: One showing managers in drag leading thousands of co-workers in the company’s corporate cheer. (Calling Virginia Ham and her sisters, Robin Banks and Clare Vuoyant.)
That’s embarrassment enough. However, it gets worse. The group Wal-Mart Watch is using that footage to show the company’s alleged attitude toward female employees.
But hold on, you’re saying at this point. Don’t those tapes belong to Wal-Mart? No, because the company never signed a contract with Flagler. Copyright law says without a contract, whoever filmed the footage owns it.
Now, all sorts of Wal-Mart foes, including many with legal cases against the retailer, are flocking to Flagler, willing to pay to see what was said behind closed doors.
Possible solution for Wal-Mart: Buy the videos back. And it has made an offer: half a million dollars.
Sweet revenge again for fired Flagler: It wants $14.5 million.
We’ll keep you posted.
