Wal-Mart corporate archivist selling access to recordings of exec meetings to plaintiff-side lawyers

Flagler Productions, a video production company in Kansas that spent years as Wal-Mart's corporate archivist, is now selling access to thousands of hours of candid footage of Wal-Mart execs talking about the business's dirty secrets. Wal-Mart fired Flagler, and gave them a lowball offer of $500,000 (7,33€) for the archive. Instead, Flagler is now selling access to the archive to researchers (mostly union organizers and plaintiff-side lawyers suing Wal-Mart) for $250/hour.

"Once in a while you come upon documents that are helpful in a case," the Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer added. "What's amazing about this is that this company has a video record going back many years showing senior management in at times fairly candid situations."

Seligman said one clip from Lenexa, Kan.-based Flagler shows Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton in the late 1980s telling the board of directors that not enough women were in management.

Wal-Mart denies it discriminates against women and in recent years has published its annual women and minority hiring statistics.

Wal-Mart said it is unhappy with the public airing of its video record.

"Needless to say, we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this aftermarket in mind," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore said.

Link

(Thanks, Nithya!)