Three advocacy groups have teamed up to file
a complaint about Walmart's dodgy campaign finance practices with the Federal Election Commission. Public Citizen, Common Cause, and OUR Walmart say that Walmart's reward for workers donating to the company's PAC crosses the line; by offering to contribute two dollars to a charity for every dollar workers give to the PAC, Walmart is going beyond what the FEC has previously approved, the groups argue:
Other companies offer to match employee donations to their PACs with donations to charities. Bloomberg News reported last year that Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola and others have this kind of program. The practice became popular in the 1980s, and the FEC has since approved various charitable matching programs presented to it -- though not without controversy.
Often the cases are approved by a slim margin, and in some situations the elections commissioners have deadlocked. In the past, some commissioners have argued that any charitable match is really just the company subsidizing a donation to its own PAC.
Walmart’s program is particularly controversial for two reasons, according to Holman. For one, it offers a 2-for-1 match instead of a 1-for-1 match. In one case where the FEC considered a 2-for-1 match, three commissioners dissented, arguing that such a large match would "skew the incentives" and "undercut the voluntariness" of the donations, according to Bloomberg. Also, Walmart doesn't give workers a choice of charities for the company to send the matching funds.
Unlike other companies that give workers a choice of charities for their matching contributions, Walmart sends all matching dollars to one place: the Associates in Critical Need Trust, which is Walmart's charity for Walmart workers in financial trouble. So: The company solicits managers and professional employees to give money to the PAC supporting candidates Walmart favors. Then, it gives double that amount to the charity that provides emergency help to Walmart's low-paid hourly workers. Walmart gets credit for charitable giving—for giving that's necessary largely because of the low wages it pays!—and it gets around prohibitions on giving to its own PAC.
The FEC has previously deadlocked on whether a double match is too big of an incentive to offer to push employees to give to PACs, and unless today's FEC is tipped over by the restricted nature of Walmart's charitable match, it's likely to deadlock again. But that's a sign that the FEC is broken, not that what Walmart's doing is right.