Wal-Mart worker protests and walk-offs planned for Thursday night and Black Friday had the retailer taking them seriously enough to send a top executive to the TODAY show this morning to downplay the story. 

Widespread picketing was not expected, Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart's chief merchandising and marketing officer, told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie. "We'll have 4,000 stores ready to go," said Naughton, staffed by "one million associates serving our customer." 

The group behind the protest actions, OUR Walmart, told TODAY they are striking to protest what they say is manager retaliation against any employees who complain about working conditions. 

"We have a  really open culture of listening to our associates, it's based on integrity, respect for the individual," Mac Naughton told TODAY. 

An OUR Walmart organizer, William Fletcher, 23, disputed this, telling TODAY that Walmart's "open door policy" where any associate can speak to a manager to bring up issues was instead used to "find out who's complaining so they can silence them with indirect threats. "They're very good at doing that while still staying within the law." 

Wal-Mart said they were "really confident" that Black Friday will go off without a hitch. "What you're seeing in the media and in the news is a small group of Wal-Mart associates in a select number of stores," said Mac Naughton, "complimented by a number of of non-Wal-Mart associates that are paid by the union." 

Still, the matter is large enough for Wal-Mart to have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), arguing that the protests were an unlawful attempt to disrupt its business. The complaint alleged that the group running the protests, the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), was backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), and was more about building union membership than fighting for worker rights. 

The UCFW filed its own complaint that day, alleging that Walmart had directed store managers to make workers fearful for their jobs if they participated in the actions. 

The legal maneuvers may be too late to prevent the strikes from disrupting one of the biggest shopping days of the year for Wal-Mart. In a statement released Tuesday, the NLRB said that it was unlikely to come to a decision before Friday. 

With stores opening at 8 p.m. on Thursday and walk-offs planned throughout the shopping event, consumer chaos is a threat, depending on how many workers end up participating. 

"Workers will be walking off the job left and right over Thanksgiving," UCFW Janna Pea spokesperson told TODAY.  

Pea couldn't give an estimate of how many walkoffs there would be, but said that there would be protest actions at over 1,000 Wal-Mart stores, ranging from employees not showing up for work, to workers walking off in the middle of their shift, to community allies passing out brochures outside the stores.

/

People walk past a Wal-Mart store with a banner reading "Low prices, every day, in everything" in Mexico City April 21, 2012.

A deli manager at Wal-Mart doesn’t like how the company is being run and is calling for a change in leadership at the retail giant, but she’s not just moaning about her employer around a water cooler.

Venanzi Luna of South Gate, Calif., has taken her battle to the Web, creating an online petition that already has more than 5,500 signatures as of late Monday.

“It is time for things to change. Wal-Mart needs to take responsibility for its actions and change its leadership,” she wrote on the petition on Change.org, pointing to recent reports that the company bribed Mexican officials.

It’s unclear whether Venanzi Luna will get her wish, but her cyber tactic points to a potentially strong tool for workers to turn the heat up in corner offices across the country.

Social media and online petitions, effectively used by consumers to pressure companies to rethink rate hikes and reassess labor practices overseas, could put power in employees’ hands, said labor experts.

“All of these Internet forces are all of a sudden part of the communications currency in the world, especially in America,” said Lee Howard Adler, who teaches employment law and public sector collective bargaining and labor law at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School. “Even the most powerful see some need to address these.”

Having workers use the Internet to get their voices heard, he said, “could have an impact if there’s a large enough response from employees, consumers and citizens.”

Alder stopped short of saying Luna’s petition is the beginning of a movement, but he’s encouraged that “this courageous deli manager is willing to give it a try.”

Indeed, employees may need a lot of courage to talk so publicly about the top executives at the companies that employs them, especially if they’re not union members.

Wal-Mart is well known for having kept unions out of its U.S. operations, and its unclear how Luna’s petition will impact her career. Wal-Mart would not comment on the petition or Luna's future at the company, but in an earlier statement about the bribery scandal, David Tovar, a spokesman for the retailers said: “We are confident we are conducting a comprehensive investigation and if violations of our policies occurred here, we will take appropriate action."

Luna could not immediately be reached for comment.

Casie Yoder, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Making Change at Wal-Mart coalition, said the organization was approached by Luna to help her write the petition.

“Wal-Mart could fire Venanzi for her petition but that wouldn't seem to me like a smart decision on the company's part,” she said.

Calling for the ouster of top executives is not totally unusual for labor, said John Revitte, a labor professor at Michigan State University. In the last decade, he said, there have been some unions that have had employee members purchase stock so they can complain at board meetings. “But for people unconnected to unions, complaining about your employer is more rare.”

That doesn’t mean, however, a discontented rank and file that isn’t unionized has no sway when it comes to decisions made about top executives, said Kristi Hedges. Hedges, who's with leadership consulting firm The Hedges Company, has been brought in by corporate boards to repair damage or coach CEOs when there’s widespread dissatisfaction with leadership.

Companies that have leaders who don’t have the trust or respect of the rank and file often end up with low retention rates or dissension at all levels, she explained, and boards will move to address that.

“If the pattern over time is an inability to lead, it’s difficult for senior leaders to be successful,” she said.

The Internet, she added, has created a new way for workers to raise their concerns and boards aren’t going to be happy with such public displays of anger toward the top executives, potentially pressuring them to stand up and take notice.

Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute, isn’t sure such employees' Internet tactics will lead to real change in Corporate America.

“We live in a culture where shareholders are king and often shareholders can’t even dislodge CEOs,” he said. “Since employees are even lower in the pecking order I have a hard time imagining they can.”

Employees have religious rights in the workplace, but wearing your religion on your sleeve at work can be hazardous to your career.

The question of how much religion in the workplace is too much is playing out in a California court this week with a closely watched case involving a former NASA employee.

David Coppedge, a former computer specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is claiming he lost his managerial role and then his job because he believes in a higher power. His employer says he was harassing employees but was ultimately let go as part of a round of mass layoffs.

Coppedge admitted in a court filing that he was engaging his co-workers in religious conversation, most notably handing out DVDs on intelligent design, and that he was warned by a supervisor to cut it out because it amounted to “pushing religion,” and that the dialogue was “unwelcome” and “disruptive.”

Despite this, Coppedge is suing his former employer for religious discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination.

This type of religious conflict at work is something we’re seeing more of today, compared to even a few decades ago when the workplace was more homogenous, said Jamie Prenkert, an attorney and associate professor of business law at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

There is more diversity in offices and factories, and the labor laws have been bolstered to protect the religious rights of employees, covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Indeed, cases of religious discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have been on the rise since 1997, reaching 4,151 charges last year.

Employers are required to provide “reasonable accommodation for the religious practices and beliefs of employees” under the law. When it's not considered an undue hardship for employers by the courts, workers have won battles including everything from not working on certain religious holidays to prayer time to wearing religious garb. 

Increasingly, however, workers are pushing the envelope on what they want to do in the name of their religion, Prenkert said, because many individuals are politically and socially emboldened today to “carry their religion into all aspects of their life.”

That desire, however, can create problems at work. “When you bring that together in the workplace with people of varying backgrounds and beliefs that have to work together, it often results in allegations of intolerance that fly both ways,” he said.

It’s tempting to say we should leave religion at the door, Prenkert added, “but that does ignore some people’s deeply held beliefs.”

Clearly, an employer can’t discriminate against an employee based on religion, but that doesn’t mean your boss has to put up with all behaviors associated with your beliefs, especially if they include harassment, said Joanna Friedman an employment attorney with Tully Rinckey in Washington.

When it comes to religion in the workplace, she said, “it’s fine for employees and even supervisors to talk about religious beliefs as long as it's not done in a manner that’s intimidating or interferes with employment duties or creates a situation where you’re abusing your authority,” she stressed.

It’s unclear if Coppedge stepped over the line.

In his suit, he claims he did not “coerce” or “compel” anyone and that he was singled out because of: “his religious convictions generally, and specifically for his belief in God as the creator of the universe, his support for California’s Proposition 8, which was adopted by voters in November 2008 (striking down the rights of same-sex couples to marry), and his request that JPL’s annual "holiday party" be renamed the "Christmas party," as it had been called in the past.”

But in the suit, he also admits that employees complained to managers about him harassing them by talking about his religious convictions and giving them religious DVDs as gifts.

A spokeswoman for NASA Veronica McGregor said, “Mr. Coppedge was laid off during downsizing. There had been issues, not with the content of Coppedge’s speech but the way he interacted with his co-workers. Of course, that was a separate issue from the layoffs that occurred later.” 

While it’s impossible to say who will prevail in the case, Friedman said handing out religious DVDs could be troublesome from a legal perspective.

“The law gives broad protections to employees and managers when it comes to religious beliefs,” she said, “but once an employee’s conduct in the workplace creates problems because of their beliefs, that’s problematic.” 

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year.

It’s hard to imagine we still have to tell employers this today, but here goes: Pregnancy discrimination is illegal.

While it may sound obvious to some, blatant pregnancy bias is still alive and well in the workplace. A pregnant woman who applied for a job at a Subway franchise in Phoenix was told by a manager “we can’t hire you because you’re pregnant.” Last month, she won punitive damages against the employer.

It’s just one example of the types of flagrant pregnancy discrimination that the federal government is trying to stop.

“A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's general counsel, said during a public meeting before the EEOC commissioners Wednesday.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC.

While the EEOC is doing outreach to employers so they understand the law, the agency is also using the big-stick approach.

The EEOC has increased the number of cases it has filed against employers when it comes to pregnancy bias, Lopez said, reaching 20 cases last year, inching up from 19 in 2010.

He pointed to a $1.64 million settlement reached with Akal Security Inc., the largest provider of contract security services to the federal government, in 2010. The agency claimed Akal had a national policy “of forcing its pregnant employees, working as contract security guards on U.S. Army bases, to take leave and discharging them because of pregnancy.”

Such conduct, the agency maintained, violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which prohibits gender discrimination in employment, including pregnancy discrimination.

This type of bias can hit low-wage workingwomen the hardest, said Sharon Terman, senior staff attorney in the gender equity program at The Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, who spoke at the EEOC event.

“We’ve heard from many women who were fired immediately upon announcing their pregnancy and whose employers explicitly told them the pregnancy was the reason,” she explained.

Low-income women who become pregnant, she continued, are routinely denied minor workplace accommodations that would help them continue working. A common example of accommodations would be allowing a worker to sit on a stool instead of standing all day, or letting her carry a water bottle.

She offered one case of a pregnant janitor who was fired via text message by her boss after she told him her obstetrician was late for her appointment.

Many poorer workers also don’t have paid sick days, she pointed out. The United States is one of the only industrialized nations that does not mandate paid sick days for employees. While some states have passed laws requiring some paid sick time, the majority of workers nationally are not covered by such legislation.

Although many employers have anti-discrimination policies, it still occurs. Employment attorney Sara Begley said, “Unenlightened managers who are simply focused on getting the job done may violate a pregnant employee's protected rights by taking adverse action for taking maternity leave, not provide salary increases or bonuses to employees on leave, assume an employee will not return post leave and transfer her duties to another employee, assume an employee will be on Mommy Track post maternity leave."

Such outdated assumptions, she added, “can and must be remedied by training and enforcement of applicable policies."

The biggest “knowledge gap” when it comes to the law, she added, appears to be with smaller firms who just don’t have adequate training.  

While reaching out and educating employers is important, said EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, he shared his frustration that so little has changed in the 35 years since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

“Why have we missed the boat?” he asked the panelists assembled at the hearing. Why, he added, does pregnancy bias persist? “It’s a puzzle to me.”

Judy Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families, who spoke at the hearing, said it was all about long-standing stereotypes, and not just regarding pregnancy but for caregiving too. Our society doesn’t value people with family responsibilities, she said. “What are our real obligations to change an engrained paradigm?” 

AP

If the beach really isn’t your thing and you prefer to spend the last weekend of summer car shopping, Consumer Reports has put together an analysis of the best deals for car buyers in five major cities across the country, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles.

The end of summer marks the transition between the 2011 and 2012 model year for many automakers. Historically, that means you can find deep discounts on cars for the outgoing model year as manufacturers and dealerships make way for the brand new models rolling off production lines.

Consumer Reports says it’s seeing the trend happen again this summer, and buying a leftover 2011 model rather than a 2012 model can save you serious money upfront.

In Chicago, for example, you can save 20 percent off the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) for a 2011 Nissan Altima 2.5 HEV eCVT, according to Consumer Reports data (the offer expires on Sept. 30). And in Dallas you can find a 2012 Ford Mustang GT Premium Coupe with a 15 percent discount on its MSRP until Oct. 30.

For more information on the car discounts, click here.

Pew Research

Americans’ view of labor unions is near the lowest level in a quarter century -- but corporations aren’t doing so hot, either.

A new survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that 45 percent of Americans have a favorable view of unions, while 47 percent have a favorable view of corporations.

The popularity of both has slumped in recent years, amid the weak economy and high unemployment.

Unions are actually slightly more popular than a year ago, when just 41 percent of Americans viewed them favorably. But their popularity has dropped considerably from 2001, when 63 percent of Americans saw them in a favorably light.

In this year’s survey, more than half of respondents said unions have a positive effect on salaries and benefits of union workers, and working conditions for everyone. But about one-third thought unions have a negative effect on the availability of good jobs in America and the ability of American companies to compete globally.

Businesses reached a recent high in popularity in 1999, according to Pew’s data, when 73 percent viewed them favorably. But it has stayed at 47 percent since 2008, at the early part of the recession.

The data is based on a survey of 1,385 adults completed earlier this month.