Wal-Mart's damage control is falling flat for some workers...

Under the program, store managers are to meet each week with 10 employees who sign up to discuss concerns, suggestions and ideas for improving operations. The program also requires regional general managers to conduct monthly town-hall meetings that are open to every worker in the area.

A new management training program, called “Leaders Out in Front,” is intended to encourage hourly workers to advance their careers and help existing managers become “better ambassadors and mentors,” according to the memo.

Not all of these perks are new. During previous holiday seasons, Wal-Mart has paid health care premiums and offered an additional 10 percent discount. But they were sporadic or at store managers’ discretion, rather than offered annually across the chain, said Ms. Clark, the spokeswoman.

Other perks, like a shirt that states length of employment in five-year increments starting with 20 years of service, appear designed to build morale, but might do the opposite.

Cleo Forward, a 37-year-old support manager at a Wal-Mart in Dallas, said the new program was promising, but that it fell short in recognizing long-time workers who felt unappreciated by the changes.

“They are going to spend $15 on a Polo for you after 20 years? Give me a break,” he said. “We would rather they lift the wage caps.”

This is an anti-union strategy as well as a desparate attempt at morale-boosting in the wake of "associates'" reactions to the corpopration's attempts to "to create a cheaper, more flexible labor force by capping wages, using more part-time employees, scheduling more workers at nights and weekends, and cracking down on unexcused days off."

The policies angered many long-time employees, who complained that the changes would reduce their pay and disrupt their families’ lives. Workers even staged small rallies in Nitro, W. Va., and Hialeah Gardens, Fla., the only such protests in recent memory.

"Associates Out in Front" is predicated on the notion that what will quiet the workers is more contact with the pacificying voices of middle management and a few scraps. But Wal-Mart's massive corps of low wage workers seem - at least according to Barbaro and Greenhouse, less enthused about the attemps at mollification than the company's spokespeople.

Kory Uselton, a 35-year-old overnight floor cleaner at a Wal-Mart in Tyler, Tex., said his store manager offered “robotic” company-approved responses during a recent meeting when workers questioned the new attendance policy, which originally called for disciplinary action after three unauthorized absences (although it was later revised to four unexcused absences).

Asked if absence for a family emergency, like a sick child, would be authorized, Mr. Uselton recounted, the manager said, “No, it’s not.”

“Many of the associates were very upset,” Mr. Uselton said. “Management is just not listening anymore.” Some Wal-Mart employees said workers might be afraid to speak up because they have seen coworkers retaliated against — for instance, transferred to worse shifts when they voiced their complaints.

Ms. Clark said Wal-Mart already had several systems in place that allowed employees to criticize company practices. Among other things, she said, there was a toll-free hotline workers could call to report ethical lapses, a Web site on which chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. answered questions and a policy, known as the “open door,” that permitted anyone to bring complaints to officers at the highest level of the company.

Yeah, right.