I suppose I try to live by the credo that anyone can change. Everyone deserves another shot (okay, I don’t include Dick Cheney or Henry Kissinger in that category–mass murderers can’t be redeemed). But, I approach this news with a bit of skepticism:

At a gathering of more than 1,000 suppliers, Chinese officials and advocacy groups, Wal-Mart executives plan to reveal a new supplier agreement that will require manufacturers to allow outside audits and to adhere to specific social and environmental criteria. The agreement will be phased in beginning in January.

The changes signal a move on the part of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, away from intermittent transactions with many suppliers toward longer-term arrangements with a smaller group of manufacturers. Wal-Mart is betting that using its buying power this way can help keep prices low even as it keeps a closer eye on its suppliers.

Wal-Mart, long criticized for its treatment of workers in the United States and its ostensible willingness to overlook violations abroad, has in recent years offered a series of environmental and labor initiatives. A Beijing meeting now under way is the company’s first “sustainability summit.”

By next year, Wal-Mart will start keeping close track of the factories from which its products originate, even if they pass through many hands. By 2012, Wal-Mart will require suppliers to source 95 percent of their production from factories that receive the highest ratings in audits of environmental and social practices.

The agreement includes a ban on child and forced labor and pay below the local minimum wage.

   If this is actually true, it would be good news. Wal-Mart’s size does mean that if it changes, others change. But, if Wal-Mart really was going to change, it could start, for example, by settling the massive sex discrimination lawsuit it faces. Or, it could stop contesting judgements against it in wage violation cases, or any of the other 80 major lawsuits against it. Or it could start paying its taxes, like the rest of us. Or, better yet, how about calling off the dogs on unionization efforts?

   Until then, I’m not convinced that we have a corporation with a new ethic. It feels phony.

   What about you? Do you believe Wal-Mart?