Last modified: Sunday, February 15, 2009 2:21 AM EST BRISTOL: The new Wal-Mart Remember when Wal-Mart was coming to New England and many people were in high dudgeon over this down market retailer that exploits workers and decimates downtowns? Today, that attitude is, well, outdated. Wal-Mart is now looked on as a place that saves shoppers money at a time when they really need to save money. It's recognized as a business that's creating - not cutting - jobs. It's also going green and making up for some bad employment practices. Wal-Mart is almost the new in thing. You might expect that the world's largest retailer would have enough smart people to adapt to its environment and continue to grow. Wal-Mart's latest push is to add supermarkets to a number of its stores. One of the first such expansions is under way in North Attleboro. The company already has a substantial New England grocery business of $1.5 billion a year at its 37 so-called superstores. It aims to double that trade in one year, the Boston Globe reported. Stop & Shop and Shaw's are bigger but they're feeling the heat. The big project going on at Wal-Mart's Route 1 store in North Attleboro is one bright spot in this dismal economy. No doubt the construction work will be welcomed in the half dozen other Massachusetts towns slated to have Wal-Mart supermarkets. Also most welcome will be the 700 jobs created when the stores open. Are they good jobs? That's a calculation for the job seeker to make but they're probably better jobs than they used to be. Back when Wal-Mart came to New England, there was a lot of angst over the chain's employment practices, and with good reason. Workers around the country claimed the company failed to pay for all hours worked, manipulated time records and cheated on breaks. Wal-Mart recently agreed to settle the class action suits, including one filed by a worker at the North Attleboro store. The settlement will cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Wal-Mart maintains that the labor practices cited in the suits are not the labor practices of today and it just wants to move on. Besides this settlement, Wal-Mart has updated its image through an across-the-board sustainability campaign. It is selling more energy-saving and environmentally- friendly products and cutting its own energy costs. For shoppers this means finding shelves stocked with long-lasting fluorescent light bulbs, water-saving laundry detergent and other items intended to help them save money in the long run as well as at the register. For the company it means things like building energy-efficient stores, recycling more waste and making its fleet of trucks fuel efficient. The new mindset was welcomed by environmental activists who to their surprise were invited to help the company shape the initiative. A similar approach was taken with labor activists on its Dickensian employment practices and revising stingy health care and retirement benefits, according to a recent story in the New York Times. In short, former enemies were turned into allies. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is one savvy outfit. Its business model made it one of just two companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average whose stock rose in 2008 (the other was McDonald's). Likewise, Wal-Mart had better-than-expected sales gains in January while most retailers were reporting worse-than-expected losses. Once upon a time, upscale New Englanders liked to say they wouldn't be caught dead in a Wal-Mart. Today they're among the bargain-hunting multitudes. Maybe now they'll take off the sunglasses. NED BRISTOL is a member of The Sun Chronicle's Editorial Board and a former editor of the newspaper.