Walmart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest retailer and the largest company in the United States. In the fiscal year ending January 31, 2001 Wal-Mart had $191 billion dollars in sales. It employs over 1 million people in the United States at 3,300 stores and operates 4,500 retail units in 10 countries: the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-mart, opened the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. The company is publicly traded at the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WMT and has its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Wal-Mart operates large discount retail stores selling a broad range of products such as clothes, consumer electronics, drugs, outdoor equipment, guns, toys, hardware, CDs and books. Its typical products are basic, mass-market equipment, rather than premium products stocked at specialist stores. Wal-Mart also operated "superstores" which are usually part of shopping malls and include grocery supermarkets. SAM'S CLUB stores are also owned by Wal-Mart; these are retail stores open only to customers who pay a membership fee. Wal-Mart's chief competitors as disount retailers include the Kmart Corporation and the Target Corporation.
Each Wal-Mart store has a usually elderly employee known as a "people greeter", whose primarily responsibility is to welcome people to the store. One Wal-Mart training video encourages employees to think of themselves not as employees but as "associates" and their superiors as "servant leaders." The training video You've Picked a Great Place to Work promotes the "essential feeling of family for which Wal-Mart is so well-known." (Ehrenreich pp. 143-4) Employees start the work day with a gathering and the "Wal-Mart cheer".
Wal-Mart is financially successful by a number of measures. For example, Wal-Mart is now the #2 grocery chain in the United States, behind Kroger. Different explanations have been offered for this success. Some stress the economies of scale Wal-Mart brings to manufacturing and logistics; the purchase of massive quantities of items from its suppliers, combined with a very efficient stock control system, help make operating costs lower than those of its competitors. Some attribute Wal-Mart's success to the company's alleged tendency to sustain short-term losses through short-term aggressive pricing, in order to drive competitors out of business and increase market power. While such a practice may make good business sense, many observers find it unsavory; communities often organize campaigns opposing proposed new Wal-Mart stores.
None of Wal-Mart's employees in the US are unionized. The company is the target of persistent unionizing efforts, but has aggressively and sometimes illegally fought off all attempts. In 2000, the meat-cutting department of the Wal-Mart superstore in Jacksonville, Texas voted to unionize; two weeks later, Wal-Mart shut down all its meat-cutting operations. Wal-Mart's unionized grocery competitors such as Kroger and Safeway are at a disadvantage, as wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at comparable companies. There is a high employee turnover rate; nevertheless many employees express satisfaction with the status quo. [1]
Wal-Mart is the most often sued corporate entity in the United States. The legal department of Wal-Mart has a reputation among personal injury lawyers for extremely aggressive legal tactics, and the corporation has been sanctioned by several courts for failing to respond properly to plaintiff discovery motions.
In 1999, Wal-Mart announced that it would not stock the morning after pill in its 2,400 pharmacies.
As of 2000, Wal-Mart, like many large American corporations with low-wage employees, screens potential hires through a drug test, in addition to a multiple choice personality test, which asks applicants to express their level of agreement with statements such as "rules have to be followed to the letter at all times." (Ehrenreich, p. 124)
External links
- Walmart homepage: http://www.walmart.com/
- Walmart watch, a site critical of the company: http://www.walmartwatch.com
References
- Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Henry Holt and Company, LLC. New York: 2001. Chapter 3, "Selling in Minnesota", includes a brief and cynical first-hand account of Wal-Mart's hiring process. This is not an unbiased source, but the information from Ehrenreich included above seems sufficiently neutral to include.