User:Tuxide/Wikiproject Retailing/Wal-Mart

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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
285px
Type of Company Public ({{nyse|WMT}})
Founded Rogers, Arkansas, 1962
Headquarters Bentonville, Arkansas, USA
Key people Sam Walton (1918–1992), Founder
H. Lee Scott, CEO
S. Robson Walton, Chairman
Industry Retail
Products Wal-Mart Discount Stores
Wal-Mart Supercenter
Sam's Club
Neighborhood Markets
ASDA
Revenue $316 billion USD ($11B FY 2006)
Employees 1.7 million
Slogan Wal-Mart. Always Low Prices. Always. (U.S.) / WE SELL FOR LESS every day! (Canada)
Website http://www.walmartstores.com/

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ({{nyse|WMT}}) was founded in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton in 1962. It is the largest retailing company in the world. It ranked first on the 2005 Fortune Global 500 and second under Exxon Mobil on the 2006 Fortune 500 listings.[1]

Comment insert another paragraph about the company once the draft has been expanded more

Contents

[edit] History

In September 2005, Wal-Mart acquired 33.3% of the Central American Retail Holding Company (CARHCO), and in March 2006, increased its holdings to 51%. Wal-Mart Central America was formed from the 375 supermarkets and other store formats, operating in 5 Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

In the past, Wal-Mart operated dot Discount Drugs, Bud's Discount City, Hypermart*USA, OneSource Nutrition Centers, and Save-Co Home Improvement stores. In 1990 Wal-Mart acquired The McLane Company, a foodservice distributor. In 2003 McLane Company was sold to Berkshire Hathaway.

Wal-Mart went public on October 1, 1970. Since then its stock has climbed from 5 cents (split adjusted) to a high of $63 in March 2002. Its stock has dropped more than 20% since then, reaching a low price of $42.31 on September 22, 2005. Its stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WMT.

[edit] Subsidiaries

The exterior of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, located in Madison Heights, Virginia.
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The exterior of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, located in Madison Heights, Virginia.
The exterior of a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, located in Center Point, Alabama.
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The exterior of a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, located in Center Point, Alabama.

Wal-Mart operates retail department stores selling a range of non-grocery products, though emphasis is now focused on the "supercenters" which include more grocery items. Wal-Mart also operates Sam's Club, a "warehouse club" (similar to Costco and BJ's) that sells discounted bulk merchandise to dues-paying members.

Comment Descriptions should be in paragraph form. Any description more than one paragraph should get its own ===subheading=== here

Today, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. owns several subsidiaries, which include:

  • Wal-Mart Stores:
  • Wal-Mart Supercenters:
  • SAM'S CLUBS:
  • Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets:
  • Wal-Mart International:
  • walmart.com:
  • Tire & Lube Express:
  • ASDA:

In addition to its wholly-owned international operations, Wal-Mart owns a 42% stake in The Seiyu Co., Ltd. in Japan, with a proposed $597 million to increase its stake to 50%. This purchase has been approved by Seiyu Group shareholders and The Seiyu will be consolidated into Wal-Mart International in FYE 2006.

The produce section of a typical Wal-Mart Supercenter.
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The produce section of a typical Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Main article: List of assets owned by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Wal-Mart operates 5 major retail formats under 3 retail divisions:

  • Wal-Mart Stores, USA
    • Wal-Mart Discount Stores — Average 100,000 square feet (9,290 m²) and include a selection of general merchandise, including apparel, electronics, health and beauty aids, toys, sporting goods, and household products. The stores also have an in-house-branded food court. There were 1,209 Wal-Mart Discount Stores in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006.
    • Wal-Mart Supercenter — Average 187,000 square feet (17,400 m²) and combine a standard Wal-Mart Discount Store with a full-line supermarket. (commonly known as big box stores or hypermarkets) The stores also typically feature a tire and oil change shop (Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express), Wal-Mart Vision Center, and numerous alcove shops - such as a Wal-Mart Money Center, hair and nail salons, a Movie Gallery video store, an arcade, and a branch from a local bank in the area. The food courts are normally limited-menu McDonald's, though Subway, Dunkin Donuts, and Baskin-Robbins have also been located. Some locations also sell gasoline through Murphy USA. There were 1,980 Wal-Mart Supercenters in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006.
    • Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market — Average 43,000 square feet (4,000 m²) and include grocery, pharmacy, and limited general merchandise products. There were 101 Neighborhood Markets in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006. The concept will be introduced into Canada in 2006 with 3 stores (one in London, Ontario and 2 in the Greater Toronto Area).
    • Walmart.com — Online shopping site that offers merchandise different from that in stores. The walmart.com site also offers digital music downloads with digital rights management (DRM) and online photo processing.
  • Sam's Club — a membership-only wholesale warehouse club focused mainly on serving small business owners. Clubs average 128,000 square feet (11,891 m²). Like some Wal-Mart Supercenters, some Sam's Club locations sell gasoline through Murphy USA. There were 567 Sam's Clubs in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006. Sam's Club also operates in Canada.
  • Wal-Mart International — operates various formats internationally, including (but not limited to) SAM'S CLUB, Discount Stores, Supercenters, Supermarkets, and restaurants.

In the United Kingdom the Wal*Mart name is only used as part of the main retail name (in conjunction with the ASDA brand) for the ultra large hypermarket format. In addition to the standard ASDA stores, the company also runs the high street George clothes store brand.

A Wal-Mart Supercenter in Puerto Vallarta
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A Wal-Mart Supercenter in Puerto Vallarta

Store Counts (as of May 4, 2006) & Revenue (for FYE January 31, 2006):

ASDA in the United Kingdom is the largest of the international businesses by sales. In Germany, however, after eight years in the market, Wal-Mart's yearly revenue is still less than one-tenth of the leading retailer, EDEKA. The presence of unions, the difficulty of obtaining building permits and high competition are some possible reasons for this lack of success. With Aldi and Lidl there are also two established discounters in the market that drive the same price policy as Wal-Mart.

[edit] Corporate governance

Comment Instead of links, there should be an actual list here.

Former members of the board of directors of Wal-Mart include Hillary Clinton (1985-1992), who also worked for Wal-Mart as a lawyer, [2] and Tom Coughlin, who went on to be vice chairman [1]. He has since plead guilty to five counts of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return related to embezzlement and theft from Wal-Mart while serving as a member of its board. [2]

[edit] Business model

Wal-Mart's chief competitors in low-end general merchandise nationally include Sears Holdings Corporation's Kmart chain and Target. Many smaller regional chains, such as Meijer in the midwest, are also competitors. Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business has also positioned it against major grocery chains such as HEB, Kroger, Albertsons, Publix, Giant Eagle, Safeway and many other regional chains and independents. Chief competitors of Wal-Mart's Sam's Club division are Costco, with a slightly higher gross than Sam's Club outlets, as well as the smaller BJ's Wholesale Club chain operating mainly in the eastern U.S..

Some people believe that Wal-Mart has driven smaller businesses out of the market. Due to Wal-Mart's focus on more expensive items (and larger population areas), a niche has been carved out of Wal-Mart's dominance by several retail corporations [3]. By focusing on a small number of low-cost products, retailers such as Family Dollar and Dollar General have successfully competed head-to-head with Wal-Mart for home consumer sales. In response to this, Wal-Mart started testing their own dollar store concept in 2004, a subsection of some stores known as, "Pennies-n-Cents."[4]

The Wal-Mart Television Network is an in-store network showing commercials for products sold in the stores, concert clips and music videos for a recording artist's media sold in the stores, trailers for upcoming movie releases, and news. According to a New York Times story, it is seen by 130 million people a month, making it the fifth largest network in America.[5].

Wal-Mart refers to its employees as "associates,"[6] and encourages managers to think of themselves as "servant leaders." Each shift at every store, club, and distribution center is supposed to start with a store-wide meeting where managers discuss with hourly employees daily sales figures, company news, and goals for the day. This may or may not be true in practice. [7]

All Wal-Mart stores in the United States have employees referred to as "People Greeters." They welcome people to the store and help prevent shoplifting. At some stores, these employees inspect the contents of the shopping carts of exiting customers.

Wal-Mart only hires non-union labor.

Wal-Mart has experimented publicly with changes to certain of its business practices.

[[Media:McKinneyTXStore.jpg|thumb|285px|right|An architect's rendering of the exterior of the "McKinney Experiment" Wal-Mart Supercenter in McKinney, TX.]]

Recently, Wal-Mart has designed two experimental stores [8], one in McKinney, Texas and the other in Aurora, Colorado, which feature wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, and biofuel-capable boilers. The buildings also include many other energy and cost-saving technologies. Critics, such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance [9], contend that Wal-Mart's negative environmental impact extremely outweighs gestures at two stores among several thousand. Driving sprawl, consuming unnecessarily large amounts of land and locating on environmentally sensitive sites are among the complaints. This is also viewed just another corporate PR exercise by many as Walmart have made no pro-active progress on changing their business practices to reduce their impact on the environment.

In March 2006 Wal-Mart opened a new Supercenter in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, that is decidedly fancier than other Wal-Mart stores. It is part of their effort to attract a more affluent demographic, who tend to view Wal-Mart product offerings as inferior to those of such stores as Costco and Target. Differences from conventional Wal-Mart Supercenters include wooden floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop (with free Wi-Fi Internet access) instead of the usual fast food venue, and pricier items, including expensive wines and high-end electronics. This Wal-Mart is also the first and only store to implement employee baggers at the checkout lines. The exterior sports the less-common hunter green background behind the Wal-Mart letters instead of the trademark blue. Wal-Mart states that this type of store is not planned to be duplicated anywhere else.[10]

After complaints by newspaper publishers in early 2005 that Wal-Mart did not advertise in smaller newspapers, the company placed ads in 336 Missouri and Oklahoma newspapers preceding the 2005 holiday shopping season. In April 2006 Wal-Mart claimed, "our test showed that it did increase product sales, but our margins are so thin that we didn't even come close to offsetting the cost of the ads."

In 2005, Wal-Mart officials embarked on a public relations campaign to counter some of the criticism it receives, through its public relations website as well as through television commercials which show employees who have had a medical emergency and have been sent by Wal-Mart to the Mayo Clinic.

It was reported in the New York Times on November 1, 2005 that in response to increased criticism the public relations firm Edelman had been retained. Edelman has set up an internal "war room", a rapid-response public relations team, staffed with high-profile political operatives to respond to negative media attention. Operatives hired include Michael K. Deaver who formerly worked on behalf of Ronald Reagan, Leslie Dach who worked on behalf of Bill Clinton, and Robert McAdam who worked on behalf of the Tobacco Institute.[11]

Wal-Mart's public relations effort has also included emailing favorable material to bloggers, some of whom have disseminated it without disclosing that it was written by the company. [12]

"Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters." [12]

April 2006 entries appearing on the websites Whitedust and Slashdot insinuated that Wal-Mart's public relations wing has been involved in an edit war of the company's Wikipedia article for the past two years. Tactics cited include removing unfavorable information, shunting unfavorable information off to separate articles, and including copious passages of positive information. [13][14]

See also: Wal-Mart employee and labor relations

The Teotihuacán store fits with Wal-Mart's Mexico strategy of opening stores in competition with informal street markets rather than formal retail outlets.[15]

In October 2004, Wal-Mart canceled its order for The Daily Show's America (The Book) after discovering a page that depicts each Supreme Court judge in the nude. A week later, they returned copies of George Carlin's When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? that they say were shipped to them by mistake. Its cover recreates The Last Supper with Jesus' seat empty and Carlin seated next to it. A Wal-mart spokeswoman said she "didn't believe this particular product would appeal" to its customer base.[16] Both it and America (The Book) were made available on Walmart.com.

In 2003, Wal-Mart announced that it would not carry magazines it deemed inappropriate or magazines that generated customer complaints. At the time of the announcement, men's magazines including Maxim, FHM and Stuff were removed from stores.[17] Other titles, such as Redbook, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, were moved to displays that obscured the magazines' covers. [18]

Wal-Mart does not carry music albums marked with RIAA's Parental Advisory Label. The store does carry edited versions of those albums. Record labels release edited versions with obscenities completely removed or overdubbed with less offensive lyrics. Such versions, sometimes referred to as radio edits, are produced by music publishers to increase retail sales.[19] Notably, albums critical of Wal-Mart itself have been removed from the shelves.[20]

As a specific example, in 2005, Wal-Mart rejected the original cover of Willie Nelson's reggae album, Countryman, which featured marijuana leaves, in an apparent pro-marijuana statement. To satisfy Wal-mart, the record label, Lost Highway, issued the album with an alternate cover, without recalling the original cover.[21] Countryman entered the Billboard album charts on July 30, 2005, at number 6 on the Country Album chart and number 46 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Though the Billboard charts do not distinguish between the two different versions of the album, Amazon.com's "Top Sellers" list showed in July that the version with the cover banned by Wal-mart was a much more popular item than the version with the "clean" cover.

Wal-Mart differs from its competitors by charging no fees to suppliers. Wal-Mart pays the supplier only for the actual cost of the goods themselves, and the supplier pays no fees to Wal-Mart.[22]

In contrast, most grocers charge several fees in order to carry a supplier's product. A slotting fee is charged for placing a product on the shelf. These fees easily approach $150,000 for a single product in high-demand markets. In addition to slotting fees, retailers may also charge promotional, advertising and stocking fees. According to an FTC study, the practice is "widespread" in the supermarket industry. Many grocers earn more profit from agreeing to carry a manufacturer's product than they do from actually selling the product to retail consumers. According to retailers, fees serve to efficiently allocate scarce retail shelf space, help balance the risk of new product failure between manufacturers and retailers, help manufacturers signal private information about potential success of new products, and serve to widen retail distribution for manufacturers by mitigating retail competition. Vendors charge that slotting fees are a move by the grocery industry to profit at their suppliers' expense.[23]

In Britain, Wal-Mart now owns Asda, which was formerly an independent company. Seen as among the lower class of supermarket chains in Britain, partly through its focus on low prices, Asda tries to elevate its status with its introduction of the "extra special" range of products which provide higher quality products at higher prices to those who desire it. A typical advertisment for Asda will stress its dedication to low prices, in comparison to (say) Waitrose or Morrisons which will instead focus its message on the quality of their produce. This reveals to some extent the kind of customer base the respective brands are aiming at.

[edit] Criticism

Comment This whole thing should be copyedited and rearranged, I just threw everything together here and it is quite a mess

Like many other large businesses and corporations, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. faces criticism.

Wal-Mart has been criticized for locking the doors to some of their store buildings to prevent overnight employees from leaving. This practice is intended to prevent internal theft, and as of 2004, about 10% of Wal-Mart stores in the United States engaged in this practice. In one incident in Florida, workers were complaining that an overnight employee was "deathly ill". However, instead of unlocking the building during the night to let the sick employee leave, the manager told the other workers to "Fine [sic] one of the mattresses. Have him lay down on the floor."[24]

Local community impacts

thumb|285px|Controversial "Planet of the Apes" listing at Walmart.com. In January 2006, Walmart.com was criticized for suggesting that African American-related DVDs such as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and documentaries on Martin Luther King, Jr. were items similar to Planet of the Apes television series DVD box set. Wal-Mart quickly corrected the page. The company initially said it was a software glitch, though it finally blamed the matter on human error. Wal-Mart has apologized for any perceived insensitivities, and a few information experts believe Wal-Mart's explanation of the problem while critics have remained skeptical.[25][26]

[edit] Cleanup section

beginning of what needs copyedited, it needs to be toned down, and noted which practices its competitors engage in too

another thing that could be summarized

According to an October 2005 article in BusinessWeek, Wal-Mart's health insurance covers 44% or approximately 572,000 of its 1.3 million U.S. workers. [27] In comparison, Wal-Mart rival Costco insures approximately 96% of its eligible workers. [28] Further, Wal-Mart spends $3,500 on average per employee for health care while the average money spent for health care per employee for the entire retail industry is $4,800, 27% more.[29] Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott acknowledged benefits could improve by claiming Wal-Mart employees can get better value from taxpayer funded health care than from Wal-Mart's own health plans: "In some of our states, the public program may actually be a better value - with relatively high income limits to qualify, and low premiums." [30] On April 17th, 2006, Wal-Mart announced it was making a health care plan available to part-time workers after 1 year of service, instead of the prior 2 year requirement. One criticism of the new plan is that it provides benefit only after a $1,000 deductible is paid ($3,000 for a family). These deductibles may financially be out of reach for eligible part-time workers. Wal-Mart estimates this change can add 150,000 workers to health coverage plans, if all who are eligible take part. [3]

The State of Maryland passed a controversial bill in January of 2006 requiring that all corporations with more than 10,000 employees in the state spend at least 8% of their payroll on employee benefits, or pay into a state fund for the uninsured. Wal-Mart, with about 17,000 employees in Maryland, was the only known company to not meet this requirement before the bill passed. [31]

Until the mid-1990s, Wal-Mart took out corporate-owned life insurance policies on low level employees, such as janitors, cashiers, cart pushers, and stockers. This type of insurance is usually purchased to cover a company against financial loss when an executive or other high ranking employee dies. In this case it is usually known as "Key Man Insurance", but the policies that Wal-Mart took out on its rank-and-file workers were derided as "Dead Peasants Insurance" or "Janitor Insurance". Critics (such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service) charge that the company was trying to profit from the deaths of its employees, and take advantage of a loophole in a tax law which allowed them to deduct the premiums. The practice was stopped in the mid-1990s when the federal government, which had previously called the financing scheme "tax arbitrage," closed the tax loophole and began to pursue Wal-Mart for back taxes.[32]

Wal-Mart, through research done by Global Insight, claims it saves working families more than $2,300 a year, while creating more than 210,000 part time, minimum wage jobs in the U.S. (10% of the jobs created). [33] There has been much debate about the effects of Wal-Mart in the community, with some organizations calculating that taxpayers pick up the tab for Wal-Mart employees who cannot get health care through their employer, thus relying state and federal health care supplemental programs which are paid for by American taxpayers, at an average cost of $2,300 per Wal-Mart employee per year. [34]


another thing that could be summarized

As Wal-Mart is one of the largest businesses in the world, it has a significant impact on economies wherever it operates. At least two dozen studies have been conducted to determined the nature and extent of this effect, most of which are indexed here or here (both sites emphasize negatives of big boxes).

Kenneth E. Stone of Iowa State University has published several studies on Wal-Mart. In 1997, Stone found that small towns "lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade after 10 years of Wal-Mart stores nearby." [35] A study by Russell S. Sobel and Andrea M. Dean, says that the Stone study is flawed, and found that though Wal-Mart openings cause some small businesses to close by offering lower prices, it also creates opportunities for other small businesses and that as a result, "the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal-Mart has no statistically significant impact on the overall size of the small business sector in the United States." [36]In 2003, Stone collaborated with Georgeanne Artz, also of Iowa State University, and Albert Myles of Mississippi State University to show that there "are both positive and negative impacts on existing stores in the area where the new supercenter locates." [37]

In 2002, the state of Georgia's survey of children in the state's subsidized health care system, PeachCare, found that Wal-Mart employed more of the parents of these children than any other employer. More than 10,000 children who qualified for the program had parents working at Wal-Mart. The next largest employer employed the parents of less than 800 children in the program.

A 2002 study [38] by Emek Basker of the University of Missouri examined the impact of Wal-Mart on local employment. Basker found that Wal-Mart's entry into a county increased net retail employment in that county by 100 jobs in the short term. Half of this increase disappeared as other retail establishments close or reduce employment over a five-year period "leaving a long-run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs."

In 2004, the University of California, Berkeley published a study which asserted that Wal-Mart's low wages and benefits resulted in an increased burden on the social safety net, costing California taxpayers $86 million. [39]

A 2005 study [40] by Jerry Hausman of MIT and Ephraim Leibtag of the USDA found that because the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not take into account lower prices at discount retailers, like Wal-Mart, that food at home inflation was overstated by as much as 15% per year. Another 2005 study [41] the same authors measures the effect on consumer welfare of the presence of discount retailers.

A 2005 study by Global Insight [42] commissioned by Wal-Mart found the company has had a positive net economic impact on the U.S. economy [27]. From 1985-2004, Wal-Mart "can be associated with a cumulative decline of 9.1% in food-at-home prices, a 4.2% decline in commodities (goods) prices, and a 3.1% decline in overall consumer prices," and that this has saved consumers $263 billion in that time frame ($2329 per household). Also in that time period, it is responsible for the creation of 210,000 net jobs for the economy. The study indicates that "nominal wages are 2.2% lower, but given that consumer prices are 3.1% lower, real disposable income is 0.9% higher than it would have been in a world without Wal-Mart." Other papers presented at the conference [43] contradict some of Global Insight's claims.



Critics, such as trade unions and environmental groups, state that Wal-Mart derives from business practices harmful to employees, local communities, the economy and the environment.

another thing that could be summarized

Wal-Mart's entry into local grocery markets has been claimed to lower prices by an average of 14%. If true, this would represent an increase in consumers' real incomes in the local economy. It has also been argued that as a result, local competitors are forced to lower prices, so consumers benefit from declining prices whether or not they shop at Wal-Mart. However, it has been argued that those who do shop there experience an additional increase in real income; it has been estimated that Wal-Mart's prices on groceries are 15-30% lower than rivals. Washington Post columnist Sabastian Mallaby claims that the "the average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco. Moreover, Wal-Mart's "every day low prices" make the biggest difference to the poor…"[44]

Bobby Calder, professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said: "The merchants in the community as a whole know they're going to suffer (because it is impossible to purchase the same items at the same price as Wal-Mart and be competitive) and so they react, of course, with publicity of their own, and word-of-mouth of their own, to paint a negative picture of what Wal-Mart does to the community." Calder added: "So that you've got more of a political process going on than [with] anyone else. … You have a special reaction to Wal-Mart that you wouldn't get to a Costco or Walgreens."[45]


In the future, merge Wal-Mart Employee and Labor Relations in here too
Main article: Wal-Mart Employee and Labor Relations

As with many US retailers, Wal-Mart experiences a high rate of employee turnover (approximately 50% of employees leave every year, according to the company)[citation needed] . Although they average nearly double the federal minimum wage[46][47], wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at other retail stores[citation needed] . Founder Sam Walton once argued that his company should be exempt from the minimum wage. (Palast, 121).


another thing that could be summarized
(For more information of imports/outsourcing/globalization, see the appropriate section)

As the single largest customer to most of its suppliers, Wal-Mart openly uses its bargaining power to negotiate lower prices from suppliers. Specifically, in its negotiations with suppliers, Wal-Mart requires that prices go down from year to year. If a vendor does not comply with Wal-Mart's request for reduced prices, they risk having their entire brand removed from Wal-Mart's shelves in favor of a lower-priced competitor or a less expensive store brand. This can put pressure on suppliers to shift jobs to factories in third world countries or reduce the quality of the product.[48]


another thing that could be summarized

Critics argue that Wal-Mart's pricing pressure forces the relocation of manufacturing capacity to China, because China currently offers the lowest-cost manufacturing environment in the world. A CEO of one of Wal-Mart's suppliers said that the price Wal-Mart requested from his company for a particular product was so low that he couldn't afford to keep production in America, even if he didn't have to pay his workers anything.[49]

In the mid-1990s, Wal-Mart had a "Buy American" campaign, but it was eventually cancelled. As of 2004, about 70% of the products sold in Wal-Mart stores have at least a component manufactured in China. It has been estimated that Wal-Mart alone makes 10% of the US imports from China and if taken separated from the US, it would be China's 8th largest trading partner, ahead of countries such as Germany and Russia. The growing deficit with China, heavily influenced by Wal-Mart imports, is estimated to have moved over a million American jobs to China. [50]

Wal-Mart supporters counter that it buys merchandise and services from more than 68,000 U.S suppliers and supports over 3.5 million supplier jobs in the United States.[51]

Like most major retailers, Wal-Mart purchases the bulk of its goods from countries where the cost of labor is significantly less than in the United States and other wealthy industrialized nations. This allows them to provide jobs for the poor in developing countries and at the same time provide low price goods for the poor in the United States. Wal-Mart has been criticized for failure to maintain adequate supervision over its foreign suppliers. This lack of supervision has led to incidents where Wal-Mart products have been made using sweatshops or alleged slave labor.

Greg Palast reports that Chinese dissident Harry Wu (Wu Hongda) discovered, in 1995, that Wal-Mart was contracting prison "slave labor" in Guangdong Province. Wu and Palast argue that numerous items at Wal-Mart are made by the Chinese People's Liberation Army rather than being "made in America".

In Bangladesh, Palast reported that in 1992 teenagers were working in "sweatshops" approximately 80 hours per week, at $0.14 per hour, for Wal-Mart contractor Beximco. In 1994, Guatemalan Wendy Diaz reported that, at the age of 13, she had been working for Wal-Mart at $0.30 per hour. (Palast pp. 119-120)

According to Wal-Mart, as well as many advocates of free trade, comparisons of wage levels between vastly different countries is not a useful way to assess the fairness of a trade policy. The company also asserts that wages paid to overseas workers are comparable to or exceed local prevailing wages. In that case, the company states that the overseas manufacturing jobs it creates are often an improvement in the quality of life for its employees. The company has also asserted that factory jobs with its suppliers are often safer and healthier than local alternatives, which may include prostitution, the drug trade or scavenging.

Walmart currently uses in-house monitoring, which, critics say, leaves outsiders unable to verify reforms. As BusinessWeek points out, "…since no outside body such as SAI or the FLA is involved and Wal-Mart won't release its audits or even its factories' names, the public is left to take the company's word for it."[52]

In 2004, Wal-Mart began working with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a San Francisco nonprofit, to reach out to groups active in monitoring overseas plants. "Wal-Mart is at an early stage," says BSR President Aron Cramer, "and it's likely that they, like most companies that engage in these processes, will adapt their approach over time."[53]

In May 2003, Five Rivers, a high-end television manufacturer, filed an anti-dumping petition in Washington, alleging color television makers in China were illegally dumping their larger-sized color sets in the U.S., thereby threatening to put Five Rivers out of business. The company tracked TV imports from China and found that sales of the Chinese televisions skyrocketed from just over 50,000 sets in 2001 to 1.5 million sets during the first nine months of 2003.[54] The ITC findings detailed that "some imports…have been imported directly by retailers such as…Wal-Mart", but the report did not indicate that Wal-Mart was the primary reason for this increase.[55]

In May 2004, the International Trade Committee (ITC) unanimously agreed that the surge of these imports from China had injured Five Rivers, and then imposed duties averaging about 23 percent on these sets. Wal-Mart filed a brief in support of the Chinese suppliers during the hearing.[56] The argument presented by Wal-Mart and the government of China claimed that the makers of these sets were pricing them fairly. As detailed in the ITC finding, Wal-Marts argument was that "imports, which are not sold under well known brand names, have lower perceived quality and hence price." [57]

Whether dumping itself is a good or bad thing is a matter of dispute. Some believe governments are unjustified in forcefully preventing consumers from having access to imported low cost products.[58][59]

According to striking workers at a Chinese factory that supplies Wal-Mart, "half of their wages were deducted to pay for their housing expenses while living in housing facilities."[60]

The documentary Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Prices claims the factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart are in poor condition and that factory workers are subject to abuse and inhumane conditions.

Wal-Mart states that it does not own these factories [61], and "believes in doing the right thing" by "developing monitoring systems to ensure contractors that do business with us comply with all relevant laws and regulations."[62]


another thing that could be summarized

Wal-Mart may be the most-frequently sued corporate entity in the United States and its legal department has a reputation for aggressive legal tactics.[63] Details of specific, major lawsuits are included below based on each lawsuit's primary subject.

"A putative class action is pending in California challenging the methodology of payments made under various Associate incentive bonus plans, and a second putative class action in California asserts that the Company has omitted to include bonus payments in calculating Associates' regular rate of pay for purposes of determining overtime. As to the first case (Cruz v. W
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