Wal-Mart

Last edited by crocodyl on April 22, 2008 - 2:26pm
Company Snapshot: 

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. It was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. It is the largest private employer in the world and the fourth largest utility or commercial employer, trailing the People's Liberation Army of China, the National Health Service of the United Kingdom, and the Indian Railways. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, with an estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business, as well as the largest toy seller in the U.S., with an estimated 22% share of the toy market.

Global Fortune 500 position: 
1
Ownership status: 
Publicly traded
Number of employees worldwide: 
1,900,000
Chief executive officer: 
H. Lee Scott
Corporate accountability
Tax issues: 

Corporate tax loopholes are having a profound effect on state revenue collections, and mounting evidence demonstrates that for many years Wal-Mart has aggressively pursued them in order to avoid paying state taxes. The legality of certain tax schemes differs state to state and certain strategies are extremely complex, but the underlying results are the same: they have saved Wal-Mart from paying hundreds of millions of dollars in state taxes.

To learn more, check out this fact sheet from Wal-Mart Watch.

Labor: 

Wal-Mart has been criticized for sourcing from international suppliers who violate workers' rights. The International Labor Rights Forum has claimed that Wal-Mart sources from suppliers who used forced labor, violate minimum wage and overtime laws, deny maternity leave, deny health care and bathroom breaks and deny workers' rights to form independent unions. As a result, the company was sued in 2005 by the International Rights Advocates on behalf of workers from China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Swaziland, and Nicaragua. Wal-Mart's purchasing and auditing policies have been blamed for their continued sourcing from factories which violate workers' rights.

Financial information
Stock ticker symbol: 
WMT
Total revenue: 
over 378 billion
Fiscal year: 
2008
Net Income: 
12.7 billion
Fiscal year: 
2008
Additional descriptive data
AttachmentSize
WalMartComplaint091305.pdf89.44 KB
ILRF Critique of Wal-Mart's Sourcing Policies125.17 KB
Standards for Suppliers (2005)88.41 KB