Word: wal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Long before it was fashionable, Wal-Mart pushed responsibility and information to the lowest ranks. Managers of departments such as sporting goods or women's apparel still get detailed reports of sales and profits in their areas, and they have a say in which products are stocked. Store managers can still buy locally and ask headquarters to adjust inventory of company brands that it has asked them to stock. Coughlin says Wal-Mart will not stray far from the locals-know-best model, even as more information and merchandise flows through Bentonville. At headquarters, management focuses...
...Wal-Mart's Supercenters are able to underprice their supermarket competitors about 15%, according to analyst Kalish, in part because they are more efficient but also because the discount giant uses nonunion labor. Wal-Mart matches the union pay rate in union markets, but the average wage at Wal-Mart nationally is less than $10 an hour before bonuses...
...most frequent complaints made by Wal-Mart employees to TIME--low wages and morale-killing store managers--recently factored into a labor case the company lost in Oregon. A jury found Wal-Mart guilty of requiring associates to work unpaid overtime--even locking them inside stores. The company plans to appeal the verdict and says workers were locked into stores only late at night, for security reasons. Some 40 other lawsuits are pending, most of which similarly accuse Wal-Mart of requiring hourly employees to work "off the clock." Since September 2001, Wal-Mart also has been the defendant...
That campaign has borne little fruit, in part because Wal-Mart's wages are competitive with those paid by rivals such as Kmart and Target. Wal-Mart offers health benefits, and its stock plan has been a wealth builder for many lower-level employees, at least until the market crashed. Still, Wal-Mart is regarded as offering ample opportunities for advancement. Charlyn Jarrells Porter, who heads the Wal-Mart division that deals with personnel issues, says two-thirds of its managers come from the ranks of store associates, which is what Wal-Mart calls all employees. This year the company...
...tries to leverage its size overseas, Wal-Mart may find it difficult to export one of its biggest advantages. Its expertise in managing high-volume inventory and supply networks doesn't work as well in Europe and Asia, where the highway systems aren't as good and stores typically are smaller. So Wal-Mart has to become better at buying, reaching further back into the supply chain to purchase at the factory such products as hardware and apparel that it now obtains from outside vendors and importers. "We realized that, as we continue to expand internationally, the need to leverage...