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...Wal-Mart's ardent, union-backed critics such as Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart, these improvements are just crumbs from the corporate table. Wal-Mart's national hourly-wage average of $10.74 is more or less competitive with Target or Kmart, but its total package still lags behind union competitors in the supermarket industry...
...company's newest medical-insurance plan, for instance, offers associates the chance to buy family coverage for $14 to $21 a month. But the deductible is $2,000--a huge outlay for a cashier earning $17,000 a year. Wal-Mart says this Value Plan is the most cost-efficient approach for 70% of its associates, many of whom have other coverage through either a family member or the state. Fewer than 10% of its associates lack health insurance, the company says...
...while Castro-Wright and his team plan the Wal-Mart of the future, the company's legal team has been fighting the same old ugly labor battles. Wal-Mart has been tarred by an ongoing gender-discrimination class action filed in California in 2001, and it recently was ordered to pay $62 million in penalties on top of the $78.5 million judgment awarded by a jury last year after it found Wal-Mart guilty of shortchanging associates in Pennsylvania who worked during their breaks or after they clocked out. (Wal-Mart says it will appeal.) Nor has it looked...
More to the point, outgoing executives have characterized Wal-Mart as hopelessly inflexible, clinging to its old culture. Even if the company wants to change its image, argues Roehm, who helped reposition Chrysler and Ford, it can't help itself...
Another issue is more basic: absolute size. "One of the difficulties that we face at Wal-Mart is scale, the fact that we have so many stores. Getting execution across all stores is difficult," says Castro-Wright. Any big change is difficult for large corporations. To change so many things, as Wal-Mart is doing, is asking...