Walmart
is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. It is the world's largest public corporation by revenue, according to the 2008 Fortune Global 500. Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, it was 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 British National Health Service, and the Indian Railways. It also owns and operates the North American company, Sam's Club.
It operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the UK as ASDA, and in Japan as Seiyu.
It has wholly-owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the UK. In 1945, he met Butler Brothers, a regional retailer that owned a chain of variety stores called Ben Franklin and that offered him one in Newport, Arkansas.
Walthon was extremely successful in running the store in Newport, far exceeding expectations.
However, when the lease came up for renewal, Walton could neither come to agreement on the existing store's lease renewal nor find a new location in Newport. Instead, he opened a new Ben Franklin franchise in Bentonville, Arkansas, but called it "Walton's Five and Dime." There he achieved higher sales volume by marking up slightly less than most competitors.
On July 2, 1962, Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City store.
In 1970, it opened its home office and first distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas. It began trading stock as a publicly-held company on October 1, 1972, and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Many suggest that Wal-Mart's high annual turnover-rate of ~70% shows that workers are dissatisfied and maltreated.
In response, Jay Nordlinger of National Review argues that Wal-Mart is attacked simply because it is a leader of the Fortune 500 list or the largest employer in America, and a "free-market success story". Penn & Teller devoted an episode of their show to an analysis of Wal-Mart criticism as a social movement. In February 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a 2–1 ruling which affirmed a lower court ruling to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit; plaintiffs estimate that about 1.6 million women could be included in the suit. According to a consultant hired by plaintiffs in a sex discrimination lawsuit, in 2001, Wal-Mart's EEOC filings showed that female employees made up 65% of Wal-Mart's hourly-paid workforce, but only 33% of its management.
As a result of the 40% rating, HRC encouraged consumers to "strongly consider other options."
In January 2006, Wal-Mart announced that "diversity efforts include new groups of minority, female and gay employees that meet at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville to advise the company on marketing and internal promotion.