Wal-Mart

1. Wal-Mart

2. About • Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton, who opened the first official Wal-Mart in 1962, and incorporated on October 31, 1969. Wal-Mart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. • The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation. It is also the biggest private employer and the largest retailer in the world, with over 2 million employees. Wal-Mart serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week in 27 countries. The company is controlled by the Walton family which owns a 48% stake in Wal-Mart. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart http://walmartstores.com/ http://walmartstores.com/AboutUs/

3. The High Cost of Low Prices • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hftb_DVuelo • 1:04:20 – 1:07:00 • This video shows how bad the working conditions are in the Wal-Mart factory, where the workers get paid very little in exchange for working seven days a week. • Employees are told to lie when an inspector comes in and to show fake pay checks to inspectors in an attempt to show that they are receiving more then they actually are. • This video also deals with the concern of Wal-Mart forcing other family shops to close, employees getting cheated in payment and work benefits, and their rights being discriminated. This happens by working illegally, being treated unfairly, not being able to have a say in their work, and not being allowed to join unions.

4. Wal-Mart Going Solar • This podcast is about a group of people trying to persuade Wal-Mart to use solar energy in order to save electricity and heating costs. They are encouraging Wal-Mart to build a solar farm in the desert to make up for the cost of energy that they are using. • Wal-Mart is such a huge company that is making a huge impact on the environment. This is one way in which they are trying to make Wal-Mart better because the Wal-Mart company keeps getting bigger and bigger. They want to help the environment by getting Wal-Mart to listen to them and respond to their demands.

5. “The Wal-Mart Effect” - article • “Ask people to give you their opinion about Wal-Mart and you are likely to get lots of different responses. They may talk with enthusiasm about the "always low prices." Or they might talk about the impact Wal-Mart had on small businesses in their community when the first store arrived. They may even talk about the loss of American jobs overseas.” • “Wal-Mart had its creation in the mind of Sam Walton who promoted a single idea: sell merchandise at the lowest price possible. It began with Wal-Mart working hard to keep the costs of their company as low as possible. This idea moved from their company to their suppliers as they asked them to be as frugal as possible. As the company grew in size, they began looking for every way to wring out the last penny of savings from materials, packaging, labor, transportation, and display. The result was "the Wal-Mart effect.“” • “Consumers have embraced "the Wal-Mart effect." As a store moves into a community bringing lower prices, it drives down prices in other stores. And either they compete or close their doors. And it also reshapes the shopping habits of those in the community.” • http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4218005/k.783A/Globalization_and_the_WalMart_Effect.htm

6. While Wal-Mart is a huge part of our daily lives, there are many things that a lot of us don't know about Wal-Mart. These things are hidden from us because Wal-Mart doesn’t want us to think badly of them. We won’t know these things until we actually research it and open a few doors that Wal-Mart doesn’t want us to open. • I think we need to be aware of many of these issues. One way we can invest in our community is by supporting some of our family-owned businesses in our area, instead of doing the majority of our spending at Wal-Mart.