Criticism on Walmart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has been subject to criticism by various groups and individuals

Local communities
 

When Walmart plans new store locations, activists sometimes oppose the new store and attempt to block its construction. Opponents cite concerns such as traffic congestion, environment problems, public safety, absentee landlordism, bad public relations, low wages and benefits, and predatory pricing (In business and economics, predatory pricing is the practice of selling a product or service at a very low price, intending to drive competitors out of the market, or create barriers to entry for potential new competitors)

Employee and labor relations

 

With close to two million employees worldwide, Walmart has faced a torrent of lawsuits and issues with regards to its workforce. These issues involve low wages, poor working conditions, inadequate health care, as well as issues involving the company's strong anti-union policies. Critics point to Walmart's high turnover rate as evidence of an unhappy workforce, although other factors may be involved. Approximately 70% of its employees leave within the first year. 

Wages

The activist group Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) said "in 2006 Walmart reports that full time hourly associates received, on average, $10.11 an hour." It further calculated that working 34 hours per week an employee earns $17,874 per year and claimed that is about twenty percent less than the average retail worker. (The number of hours the "average retail worker" worked was not specified.) The report from LAANE further opines that this pay is "over $10,000 less than what the average two-person family needs." Walmart managers are judged, in part, based on their ability to control payroll costs. Some say this puts extra pressure on higher-paid workers to be more productive.

Other critics have noted that in 2001, the average wage for a Walmart Sales Clerk was $8.23 per hour, or $13,861 a year, while the federal poverty line for a family of three was $14,630. Walmart founder Sam Walton once said, "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment."

A 2004 study at the University of California, Berkeley charges that Walmart's low wages and benefits are insufficient, and although decreasing the burden on the social safety net to some extent, California taxpayers still pay $86 million a year to Walmart employees.

Working conditions

Walmart has also faced accusations involving poor working conditions of its employees. For example, a 2005 class action lawsuit in Missouri asserted approximately 160,000 to 200,000 people who were forced to work off-the-clock, were denied overtime pay, or were not allowed to take rest and lunch breaks.

In 2000, Walmart paid $50 million to settle a class-action suit that asserted that 69,000 current and former Walmart employees in Colorado had been forced to work off-the-clock.

The company has also faced similar lawsuits in other states, including Pennsylvania,^[Oregon, and Minnesota. 

Class-action suits were also filed in 1995 on behalf of full-time Walmart pharmacists whose base salaries and working hours were reduced as sales declined, resulting in the pharmacists being treated like hourly employees.

Child labor violations

In January 2004, The New York Times reported on an internal Walmart audit conducted in July 2000, which examined one week's time-clock records for roughly 25,000 employees. 

According to the Times, the audit, "pointed to extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals," including 1,371 instances of minors working too late, during school hours, or for too many hours in a day.

There were 60,767 missed breaks and 15,705 lost meal times. 

Walmart’s vice president for communications responded that company auditors had determined that the methodology used was flawed, and the company "did not respond to it in any way internally."

Imports and globalization

As a large customer to most of its vendors, Walmart openly uses its bargaining power to bring lower prices to attract its customers. The company negotiates lower prices from vendors. For certain basic products, Walmart "has a clear policy" that prices go down from year to year. If a vendor does not keep prices competitive with other suppliers, they risk having their brand removed from Walmart's shelves in favor of a lower-priced competitor. Critics argue that this pressures vendors to shift manufacturing jobs to China and other nations, where the cost of labor is less expensive.

In the mid-1990s, Walmart had a "Buy American" campaign. Yet by 2005, about 60% of Walmart's merchandise was imported, compared to 6% in 1995.

In 2004, Walmart spent $18 billion on Chinese products alone, and if it were an individual economy, the company would rank as China's eighth largest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia, and Canada.

One group estimates that the growing US trade deficit with China, heavily influenced by Walmart imports, is estimated to have moved over 1.5 million jobs that might otherwise be in America to China between 1989 and 2003.

According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), "Walmart is the single largest importer of foreign-produced goods in the United States", their biggest trading partner is China, and their trade with China alone constitutes approximately 10% of the total US trade deficit with China as of 2004^[update].

While the company certainly imports many products, it points out that it purchases goods from more than 68,000 US vendors, spending $137.5 billion in 2004, and supporting more than 3.5 million supplier jobs in the US.
(its a selected portion of the document, for more details plz visit the link mentioned)