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11/03/2005:

"Wal-Mart: is this the worst company in the world?"

There can be few chief executives in corporate America more uncomfortable at the moment than Lee Scott of Wal-Mart. Not that he should necessarily have our sympathy: his company, known unaffectionately as the Beast of Bentonville, after its corporate home, is the biggest single private employer in the United States. Its network of more than 3,500 discount retail stores has been lambasted repeatedly in recent years for its rock-bottom wages, which oblige thousands of its lower-end employees to resort to government subsistence, including food stamps, to make ends meet.

It has faced down critics for its reliance on overseas sweatshop labour, especially in China, to produce the goods with which it stocks its shelves. It has met community resistance to new store openings in many parts of the country because of its tendency to empty town centres of traditional family-owned businesses and foster suburban sprawl. It has been accused, in fact, of being the very emblem of everything that assails the modern American economy, as old-style industrial manufacturing jobs are outsourced overseas and are replaced with low-wage, low-security service-sector work.

All that, though, is only one of the multiple headaches confronting Mr Scott. His biggest problem is that he has been making energetic efforts to improve his company's lousy reputation, only to have his efforts undermined by embarrassing new information unearthed about the company and by a spirited organising effort by churches, small businesses, unions, environmentalists and rich coastal liberals to stop the Wal-Martisation of America dead in its tracks.
independent.co.uk