The Decline of Wal-Mart

THE BEGINNING OF THE DECLINE OF WALMART

The most used sentence all across America and possibly the world is "let's go to Wal-Mart".

All this came about by Samuel Moore Walton (March 29, 1918 - April 6, 1992), born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.

After he was discharged from the army, he bought a Ben Franklin variety store which he named Walton's 5 & 10.

In 1954 Sam started a chain of Ben Franklin stores, and eventually became the founder of two American retailers, Wal-Mart and Sam's Club.

The first true Wal-Mart opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart eventually became the world's largest retailer, and in 2004, more than 1.5 million people were employed by the Wal-Mart Corporation.

By this time, the most used sentence all across America and possibly the world is "let's go to Wal-Mart".

When Sam died, he left his ownership in Wal-Mart to his wife and their children. Rob Walton succeeded his father as the Chairman of the Board of Wal-Mart, and John was a director until his death in a 2005 plane crash.

Since the death of Rob, Wal-Mart has hired H. Lee Scott, Jr., and is now the current president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart. Scott has worked for Wal-Mart in different capacities since 1979, but has held his current offices since January of 2000. Under his leadership, Wal-Mart has retained its position as the largest retailer in the world based on revenue, but its share price has fallen 22%.

Even though Wal-Mart has such a reputation, they now have several thousand lawsuits against them. Discrimination lawsuits from women, and also lawsuits about Wal-Mart not paying overtime.

Critics have accused Wal-Mart of implementing corporate policies that are detrimental or unfair to retail store employees, such as low hourly wage standards and anti-labor union policies.

Scott is known to employees for taking a very sarcastic tone with managers who question Wal-Mart's benefits and other policies, and he is labeling these managers as disloyal.

CNBC NEWS aired a program about this on Dec. 25^th 2006, about the troubles Wal-Mart was having.