Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other countries. It is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded in 1962 by brothers Sam and James "Bud" Walton in nearby Rogers, Arkansas. It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses.
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Employees in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits.
Pinkerton is an American private investigation and security company established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born American cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co. and finally the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. At the height of its power from the 1870s to the 1890s, it was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world. It is currently a subsidiary of Swedish-based Securitas AB.
The American multinational retail chain Walmart has received criticism from parties such as labor unions and small town advocates for its policies and business practices.
Laneco was a supermarket chain operating in eastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey. Laneco operated four types of stores. The older stores were called Food Lane, which were former Food Fair stores with the least square footage and only carried food products. There were also Laneco's and Laneco SuperCenters. The Clinton, New Jersey store was known as a "Laneco Dept Store", which were much larger than Food Lanes and offered general merchandise. Sam Walton worked with Raymond A. Bartolacci Sr. to develop the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Laneco also operated CR Pharmacies, which were often located in Laneco Supercenters.
Union busting is a range of activities undertaken to disrupt or weaken the power of trade unions or their attempts to grow their membership in a workplace.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is a 2005 documentary film by director Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films about the American multinational corporation and retail conglomerate Walmart. The film presents a negative picture of Walmart's business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Walmart executives. Greenwald also uses statistics interspersed between interview footage, to provide an objective analysis of the effects Walmart has on individuals and communities.
The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, formerly known as the National Labor Committee, was a non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) that investigates human and labor rights abuses committed by large multinational corporations producing goods in the developing world. The Institute was headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with offices in Bangladesh and Central America. Charles Kernaghan served as the Executive Director. The Institute published investigations with the goal of influencing public opinion and corporate policy. It is widely considered to be the organization that began the late-20th-century anti-sweatshop movement in America.
Walmarting or Walmartization is a neologism referring to U.S. discount department store Walmart with three meanings. The first use is similar to the concept of globalization and is used pejoratively by critics and neutrally by businesses seeking to emulate Walmart's success. The second, pejorative, use refers to the homogenization of the retail sector because of those practices. The third, neutral, use refers to the act of actually shopping at Walmart.
Working Families for Walmart is an advocacy group formed by Walmart and the Edelman public relations firm on December 20, 2005. It has been used to praise Walmart in a show of opposition to union-funded groups such as Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch. The group is financially supported by Walmart and is headquartered in Edelman's Washington, D.C. office. It is not organized as a non-profit, and is not required to disclose its sources of funding.
Wake Up Wal-Mart was a campaign founded by United Food and Commercial Workers Union. It was based in Washington, D.C., and was often critical of the business practices of Walmart, the world's largest retailer, and the largest private employer in the United States. The group claimed Walmart was offering its employees substandard wages and health care benefits, and called on the retailer to improve both. Wake Up Wal-Mart was founded April 5, 2005, and maintained the web site WakeupWalMart.com, the centerpiece of the organization. The organization is now defunct. Its website is no longer active and the url wakeupwalmart.com now redirects to another UFCW-funded group, Making Change At Walmart.
Walmart Watch, formed in the spring of 2005, was a joint project of the Center for Community and Corporate Ethics, a nonprofit organization studying the impact of large corporations on society, and its advocacy arm, Five Stones. The Walmart Watch group was based in Washington with the claimed goal to challenge Walmart to become a better employer, neighbor, and corporate citizen in order to improve the wages, health benefits, and treatment of workers.
Walmart Canada is a Canadian retail corporation, discount retailer and the Canadian subsidiary of the U.S.-based multinational retail conglomerate Walmart. Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, it was founded on March 17, 1994, with the purchase of the Woolco Canada chain from the F. W. Woolworth Company.
In human resources, turnover refers to employees who leave an organization. The turnover rate is the percentage of the total workforce who leave over a certain period. Organizations and wider industries may measure their turnover rate during a fiscal or calendar year.
The Center for Union Facts (CUF) is an American interest group that is critical of labor unions. It is one of several advocacy and public relations groups founded by Richard Berman, whose Washington, D.C.–based public affairs firm, Berman and Company, specializes in research, communications and advertising. The Washington Post describes CUF as "part of a constellation of nonprofit groups Berman created to carry out corporate messages."
Crossgates Commons is a large shopping plaza in Albany, New York along Washington Avenue Extension. It is owned and managed by Pyramid Management Group, Inc., who also own and manage the nearby Crossgates Mall.
Labor spying in the United States had involved people recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence, committing sabotage, sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, in the context of an employer/labor organization relationship. Spying by companies on union activities has been illegal in the United States since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. However, non-union monitoring of employee activities while at work is perfectly legal and, according to the American Management Association, nearly 80% of major US companies actively monitor their employees.
Concentra Inc., is a national health care establishment centered around occupational health. It was founded in 1979 in Amarillo, Texas, and the headquarters of the corporation is in Addison, Texas. It runs 547 occupational health centres and 151 onsite health clinics at employer worksites across over 40 states. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Concentra treats one out of every seven occupational injuries in the United States. It is currently a publicly traded company with over 80% of the shares owned by Select Medical.
Anti-corporate activism is activism directed against the private sector, particularly larger corporations. It is based on the belief that the activities and impacts of big business are detrimental to the public good and the democratic process.
Alice Orcutt Nakamura is an American-Canadian economist and writer. She is a fellow of the Canadian Economics Association, which is the highest honour of the association. She is currently a professor of finance and management science at the University of Alberta where she has taught since 1972. Alice Nakamura was also the first female president of the Canadian Economics Association in 1994–1995. She was also the president of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth from 2014 to 2016.
