2004-2-26
This is Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English Economics
Report.
Discount stores sell goods at low
prices. They succeed only if they sell a lot of goods and keep their
costs low. One company has succeeded beyond imagination.
Wal-Mart is bigger than any competitor. It has more than
four-thousand stores in the United States and nine other countries.
It has more than one-million workers. It is America's largest
private employer.
Wal-Mart reported sales of almost
two-hundred-sixty-thousand-million dollars last year. And profits?
The company reported earnings of nine-thousand-million dollars last
year.
Sam Walton recognized the power of low prices. He owned fifteen
stores in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma before he began Wal-Mart.
Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart store in nineteen-sixty-two.
He began to use computers to control the flow of goods. He reduced
prices to levels no one thought possible.
By nineteen-eighty-five, Sam Walton was the richest man in
America. He added businesses like Sam's Club membership stores. And
he opened more Wal-Mart stores.
Wal-Marts are big stores. They sell just about anything. Wal-Mart
Supercenters are even bigger. They include a market full of food.
Other food stores are worried. So are labor unions in that industry.
To keep labor costs low, Wal-Mart has worked hard to prevent its
employees from joining a union. The company has faced legal actions
over some of its employment activities.
And, last October, federal immigration agents raided sixty
Wal-Mart stores. They arrested more than two-hundred night cleaning
workers who were in the country illegally. Wal-Mart noted that an
independent company employed them. But labor is not the only issue.
Recently, the Los Angeles City Council began to consider a
possible ban on huge stores like Wal-Mart Supercenters. Critics say
Wal-Marts ruin small businesses and replace them with low-paying
jobs. Wal-Mart denies this happens. It says people save money which
they can spend on other things.
Sam Walton died in nineteen-ninety-two. He urged people to buy
American products to save jobs and to control the trade deficit.
Today many goods are made in China. Wal-Mart says it believes in
buying American goods and is willing to pay more to offer them. But,
it says, it cannot tell people what to buy.
This VOA Special English Economics Report was written by Mario
Ritter. This is Bob Doughty.