You don't become the world's biggest retailer without creating enemies. Wal-Mart has picked up plenty along the way.
They range from neighbors who don't want to live near its bland big-box stores to workers who have sued the chain in the largest sex discrimination case in U.S. history.
Here are some of the reasons not everyone smiles back at Wal-Mart's smiley face mascot:
Neighborhood conflicts.
Wal-Mart's plans to build new stores have long faced opposition from mom-and-pop storekeepers worried that its big-volume discounts would drive them out of business as well as from neighbors worried about traffic, 24-hour noise and aesthetics. In some towns where Wal-Mart discount stores were blamed for killing downtown, Wal-Mart later abandoned its discount store for a new supercenter built in a nearby city.
In California, some bedroom communities even banned any store larger than 100,000 square feet to keep out supercenters.
Florida has been easier, but not too much.
"These stores need up to 40 acres, and there are not many wide open spaces left," said district manager Joe Crider, a former Eckerd Corp. vice president.
In Pinellas and Pasco counties, local governments put a stop to at least four Wal-Mart Supercenter projects in recent years because of neighborhood opposition.
But Wal-Mart rarely gives up. In 1998, neighborhood opposition killed Wal-Mart's plans to build a supercenter on 54th Avenue at 31st Street S in St. Petersburg. Now a store to serve the same neighborhoods is under construction a couple of miles away at 3501 34th St. S.
In recent weeks, a new Wal-Mart Supercenter planned for Bayonet Point in Pasco County has ignited fierce debate over traffic along side streets and on U.S. 19. Wal-Mart's preferred locations for stores along Florida's west coast have been the congested thoroughfares of U.S. 19 and U.S. 41.
With Wal-Mart trying to penetrate more urban markets as part of its plan to open 220 new supercenters in 2004, analysts say the company's creativity will be tested. The chain will experiment with two- and three-story stores in inner-city Dallas and South Central Los Angeles that have worked elsewhere for Target. In the Tampa Bay area, Wal-Mart is trying to buy old mobile home parks even though displacing their low-income residents creates ticklish relocation issues.
The company has been negotiating to buy a mobile home park next to its discount store on Tyrone Boulevard so it will have enough property to replace it with a supercenter.
"We're not deterred easily," said Wal-Mart's Sharon Weber. "We have a history of opening new supercenters as quickly as we have planned."
Workforce tensions.
If you shop at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the Tampa Bay area, don't expect the butcher to prepare a smaller-than-standard package of hamburger for you or cut a special slice of meat. All the fresh beef and pork at the chain's bay area stores are pre-cut by a meat packer in Kansas City, then shipped in saline solution in an airtight wrapping that extends their shelf life up to 21 days.
Such thrift has been seen as cheapness by many Wal-Mart critics and employees. Butcher shops are the highest payroll department in a supermarket. Super Target followed Wal-Mart's cost-saving lead with so-called case-ready meat, and other grocers are expected to follow eventually.
Wal-Mart's elimination of meat cutter jobs in many supercenters became a platform for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is fighting to represent Wal-Mart workers.
The union and a coalition of labor and women's rights groups have been campaigning against Wal-Mart. One outgrowth is a recent class action discrimination lawsuit claiming Wal-Mart denied 1.5-million women promotion, training and equal pay while tolerating a hostile work environment.
"Eventually Wal-Mart will be organized, if for no other reason than this country cannot tolerate an employer this huge not paying its employees a living wage," said Greg Denier, spokesman for the food workers union. "One of our biggest handicaps in organizing them has been the turnover. About 500,000 people leave the Wal-Mart payroll every year. That's more people than the entire payroll of General Motors. A $15 an hour meat-cutter job is worth fighting for, but people don't feel that way about a $6 a hour job."
In 2001 the average Wal-Mart employee earned $8.23 an hour or $13,831 a year, according to Business Week. The federal poverty level for a family of three that year was $14,630. The chain says it pays competitive wages and benefits. It also says its annual turnover has dropped to 45 percent, down from 75 percent in 1999. Annual turnover in the retail industry is more than 100 percent, as some lower-level positions are filled two and three times a year.
Wal-Mart says its workers have spoken by repeatedly voting not to join unions and declining to sign election petitions. The company faces union-inspired unfair labor practices complaints in 26 states, including Florida, as well as lawsuits accusing it of forcing employees to work overtime without pay. Wal-Mart denies the charges.
Culture wars.
As the nation's largest retailer (at annual sales of $244-billion, four times the size of second place Home Depot Inc.) Wal-Mart is becoming a gatekeeper for the products that will command shelf space as mass-market big sellers. Wal-Mart, which used to promote its Made in America products, also has become by far the largest U.S. importer of goods made in China and a leading advocate for free trade.
Wal-Mart says it simply respects the family values of its customers, but critics say the chain consistently takes a conservative position on cultural issues.
Some in the music industry complain Wal-Mart insists on carrying only sanitized versions of pop music. The company has refused to carry many CDs and DVDs that carry parental warnings. Wal-Mart has pulled from the shelves "lad" magazines such as Maxim, FHM and Stuff because of racy covers, and it hides behind binders such magazines as Glamour, Redbook, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan because of sexual language on their covers.
When Gynetics Inc. introduced Preven, a morning-after contraceptive, Wal-Mart was the only one of the 10 largest drug retailers not to carry it.
Mark Husson, a securities analyst with Merrill Lynch, has even charted the connection between Wal-Mart's market strength and the political bent of places where it has the strongest presence.
"Wal-Mart is predominantly a small town retailer and most successful in Republican markets," he wrote.
