Labor Relations

Labor Relations 1

Labor Relations

A Report on the History of Wal-Mart and its Health Care

In partial fulfillment of the requirement for MG 420

Park University

Instructor Chris Reams

December 9, 2004

Labor Relations 3

Wal-Mart is a legend in American business and it appears to have become the nation's most popular private-sector target for lawsuits. I chose to perform this study on Wal-Mart's health care because it has become a growing concern not only for the employees of Wal-Mart, but for the taxpayers in each state that hosts a Wal-Mart chain. I would first like to discuss the history of the rapid growth of the company.

Wal-Mart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton, a merchant from Rodgers, AK. Wal-Mart's growth has been explosive. By 1967 there were 24 stores with sales totaling 12.6 million. In 1970 it opened its first distribution center and the store grew to 38 with 44.2 million in sales. In 1979 it was the first company to reach 1 billion in sales with 276 stores. Ten years later it was celebrating its 25th anniversary with 1,198 stores, averaging 15.9 billion in sales with 200,000 sales associates.

In 1991 Wal-Mart went international opening in Mexico City and by 1995 Wal-Mart had 1,995 stores, 239 super centers, 433 Sam's Clubs, 277 international stores, averaging 93.6 billion in sales with 675,000 associates. Wal-Mart has a customer base of 90 million each week worldwide. In 2001 it grew to 4,300 stores and a quarter trillion dollars in annual sales. Today Wal-Mart has 5,161 total stores in which 3,627 are in the U.S., 1,534 international stores employing 1.5 million associates world wide and by fiscal year ending 31 Jan 2004, sales soared to 256.3 billion.

I presented this history to pose the following questions: Why are many of the employees at Wal-Mart uninsured? Secondly then, Why are those employees that are insured, insured by state...