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Wal Mart As A Symbol Of The United States

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Overview: Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart in 1962 in Roger, Arkansas. In a little less than 10 years, Wal-Mart had 38 locations and was opening two stores per year. In 1970, the company started trading in the New York Stock Exchange. By 1979, the company announced a record $1billion sales and it became the first company to do so. Wal-Mart reached record after record during those years, and by the end of 1989, Wal-Mart reported after tax-profits of $1billlion. Wal-Mart now has become a symbol of the United States, and it is the biggest employer in the world with approximately 2.2 million workers with operations in 27 different countries. Wal-Mart’s revenue is gargantuan; they were ranked number one by Fortune Magazine in 2001, with a revenue of $219.8bn. At this point, Wal-Mart sales are around $1billlion per day. The incredible rise of Wal-Mart from a little store in Arkansas to one of the biggest companies todayis astonishing; however, it has not come without its problems. During the early 1980’s, employees tried to unionize in one of the distribution centers in Arkansas. Walton told the workers that if they unionize, he would remove the employees’ profit-sharing plan and replace them with other employees. Another scandal Wal-Mart faced was in its “Made in America” campaign, during which most of the clothes sold in Wal-Mart were manufactured in sweatshops in developing countries. The video The Age of Wal-Mart, which aired in 2004, presented many ethical issues

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