BERKELEY, Calif. Dec. 5, 2007 (KGO) — Wal-Mart is getting new attention for its business practices. This time, it’s a study from UC Berkeley’s Labor Research Center.

It suggests that Wal-Mart could pay its people more, and still provide customers with low prices.

Wal-Mart is the country’s largest retailer with arguably some of the lowest prices.

“But one part of their lower prices is also from the fact they pay lower wages and benefits,” said UC Berkeley labor researcher Arin Dube.

Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and education studied what would happen if Wal-Mart raised its minimum wage to ten dollars an hour.

For the average worker it could mean a raise of from one thousand to four thousand dollars a year.

“That’s something you actually see in your paycheck,” said Dube.

Wal-Mart employee Mario Gonzales certainly wouldn’t mind a raise.

“Then I’d be happy. If I made ten dollars an hour then I’d be in a whole lot better situation than I am right now,” said Gonzales.

The study says shoppers would only pay 36-cents more each time they visited the store or less than ten dollars a year. These customers say they wouldn’t mind paying a little extra.

“Why not, because these people are trying to make a living,” said Laura Wainer from San Francisco.

“It would be important for us to pay a little bit more money so people can be treated fairly,” said Margaret Dale from Oakland.

Another report from the center says just the introduction of a new Wal-Mart store to the area has an impact on jobs.

“What has happened is they have also driven down the wages and benefit standards in places they have come to,” said Dube.

Wal-Mart responded with this statement: “We create economic opportunity by providing good and secure jobs that give associates the chance to build careers.”

The company said workers earn an average $10.83 an hour, and it’s higher in urban areas. In California it’s $11.59 an hour.

The center says as criticism mounts, Wal-Mart has improved employee benefits.

“Still less than half of Wal-mart workers have health care at the job, so there’s a lot of room for improvement as far as I can tell,” said Dube.

Just one in every four voters in 10 battleground House districts says the American Dream is “still there for everyone,” while four in 10 say the dream exists “only for some people,” according to The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll.

Younger voters expressed more optimism than older ones, and men were more upbeat than women. Notably, black voters voiced more optimism than whites, a finding that underscores polling trends since Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first African-American president.

The survey of likely voters in competitive congressional districts, conducted for The Hill by Penn Schoen Berland, offers a snapshot of the electorate as concerns over the pace of economic recovery dominate the midterm campaign. It comes as Republicans hammer Democrats over the soaring national deficit and debt, warning that exorbitant federal spending will leave the next generation of Americans weighed down by a heavy financial burden.

Twenty-six percent of respondents overall said the American Dream “is still there for everyone.” Forty-one percent said the dream is there, “but only for some people”; 21 percent said it no longer exists “for most people”; and 9 percent said it no longer exists at all.

An equal percentage of Republicans and Democrats said the dream existed for everyone, but more black voters, 32 percent, than white voters, 26 percent, responded that way. Thirty percent of voters under age 55 said the dream was there for all, while just 23 percent of older voters agreed.

The findings track other survey results showing that two years of high unemployment, rampant home foreclosures and a growing income inequality have taken a toll on voter optimism. “That’s a very clear pattern we see,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center.

Pew has asked Americans nationwide over the last 16 years whether they believe their children will have a better standard of living than they currently enjoy, and Taylor said that the responses in recent surveys “are still positive rather than negative, but that gap is much lower now than it has been.”

In May 2010, 45 percent of respondents said their children would be better off, down from 57 percent in 2006. The high-water mark for that question since 1994 came in 2002, when 61 percent of Americans said their children would have a better standard of living than them.

In a Gallup poll that asked a similar question, 62 percent of Americans in January 2010 said that today’s youth were likely to have a better life than their parents. Two years earlier, at the beginning of the recession but before it had taken its toll, 66 percent responded the same way. In December 2001, the percentage of people who said the next generation would be better off stood at a high of 71 percent.

For years, younger Americans have shown more optimism about their future than their elders, Taylor said. The trend has persisted through the recession, which in some cases has hit young adults the hardest, as the post-graduation job market has shrunk.

“You would think, ‘Boy, they’re starting life in pretty tough circumstances — wouldn’t they be bummed out by that?’ ” Taylor asked. “There’s something about this generation of young adults that has made them a very optimistic group,” he added. The phenomenon, he said, is attributed in part to the “empowering” nature of new technology, which young people have seized upon much more enthusiastically than have older Americans.

The gap in optimism between white and African-American voters has been a more recent development, and Taylor said pollsters have found inferential evidence that the higher optimism among black voters is linked to Obama’s election in 2008. “One very clear finding is that even though they have been hit at least as hard by the recession as everyone else, [African-Americans] are comparatively more optimistic about the economic future of the country and their own economic prospects,” Taylor said.

Despite the doubts about the American Dream voiced by respondents in The Hill survey, pollster Mark Penn said that given the depth of the recession and widespread economic uncertainty, the findings could have been worse. “This question did not signal the end of the American Dream,” he said.

http://thehill.com/house-polls/thehill-poll-week-3/124935-only-1-in-4-see-american-dream-as-still-there-for-all

Bloomberg.com

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, plans to increase its workforce by 36 percent in the next five years as global economic growth boosts spending.

New employees will be hired “mostly” outside the U.S., Susan Chambers, executive vice president for human resources, said in a speech at a conference in New Delhi today. “The opportunity for growth is not just in India but global,” she said, without providing more details on the hiring plans.

Wal-Mart plans to have 3 million workers in five years, up from 2.2 million now, Chambers said. Overseas sales for the world’s largest listed company by revenue have grown 91 percent in the last five years to $100.1 billion, almost triple the pace in the U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“It’s another nod to international growth as opposed to a U.S. focus,” said Brian Sozzi, an analyst at Wall Street Strategies Inc. in New York. “It seems there is a real internal push to guide market expectations towards Wal-Mart’s international opportunity, in an attempt to re-energize the stock.” He recommends holding the shares.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer is boosting overseas expansion to offset slowing growth in the U.S., where same-store sales, which strip out the effects of new outlets, have fallen for five consecutive quarters. Wal-Mart plans to enter Africa by acquiring Massmart Holdings Ltd. in a transaction worth about $4.6 billion.

‘Adjust Model’

“This points to much more aggressive growth outside the U.S., both through organic store expansion and acquisitions like Massmart,” analyst Colin McGranahan of Sanford C. Bernstein in New York said in an e-mail. “It means Wal-Mart is going to be even more complex and needs to adjust its model to address local market employee issues.” He rates the shares “market perform.”

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, or Cosatu, the nation’s largest labor federation, said today it is concerned that the proposed takeover of Massmart may erode workers’ rights. Massmart, South Africa’s second-largest listed retailer, said on Sept. 28 that it has “no doubt” that Wal-Mart will honor pre-existing memberships that workers have with labor unions.

Wal-Mart rose 17 cents to $53.52 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares are little changed this year.

Indian Rules

In India, Wal-Mart and rivals including Carrefour SA are urging the government to allow overseas investment in multibrand retailers after the trade ministry invited views from the industry on the matter. India may decide in two to three months whether to relax the restrictions, junior trade minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Sept. 17.

Indian laws limit overseas investment to single-brand retail or wholesale outlets. The government of the world’s second-most populous country is reviewing feedback it sought in July from interested parties such as local and foreign retailers, and industry groups, according to Scindia.

Wal-Mart has partnered with closely held Bharti Enterprises Pvt. in India to open wholesale stores and build a supply chain network.

The venture, Bharti-Walmart Pvt., plans to open 15 stores in India by the end of 2011, Chief Executive Officer Raj Jain said in New Delhi Sept. 28. It has three stores now.

Wal-Mart may open hundreds of stores in India should the government lift the ban on foreign direct investment in multibrand retailers, Jain said in July.

“India will take time to play out,” Wal-Mart’s international chief Doug McMillon said in a June interview. “Our hope is that at some point foreign direct investment is opened up.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Malavika Sharma in New Delhi at msharma52@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Frank Longid at flongid@bloomberg.net; Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net.

Find the original story online at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-30/wal-mart-to-hire-800-000-in-the-next-five-years-chambers-says.html

• Asda’s owner bought stores in Chile and India last year
• South African Massmart has stores in 13 African countries

from The Guardian
by Andrew Clark, New York

The world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart, wants to introduce its price-slashing, cost-cutting style of business to sub-Saharan Africa through an R32bn (£2.9bn) takeover proposal for Massmart, a Johannesburg-based chain of discount superstores.

In potentially its biggest overseas venture since its purchase of Britain’s Asda chain 11 years ago, Wal-Mart has begun buyout negotiations with the management of Massmart, which runs 290 stores in 13 African countries under brand names such as Makro, Game and Builders Warehouse.

A deal would be Wal-Mart’s first step into Africa, taking the Arkansas-based multinational into its fifth continent. Asda’s chairman Andy Bond, who would oversee the region for Wal-Mart, described South Africa as a “compelling” growth opportunity: “South Africa possesses attractive market dynamics, favourable demographic trends and a growing economy.”

The vast majority of Massmart’s outlets are in South Africa but the company has a handful sprinkled across other African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The business was founded in 1990 by Mark Lamberti, who remains chairman of Massmart and has become one of South Africa’s best-known entrepreneurs.

For Wal-Mart, the offer is the latest move in a strategy of steady international expansion which took it into India and Chile last year. Much of Wal-Mart’s overseas spread is discreet from customers’ point of view – the company keeps local brand names and stocks a degree of local produce, but integrates “back end” functions such as purchasing, stock-keeping and logistics to make economies of scale.

Although popular with thrifty shoppers, Wal-Mart has a reputation for being anti-union and for a ruthless approach in keeping down wages. Michael Bride, deputy organising director for global strategies at America’s UFCW union, warned that Massmart’s employees could be in for a taste of this approach: “The company may very well adopt a policy of racing to the bottom in terms of wages and salaries and then denying workers a voice.”

He said this could have a knock-on effect on other South African retailers: “In the US, Wal-Mart’s aggressive policies on salaries and benefits have led others in the industry to lower standards.”

Wal-Mart is tightly controlled by the low-profile Walton family, who hold a stake of about 40%. Four of America’s richest ten individuals are members of the family, according to Forbes magazine, including the company’s chairman, Rob Walton.

Its tentative offer price of R148 per share sent Massmart’s shares up 10% on the Johannesburg stockmarket, where experts said the price was a steep one. Syd Vianello, a retail analyst at Nedcor Securities, told Bloomberg News: “It’s a rich price they’re paying. Wal-mart obviously believes they can do a hell of a lot more with Massmart.”

Massmart has a variety of formats selling groceries, electronics, building materials and household goods to consumers. It also has a wholesale division operating cash-and-carry style warehouses.

The company’s board said it had entered into an exclusivity period to talk to Wal-Mart but it has yet to offer any recommendation to investors on whether to accept the US firm’s proposal.

The founder of Massmart has championed entrepreneurialism in South Africa. He once told the Financial Mail newspaper that apartheid had dulled the country’s business creativity: “For 50 years, this country lived through a period where people’s creativity was stifled. The fundamental principles of apartheid did not create a sense of can-do.”

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