November 25, 2003 E-mail story Print
LA Times Special Report
Third of three parts
By Nancy Cleeland and Abigail Goldman, Times Staff Writers
Grocery Unions Battle to Stop Invasion of the Giant Stores
Wal-Mart plans to open 40 of its nonunion Supercenters in California. Labor is fighting the expected onslaught, but the big retailer rarely concedes defeat.
Wal-Mart and the Unions
Number of visits to U.S. Wal-Marts weekly: 100 million.
Single-day sales record: $1.4 billion for American stores on Nov. 29, 2002 - larger than the annual GDP of Belize, Greenland and Monaco. (Source: Wal-Mart & the CIA World Factbook)
Number of new employees Wal-Mart plans to hire through 2008: 800,000 — the equivalent to of adding all the workers at General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. combined. (Source: Wal-Mart & Hoovers)
Number of ocean shipping containers imported in 2002: 291,900. Home Depot was No. 2 at 182,000.
Wal-Mart stores permit recreation vehicles to park for free on its lots on a store-by-store basis, making Wal-Mart an unofficial campground chain for cross-country travelers.
Wal-Mart's distribution center in Bentonville covers 1.2 milllion square feet, which could hold 24 football fields, 800 tennis courts or 7 Major League Baseball fields. (Source: Wal-Mart)
Wal-Mart is the country's top seller of dog food, disposable diapers, photographic film, toothpaste and pain remedies.(Fortune magazine, Feb. 2003 article)
If Wal-Mart were a country, its 2002 sales of $245 billion would make it No. 31 on the list of the world's largest economies richest nations, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Austria. (Source: CIA World Factbook)
Wal-Mart is three times the size of Carrefour, the world's second-largest retailer. (Source: Retail Forward)
Wal-Mart is the No. 1 retailer not just in the U.S., but also in Canada and Mexico as well as the U.S. (Source: Wal-Mart)
Additional sources: "The Wal-Mart Decade," by Robert Slater; The Journal of Commerce; Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Hoovers Inc., CIA World Factbook, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Retail Forward.
posted by Richard at
Saturday, November 29, 2003
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