I guess a successful business model also consists of violating fair employment practices. That fact is not demonizing a business, but is characteristic of how individuals place profit over the law, not to mention placing it over people.
You're operating on outdated information. The transgressions you cite, the very same that every opponent of the company cites, happened in the early- and mid-'90s after Sam Walton died. That's not to say that isolated examples don't still occur, but rather that the institutional attitude that engendered and condoned them doesn't exist anymore. Wal Mart was sued over them, lost, and ever since has been sh*t-scared of being sued over them again and has implemented near-draconian corporate policies to try to ensure that they don't happen anymore.
Once Mr. Sam was gone the MBAs took over his company and made a serious but unintentional attempt to ruin it by assuming that they knew more about how to run a business than he did. The man built a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by doing things a certain way - lowest price possible and excellent customer service - and the college boys didn't even let his body cool before beginning to make changes in the operations and philosophy of the business while telling themselves and each other, "Now the old man's gone, we're gonna turn this place into a
real moneymaker!". A classic example of educated fools thinking their classroom endeavors and success trump that resulting from lifelong labor and experience.
They stopped giving merit raises, demanded that work be done off the clock, paid straight time for overtime worked, and made people do work that they weren't supposed to do, among other things. For example, firing or cutting back the hours of the healthy young males who unloaded the trucks and ordering the young and old women who worked the floor to do it, then telling those women that because the work in their departments wasn't done by the end of their shift they would have to clock out and come back to finish it before going home or risk losing their jobs. Or just in general telling floor employees to clock out and return to complete assignments before going home, again under threat of being fired. Never mind that it's been busy and they'd been helping customers, "excuses" weren't accepted. Or, as in another case, "laying off" a long-time employee because of "lack of work available", as it said on the separation notice, but having a punk-ass assistant manager tell said employee that what's actually happening is she's being fired because, "...why should I pay you the money you're making when I can hire some teenage girl for minimum wage to do the same thing?"
While the changes resulting from those days are good, the company's management philosophy still leaves a lot to be desired. Like damn-near all businesses in America today, they don't practice customer
service, they practice customer
appeasement and call it customer service. IOW, they ignore the customer as much as possible until he gets upset, then they give him something free or at a discount to (hopefully) assuage his vexation. That's management, however. The worker bees, like I was, do their best to treat customers like they want to be treated as a shopper, but if doing for the customer interferes with doing assigned work the managers will quickly tell the worker bees that there are "other concerns" besides helping individual customers.
My mother worked for the company from the mid-'80s to mid-'90s and experienced the changes after Mr. Sam died firsthand (those things I noted from those days, and others, happened to her), and I worked for the company in '06-'07 and experienced the policy and atmosphere changes that resulted from them and the management philosophy that holds sway now.
*edit* Lee's said it well, especially that last part.
