“Creating Hourly Careers: A New Vision for Walmart and the Country” exposes the barriers to career development at the country’s most powerful retailer, and makes the case for a new way of doing business. Rather than finding opportunities for professional growth, Walmart associates are faced with a cap on wages, ever-changing schedules, expensive benefits, and an arbitrary discipline system. And given the limited number of managerial positions, most employees must develop a career as an associate if they want to stay with the company. Unfortunately, thanks to Walmart’s current policies, that’s an option that most of the company’s employees simply can’t afford.
Nelson Lichtenstein, MacArthur Foundation Chair in History and Director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California at Santa Barbara
Erin Johansson, Research Director, American Rights at Work
January 2011
