Wal-Mart Begins Preaching a New Creed

Finding a spot to leave your car around the local Wal-Mart store in Middlefield, Ohio, can be a problem - because a section of the car park is reserved for horse-drawn wooden buggies.

The superstore is in the middle of America's fourth-largest Amish community, and Wal-Mart has erected hitching posts for the religious community's black carriages. Inside, the shelves are stocked with barley soup, blocks of ice for non-electrical refrigerators and a denim-type fabric used by Amish people for weaving.

The world's largest retailer maintains that it is changing. Organic baby clothes, energy-saving light bulbs and sustainable seafood are appearing in stores. Wal-Mart is aiming to halve its lorries' energy consumption in a decade and is testing wind and solar power at stores in Texas and Colorado.

Wal-Mart, which owns Britain's Asda supermarkets, is desperate to shake off the image of a multinational behemoth forcing customers and employees to conform to a cult-like corporate orthodoxy. It wants to be seen as trendy, progressive and responsive to local communities. "Union-funded critics say the changes under way at this company are a publicity stunt," says Wal-Mart's chief executive, Lee Scott. "They could not be more wrong."

He advises critics to talk to people in Breck Road, Liverpool, where a new Asda has created 300 jobs, of which 60% went to long-term unemployed people.

Wal-Mart has 138 million customers a week worldwide, employs 1.8 million people and had sales of $312bn (£175bn) last year. But it is under attack - and feeling it.

A critically acclaimed movie, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, presents the company as a fiercely anti-union organisation hammering smaller retailers and squeezing suppliers to the bone in an endless quest to keep prices down.

This week the company improved its employee healthcare cover in the face of political criticism. Wal-Mart insures only 48% of employees, compared with an average of 68% for large US firms. Part-time staff - who make up a rapidly rising 25% of Wal-Mart's workforce - have to wait two years to enrol.

Even in its home town of Bentonville, deep in rural Arkansas, Wal-Mart faces sniping. The company this week hired the ballroom of a local hotel to spell out its mission to 70 international journalists. Disgruntled employees set up camp in the hotel bistro, telling of harassment, poor race relations and ageism.

Past and present "associates" from Florida, Maryland and Texas told of a ruthless employer forcing them to work unsocial hours, offering minimal healthcare coverage and paying pitiful wages.

Greg Pierce, a 29-year-old former customer services manager, told the Guardian: "We were told when we applied that there'd be awesome benefits and awesome pay - but as soon as they get you into the system, you're caught."

The Rev Markel Hutchins, a black civil rights leader, noted that Wal-Mart's customers were among the poorest in America but said: "There are too few African Americans and too few Hispanics in the upper levels of Wal-Mart. Buying the odd table at an African American dinner just isn't good enough."

At Wal-Mart's head office, an overpowering smell of popcorn greets visitors and a large sign on the wall reminds staff to smile whenever a customer is within 10 feet. Dozens of glass-walled supplier rooms contain hopeful entrepreneurs trying to get their products into Wal-Mart's 6,465 shops worldwide.

In Wal-Mart's nearby distribution centre, staff gather every day at a mock-up of a Sam Walton grocery store, for the "company cheer".

Wal-Mart is trumpeting its community initiatives. It has begun using local architects to blend stores into cityscapes: an Arizona store is built with desert sandstone, an outlet in Long Beach, California, has an art-deco look and in Florida a "fisherman's pier-style" Wal-Mart has gone up.

Mike Huckabee, the Republican governor of Wal-Mart's home state, jokes that there are three things you will never hear from a native of Arkansas: "I don't think duct tape will fix that"; "Baby, I don't think we need another dog" and "I don't think there's anything we need today from Wal-Mart."

He brushes aside sceptics. "I find it incredible that in a capitalistic environment people can be critical of a company for delivering lower prices. It's like saying you want to punish Disneyworld because it's better value than the county fair. Or that professional baseball's got to be stopped because it gives Little League players an inferiority complex."

Work experience

Greg Pierce, 29, former customer services manager, Florida

"When I joined Wal-Mart, I told them I had young children and I needed to be at home during the day - we agreed I would work nights. Within a week, I was scheduled to work at 7am. They hired me as a cashier knowing I had a knee injury. Soon, they asked me to push shopping carts - and my knee snapped out of place. They told me the injury was a pre-existing condition and gave me no help or time off. I stood for nine hours a day with crutches and a cast, trying to scan items."

Maria Lopez, 70, sales assistant, Texas

"After six years earning $10.93 (£6.17) an hour in electronics, they made me transfer to the front of the store - which involved heavy work like moving boxes. I hurt my shoulder lifting a case of bottled water - and they made me go for physical therapy in my own time.

They refused to believe I was too badly hurt to work until I had surgery to repair a chipped bone in my shoulder. When you get older at Wal-Mart, they do everything they can to push you out."