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Wal-Mart also recently created a director of diversity post. At last year's annual meeting, Wal-Mart ceo Lee Scott announced executives would forfeit a percentage of their bonuses—7.5 percent in 2004 and 15 percent in 2005—if they failed to meet specific employment diversity goals.

Those goals include promoting women and minorities in proportion to the number that apply for management positions. "If 50 percent of the people applying for the job of store manager are women," Scott told shareholders and employees, "we will work to make sure that 50 percent of the people receiving those jobs are women."

Wal-Mart's Williams, dismissing the sex-discrimination allegations against Wal-Mart as yet another example of the human tendency to "take shots at you if you are on the top," told ct the company's culture of improvement requires it to continually review its employment practices.

"Part of that, of course, is being honest with yourself—fixing mistakes when you make them—and moving on," she says. "Wal-Mart will emerge from all this a better company."

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Deliver Us from Wal-Mart? | Christians are among those sounding the alarm about the ethics of this retail giant. Are the worries justified?

Benefits Blues | Spiraling health costs squeeze Wal-Mart as they do every other large company.

Wal-Mart offers statements on a host of issues, including some discussed in this article.

CT covered Christian bookstores that have suffered from a drop in business after Wal-Mart and other big retailers began carrying Christian books.

Forbes magazine covered Wal-Mart's expansion into the Christian product business.

Christian Retailing quotes a Christian bookstore owner who says, "Wal-Mart is a canker out there that's killing our market in this country. Until the suppliers realize that and start standing up to Wal-Mart and start protecting independent stores, we're on a death trail."

PBS's Frontline ran a documentary last November about Wal-Mart. The full program is available for viewing online.

Ariah Fine is a student at Wheaton College and says in this Relevant article that shopping at Wal-Mart is wrong.

Baptist Press says a pastor was asked to stop passing out tracks at his local Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart Facts is the public relations push the company is using to show it's environment, community, and people-friendly.

The National Labor Committee has a page of articles about Wal-Mart's labor abuses.

After some deliberation, Danny Duncan Collum writes in Sojourners Magazine, "Today I'm ready to join the ranks of all right-thinking people the world over in declaring Wal-Mart an outpost of hell on earth."

More Christianity Today articles on Money & Business is available from our website.

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April (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49