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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants to move into the grocery business throughout the state [California] by opening 40 Supercenters, each a 200,000-square-foot behemoth that combines a fully stocked food market with a discount mega-store - entirely staffed by non-union employees. The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Teamsters are trying to thwart that effort, hoping to save relatively high-paying union jobs.

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Wal-Mart pays its grocery workers an estimated $10 less per hour in wages and benefits than do the big [unionized] supermarkets nationwide - $9 versus $19.

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From a small-town five-and-dime, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has grown over 50 years to become the world's largest corporation and a global economic force.

It posted $245 billion in sales in its most recent fiscal year - nearly twice as much as General Electric Co. and almost eight times as much as Microsoft Corp. It is the nation's largest seller of toys, furniture, jewelry, dog food and scores of other consumer products. It is the largest grocer in the United States.

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The company has prospered by elevating one goal above all others: cutting prices relentlessly.

By squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, the company has hastened the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. By scouring the globe for the cheapest goods, it has driven factory jobs from one poor nation to another.

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U.S. retailers began making their way to Bangladesh in the 1980s. They found a large population of poor, young women willing to work from dawn to dusk for a few pennies an hour.

Many factories lacked ventilation and fire escapes. Labor activists estimated in the mid-1990s that as many as 50,000 Bangladeshi children were sewing apparel for companies such as Wal-Mart and Kmart Corp.

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In 2000, [an American supplier of WalMart] took the hardest step of all: He opened a factory in Shenzhen, China, where workers earn 25 cents an hour, compared with $13 in Chicago.

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In one case, a jury in Oregon last year found that company managers had coerced hundreds of employees to work overtime without pay.

The Oregon jury found last December that Wal-Mart's behavior was illegal and willful. A separate trial to determine damages for the 290 plaintiffs is set for early next year.

Wal-Mart settled similar overtime suits in Colorado and New Mexico for undisclosed amounts. More than 40 other cases are awaiting trial.

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US works its hardest in 20 years

The US is seeing an explosion in productivity to match its growth, after the three months to September produced the fastest increase in 20 years.

Businesses are underpinning improving profits through aggressive cost-cutting, which usually means working existing employees harder and laying off staff, rather than hiring new ones.

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[Wal-Mart] is so ruthlessly efficient that 4% of the growth in the U.S. economy's productivity from 1995 to 1999 was due to Wal-Mart alone, researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute estimated last year. No other single company had a measurable impact. Wal-Mart also has forced competitors to become more efficient, driving the nation's productivity - output per hour of work - even higher.

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Single living 'creates eco woes'

Gadget-hungry people and shrinking households are creating huge, unnoticed climate problems, a report says.

Analysis by Dutch academic Jan Kooijman for the UK packaging industry says more radical shifts in habits are needed.

He said people should use less heating and water, drive less, take fewer flights and live in larger households.

Dr Kooijman says the current trend of people living alone is making matters worse because each household needs hundreds of essential items from toothpaste to toilet brushes and bread knives to clocks.

Each of these items has created greenhouse gases as part of the production process.

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