Immediate Release
Contact: Chris Kofinis (202) 486-6422

WAL-MART'S NEWLY RELEASED DIVERSITY DATA SHOWS WAL-MART HAS FAILED TO IMPROVE DIVERSITY

Today, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, released new diversity data which shows - once again- how far this company must go before it becomes a responsible employer. Even though 60.87 percent of Wal-Mart’s Associates were women in 2006, only 39.69 percent of Wal-Mart's managers were women, up only 0.89% over last year. At this rate of change, it will take Wal-Mart another 11.9 years for women to make up at least 50 percent of the managers in the company.

Amongst minority workers, the percentage of workers in management compared to the total workforce is equally poor. For example, even though minority workers at Wal-Mart comprised 33.15 percent of Wal-Mart's total work force, minorities comprised only 23.2 percent of its management. More specifically, even though African Americans comprise 17.50 percent of Wal-Mart’s workforce, African Americans represent only 11.39 percent of Wal-Mart’s management.

Again, based on Wal-Mart's own EEOC data, and in terms of Wal-Mart's management ranks, the percentages of women, African Americans, and Hispanics in Wal-Mart's management are far below the percentage of women, African Americans, and Hispanics in their total workforce.

In fact, even though Wal-Mart faces the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history, affecting over 2 million current and former female Associates, Wal-Mart still fails to show any serious commitment to significantly expanding the number of women in management.

Overall, Wal-Mart's newly released data shows how Wal-Mart has completely failed to address its serious diversity issues.

The following statement is attributable to Chris Kofinis, Communications Director for WakeUpWalMart.com:

"Wal-Mart's own statistics prove what an embarrassing failure its diversity initiatives have been and paint a disturbing picture of how incredibly difficult it still is for women and minority Wal-Mart workers to get ahead. More to the point, Wal-Mart has no excuse as to why so few women, African Americans, and Hispanics comprise its managerial ranks, even though women, in particular, dominate its Associate ranks.

Given the fact that Wal-Mart faces the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history, normal logic would dictate that Wal-Mart would take serious steps to address the severe inequality in its stores. Since Wal-Mart's diversity programs have clearly failed across the board, it is time for Wal-Mart to reveal its secret ‘diversity goals’ which it supposedly sets for its management, but will not disclose to its shareholders.”