Retail, Walmart | featured news

For the second time in five days – and also the second time in Walmart’s five decades – workers at multiple U.S. Walmart stores are on strike. This morning, workers walked off the job at stores in Dallas, Texas; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Laurel, Maryland; and Northern, Central, and Southern California. No end date has been announced; some plan to remain on strike at least through tomorrow, when they’ll join other Walmart workers for a demonstration outside the company’s annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Today’s is the latest in a wave of Walmart supply chain strikes without precedent in the United States: From shrimp workers in Louisiana, to warehouse workers in California and Illinois, to Walmart store employees in five states.

On Friday, the government finally cleared a controversial plan to open up its lucrative retail sector to global supermarket chains in an effort to revive a flagging economy. There has been a massive political kerfuffle over how the supposed invasion of global chains will destroy India's fabled "mom-and-pop" stores, which have a stranglehold on the retail market.

India ushered in the biggest economic reforms in two decades on Friday, allowing big foreign retailers like Walmart, foreign broadcasters and foreign airlines to invest in the country, among other reforms.

Wal-Mart's Facebook page has more than 17 million fans and the company also pays to advertise on Facebook. Expanding its reach online is key for Wal-Mart as shoppers increasingly shop on their computers, tablets and smartphones.

Walmart's 24-hour stores will start selling the least-expensive version of the new iPad at 12:01 a.m.

Several more national retailers have joined Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in pulling a batch of powdered infant formula from their shelves.

Now playing: Movies at Walmart.com. The world's largest retailer on Tuesday started streaming many movies the same day they come out on DVD, in a second bid for a share of popular movie rental and streaming website Netflix Inc.'s business and just two weeks after Netflix announced new price increases.

Walmart is doing a less-than-stellar job when it comes to doing right by its workers. According to a new report Walmart could raise the wages of its employees without affecting prices.

The CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. received a pay package in 2010 worth $18.7 million, a 4 percent dip from the year before, according to an Associated Press calculation, as the world's largest retailer struggled to reverse a decline in a key revenue figure.Mike Duke, 61, received a base salary of about $1.2 million and a performance-based bonus of nearly $3.9 million for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31.

Thrifty shoppers looking for low prices on basics are frequently passing up the big boxes of Walmart for the tighter aisles of their local dollar stores.