Everyday Low Prices, At All Costs(4)

Some industry insiders say that the company's latest move is simply aimed at sticking to its "everyday low prices" philosophy, which demands it to lower costs by all legal means. A staff reduction becomes inevitable when the cost of manpower grows faster than revenue in the purchasing system.

In fact, the concern about potentially rising costs is also partly to blame for its reluctance to establish a trade union in its early days in China.

Wal-Mart has been accelerating its pace of going local by employing more Chinese senior management and building trade unions in the domestic supermarket system.

In order to assure high qualities and low prices, Wal-Mart has put forward a series of severe guidelines for its suppliers, some of which are even stricter than local government regulations.

But according to one laid-off worker, the company demands of itself much less than it does of its suppliers. For example, suppliers are required to adopt a standard working-time system and pay extra compensation for over-time work, yet the company itself fails to do so no matter how late its employees stay.