A twofer! The first part of this meme is false, he didn’t say Walmart would close stores. The 2nd part is misleading & brings up a red herring about wage theft. Nearly all of the wage theft lawsuits are decades old and have little bearing on Walmart’s current balance sheet.

▪️The first part of the meme’s claim comes from a Dec 6 interview with CNBC. McMIllion said retail theft was ‘higher than what it has historically been” and “If that’s not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close.”
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/12/06/walmart-ceo-on-rise-in-retail-theft-prices-could-go-higher-and-stores-will-close.html

▪️This spawned headlines and memes that Walmart was considering closing stores, but in context McMillon was clearly speaking generally. Walmart’s spokesman later confirmed this & said McMillion “was speaking about retail in general and not specifically about Walmart.”
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.33399EU

▪️The $1.5B in wage theft claim comes from the Violation Tracker from Good Jobs First, a left wing advocacy group. It compiles lawsuits against companies. There are 44 lawsuits for Walmart listed under “wage and hour violations,” you can check it out here:
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/?parent=walmart&order=primary_offense&sort=desc&page=3

▪️The vast majority of the $1.5B comes from 3 lawsuits:

🔹$640M from 2008, settling 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, most of which happened years prior.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28372433

🔹$242M from a 2016 settlement over meal and rest break violations. However, this claim dated back to a 2006 judgment of $78M, which was appealed over a decade and included post-judgement interest.
https://wjactv.com/news/local/thousands-get-early-christmas-present-from-walmart-class-action-lawsuit

🔹$152M in a 2009 class action lawsuit over violating California’s meal and rest break laws. These violations dated back to a 2001 lawsuit.
https://legalpad.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/09/in-walmart-class-action-huge-judgment-followed-by-stillquitebig-settlement.html

🔹The two other largest settlements, violating California and Nevada labor laws, totaled $86M and $85M. They were from 2009 and 2010, and also dated back to years prior. The vast majority of the smaller settlements were also before 2010.

▪️Clearly, Walmart had problems running afoul of labor laws in the early to mid 2000s. But in recent years, there’s been very few big lawsuits, and settlements aren’t even a rounding error in comparison to their $572B in revenue.

▪️But retail theft is a significant current problem, affecting not just Walmart. Retailers lost nearly $100B to organized crime in 2021. Dismissing this by pointing to an irrelevant stat on wage theft is dishonest. (Ironically this source repeats the false claim about Walmart closing stores)
https://thehill.com/homenews/3767004-walmart-ceo-stores-could-close-with-uptick-in-shoplifting/