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Text: Petitioner Wal-Mart is the Nation’s largest private employer. It operates four types of retail stores through out the country: Discount Stores, Supercenters, Neighbor hood Markets, and Sam’s Clubs. Those stores are divided into seven nationwide divisions, which in turn comprise 41 regions of 80 to 85 stores apiece. Each store has between 40 and 53 separate departments and 80 to 500 staff posi tions. In all, Wal-Mart operates approximately 3,400 stores and employs more than one million people.

Pay and promotion decisions at Wal-Mart are generally committed to local managers’ broad discretion, which is exercised “in a largely subjective manner.” 222 F. R. D. 137, 145 (ND Cal. 2004). Local store managers may in crease the wages of hourly employees (within limits) with only limited corporate oversight. As for salaried employ ees, such as store managers and their deputies, higher corporate authorities have discretion to set their pay with in preestablished ranges.

Promotions work in a similar fashion. Wal-Mart per mits store managers to apply their own subjective criteria when selecting candidates as “support managers,” which is the first step on the path to management. Admission to Wal-Mart’s management training program, however, does require that a candidate meet certain objective criteria, including an above-average performance rating, at least one year’s tenure in the applicant’s current position, and a willingness to relocate. But except for those requirements, regional and district managers have discretion to use their own judgment when selecting candidates for management training. Promotion to higher office—e.g., assistant man ager, co-manager, or store manager—is similarly at the discretion of the employee’s superiors after prescribed objective factors are satisfied.