In 2003, Rick Wartzman was overseeing the business section of the Los Angeles Times when his team produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories detailing how Walmart became the largest company in the world — and how its rise relied on low wages for its workers and those of its suppliers. Those stories helped to solidify a widespread perception of Walmart as an exploitative force in the global economy.
In 2015, Walmart — the largest private employer in the United States — announced a series of labor policies that raised worker pay. More recently, it has converted many of its part-time workers to full-time employees. Wartzman, who had moved on to become executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University (where he is now head of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society), decided to commit himself to studying how and why Walmart transformed its relationship with its lowest-paid workers. He was granted an unusual amount of access by the company to its top executives, board members and employees.
