Wal-Mart Gets the Gold Medal For Employee Safety

Company	OSHA Enforcement Inspections, 2006-2011	Employees	Inspections per 100,000 Employees
Ford	389	164,000	237.2
Home Depot	406	189,390	214.4
Lowes	247	161,000	153.4
Costco	99	82,000	120.7
Whole Foods	26	45,300	57.4
Target	203	355,000	57.2
McDonald's	69	400,000	17.3
Walmart	215	2,100,000 (1,400,000 U.S. only)	10.2 (or 15.4 U.S. only)

The table above shows: a) the number of OSHA enforcement inspections over the last five years for a sample of large U.S. companies, along with b) the number of employees at those companies (from Yahoo! Finance), and finally c) the number of OSHA inspections per 100,000 employees at those companies.  

Note that when adjusted for the number of employees, Walmart has the best safety record by far among the group of retailers and manufacturers (Ford). Walmart's main competitor Target has almost six times more OSHA enforcement inspections, and Costco has twelve times as many.     

Conclusion: Wal-Mart has a much better safety record than Target, Home Depot, Lowes, McDonald's, Whole Foods, Costco and Ford, when measured by inspections per employee, and therefore gets the Gold Medal for employee safety.

Update: Even after adjusting for Walmart's U.S. employees only (1.4 million), and not adjusting any of the other companies for U.S. employees only, Walmart still comes out ahead with the best safety record per 100,000 employees.