I've met people who have escaped cults. Inside the collective, you think you are happy meanwhile your life is being drained from you to feed the machine keeping you down. When I see these organizations, Apple with its products, Walmart in this case, hell even sports teams to a minor extent, try to create an identity around themselves, I see the cult escapees. I also know a few managers at Walmarts, they are paid roughly local median for managerial staff, and they seem to like it. I've not yet met a front line person working at Walmat who liked the experience. And I understand the fallacy of "the plural anecdote is not data."
I get what you're saying, but I think it's crazy to draw a parallel between working for Walmart and being in a cult. I don't think there are any signs that point to employee indoctrination. Some people are just happy with what they make. And Walmart also provides definite upward mobility, which probably greatly boosts employee satisfaction. This is total speculation, but it seems to me that people just want Walmart to be evil since they're a huge corporation, so they look for any and every opportunity to make that accusation.