In “Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olsson, she finds the truth about how Wal-Mart treats its customers and more importantly how the million dollar company treats its employees. In this essay, Olsson strongly believes that Wal-Mart keeps its stores understaffed and their employees overworked and underpaid, with minimal options for reasonable benefits.…
The article “Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olsson is the detailed explanation of how Wal-Mart treats their customers and more importantly how the million dollar company treats their employees. Olson kicks off the article by telling a story about Jennifer McLaughlin, who is a twenty-two year old Wal-Mart employee. She goes on to explain the daily work tasks that she completes. She complains how Wal-Mart runs their business, and also how terrible the company treats her as an employee. Jennifer is forced to work over time, is underpaid and also treated unfairly. Employees say that they cannot say no after being asked to work off the clock. The workers at Wal-Mart also started to try to create a union which highly concerned Wal-Mart. A union at Wal-Mart was never formed due to the company’s anti-union group that was started and created by Wal-Mart. In ten separate cases, Nation Labor Relations Board has ruled that Wal-Mart repeatedly broke the law by interrogation of workers, confiscating union literature, and firing union supporters (Olsson). The issue of creating a union was not the only concern of the Wal-Mart workers. They also were concerned with how they would pay for health insurance. In Jennifer’s case, for her to have Wal-Mart covered health insurance it would cost her a $85 dollar chunk out of her pay check. The work force does not understand how a company that is account for 2 percent of America’s domestic product and has had 200 billion dollars in sales cannot give their hard working employees good health insurance. This article does make Wal-Mart sound like the bad guy, but I do not think that is completely true. Wal-Mart is running a business, and sometimes running a business means cutting resources.…
In opposition to this argument, Mallaby claims that critics of Wal-Mart are oblivious if they think Wal-Mart is the worst corporation when it comes to the way that employees are treated. He believes that it depends on what other corporations Wal-Mart is compared to and gives an example of this stating that “Wal-Mart opened a store in Glendale, Arizona, last year, it received 8,000applications for 525 jobs,” suggesting that not all people think that Wal-Mart mistreats its employees and that their benefits or wages do seem appealing to many (Mallaby 621). Though Mallaby does not discuss unions, Olsson targets this topic and mentions that Wal-Mart quickly rids of unions in order to keep opposition away. Commenting on the unions at Wal-Mart, Olsson says, “To protect the bottom line Wal-Mart is as aggressive at fighting off unions as it is at cutting costs” (Olsson 615). Wal-Mart has a main goal of fighting costs to make them lower than their competitors; therefore, fighting off unions is of utmost importance to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart does not want any opposition and does not want to lose to its competitors. Expanding the issue of working conditions to international relations, Mallaby shows how Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, the new anti-Wal-Mart movie circulating among activist groups, exploits the mistreatment of the Chinese workers that work for Wal-Mart.…
Within Karen Olsson’s “Up Against Wal-Mart” logos the author throws numbers at the audience to appeal to our logical sense of financial instability created by the poor benefits and wages Wal-Mart gives its employees. This is the author’s way of depicting the difficult if not impossible means that these families live. This article is very clearly anti Wal mart, mentioning not one instance of any “good deed” done by the corporation. Using each of the first-hand account the author shows a different aspect of the cruel mistreatment of employees. Even telling us about Wal mart’s tendency to hire a major company to bust up any union supporters in the corporation. Using logos the author shows us all the numbers that appeal to our financial reasoning, presenting these numbers that lead us to the conclusion that the workers at Walmart are…
The essays “Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olsson and “Progressive Wal-Mart. Really” by Sebastian Mallaby portray Wal-Mart to two completely different lights. Olsson shames Wal-Mart for its poor health benefits, the meager pay Wal-Mart employees receive, and the managers who purposely fail to schedule enough workers. Mallaby, on the other hand, commends Wal-Mart on how much money the franchise saves customers.…
According to “The Mounting Guerilla War against the Reign of Walmart” by John Logan and “Labor Takes Aim at Walmart – Again” by Spencer Woodman labor at Walmart is awful, employees in warehouses are working in bad working conditions and workers in the retail stores are not earning the wages they deserve. Woodman’s article talks about the different ways that Walmart workers are treated. The workers affected are not just associates in the stores but the ones who are working in the warehouses that Walmart contracts. This article also talks about the different organization out there that are trying to help the employees. For example, Untied Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) was trying to help by organizing Walmart when it came to labor laws. There is also a group among the different Walmart’s called OUR Walmart, which is a way of employees to have their voice heard for only five dollars a month. The article also talks about a few different strikes that happen at a few different Walmart’s, and the strikes are generally over working conditions and wages.…
Karen Olsson believes that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer company, under pays their employees for the amount of work they do daily. They do not offer good working conditions for their employees or enough medical benefits to support themselves and their families. Sebastian Mallaby says that Wal-Mart is not wrong for the way that they run their business; he feels as though Wal-Mart does their consumers a favor by keeping the wages low and offering “low prices” (620). It’s just business! They have to do what it takes to remain the world’s top retailer and continue to, “enrich shareholders, and put rivals out of business” (620). Karen Olsson and Sebastian Mallaby both address the topic of big business in today’s economy, but I find Karen Olsson’s argument to be the most persuasive because she has more information and quotes to support her opinion and views of the way that Wal-Mart treats their workers, while Sebastian Mallaby’s article is quite the opposite. Their opinions are very different but they share common interests which are: Wal-Mart, their customers, and their workers.…
Megan McArdle, the author of Walmart's Wage Experiment Works... for Workers, compares wage increases with different workforces at Walmart stores. McArdle provides the reader with ideas and questions like, "What happens if different stores did this?" and other questions relating to the effort needed to continue production if Walmart increased or the number of employees needed to fill the new workplaces. Claims like, "Paying higher wages has allowed Walmart to attract better workers, resulting in cleaner, nicer stores." Throughout the article, McArdle compares Costco's way of work with Walmart's and concludes that people living/working in rural(ish) areas generally make less money and have less workers, so "up"ing the wages would help those less…
Liza’s article is very critical of Wal-Mart’s treatment of its employees and community. She makes the point that Wal-Mart attempts to constantly get the employees that are most in touch with their customers and uses them to exploit their consumer base. Liza makes the argument that Wal-Mart has no sense of value for their workers, who are abused and taken advantage of in almost every way. These are people who work for extremely low wages and, she cites an instance where Wal-Mart employees were locked away after they had completed their hours, totally exploited. She also says that these lack of values are a result of Wal-Mart’s low prices, as what they lack in profit is made up by low labor costs and violations of workers rights. Wal-Mart goes as far as discriminating against its workers and paying them wages which force them to buy from their own store. But Maich disagrees with her arguments, under the line that the majority of Wal-Mart’s workers appear to be content dispite the low wages and questionable benefits; The amount of interest in the jobs available at Wal-Mart’s would appear to contradict Liza’s arguments that Wal-Mart abuses its workers. So why would people join a company that abuses them? More or less, Liza makes the argument that they are the only jobs available to these workers as sort of another Wal-Mart…
2 One of the most frequent complaints about Walmart, which employs 1.4 million people worldwide, is its failure to pay workers a living wage. Store employees are paid 20-30 percent less than the industry average, making many of them eligible for social assistance. It is estimated that American taxpayers fork out $2.5 billion a year in welfare payments to Walmart employees (Head, 2004). Because the retailer hires hard-to-place workers, like recent immigrants, seniors, and single mothers, its employees are often afraid they will not find work elsewhere. The kind of work Walmart does offer is gruelling: stores are intentionally understaffed-the strategy behind the company's legendary productivity gains-so that existing employees will work harder (Head, 2004). It is alleged that systemic discrimination against women within the corporation has denied the majority of Walmart workers the chance at promotion, a charge that is now the subject of the largest civil-rights suit in U.S.…
Ethic violations includes bribes, theft, personal conduct violations, and falsification of company assets, system hacking, or global trading malpractices. While Founder Sam Walton had a vision of employees of excellence. In the past 20 years Walmart’s ethics regarding employees has been questionable in the eyes of today’s workforce. It is evident by visiting several Walmart stores that customer service, excellence and engagement of Walmart employees is often inconsistent among locations and the individual leaders or Store Managers of each locations. It is not uncommon that the customer experience varies greatly from one Walmart location to the next. Walmart has long been criticized for low employee wages, unethical employment practices, which has resulted in thousands of employee related lawsuits. In a move to improve company image, culture and ethics, Walmart introduce new opportunities to employees, which included higher wages, flexible schedules, advancement opportunities, benefits and investment opportunities. Walmart also prides itself with by offering advancement opportunities for those stakeholders who practice dedication and commitment to the company. While these efforts appear to be long overdue by Walmart. Employers across the country are watching and measuring results as workforce challenges continue to plague industries throughout the…
Wal-Mart is a superstore that has facilities all over the world. Wal-Mart is known as the friendly neighbor superstore. But until recently Wal-Mart has found it’s self not so friendly and is battling in unfair labor practices.…
Is Wal-mart the ideal store to shop it? Austrian economic and business professional Karen De Coster and banker Brad Edmonds believe that Wal-mart improves the lives of people in rural areas because it gives them access to a lifestyle that they would not have if Wal-mart did not exist.…
As the largest retailer in America, Walmart has been called “one of the most impactful organizations in the history of humanity” (Roberts 1); however, we must ask ourselves what type of impact Walmart is making. Because they are such a large corporation, Walmart has the power and ability to greatly influence our society either for the good or for the bad, and most people agree that their impression on our current society is a negative one. There is lots of controversy over the ethical and economic repercussions our country faces because of Walmart. It is evident to most people that Walmart negatively impacts communities, treats employees unfairly, and facilitates child labor in American and abroad.…
A. Wal-Mart realized through third party studies and internal research that the Chinese customer were significantly more cost-sensitive than those in other countries and that there existed a strong, established culture of frequently shopping around to find the absolute lowest prices. Through these studies, Wal-Mart also realized that customer satisfaction level greatly influenced customer loyalty in China. The greatest determinant of this satisfaction was made up of perceived value. The perceived value is composed of three sub factors: (1) Product price, (2) Relative price and (3) Promotion. The other factors for customer satisfaction in descending order of its importance are Image, Merchandize, Shopping environment, Service, Check-out process and Store policy. Wal-Mart thrived for offering quality merchandise at the lowest price and with best customer service possible. Wal-Mart also had a reputed image as a foreign supermarket chain in China. Due to all these favorable factors customers patronized Wal-Mart China stores.…