Up Against Walmart Rhetorical Analysis

In her essay “Up Against Wal-Mart,” Karen Olsson claims that the employees of Wal-Mart are mistreated. They are overworked; each has to perform a plethora of duties because their stores are understaffed. She contends that they are not paid according to their heavy work loads, causing them to be disgruntled. Her view is that they are underappreciated and underrepresented, and based on her essay, I have come to agree with her points. From the facts and first hand accounts she presents on employees of Wal-Mart, I agree with her proposition that employees are underappreciated. Jennifer Mclaughlin’s story of her experiences working at Wal-Mart is said to be a common one for Wal-Mart employees; she is paid little- only $16,800 per year- but has extensive responsibilities in a given shift. After reading this, I realized that this is coming from a huge, high profit company and wondered at why they were not being paid adequately enough to afford the company’s health insurance. As Olsson puts it “Wal-Mart is no mere peddler of saucepans and boom boxes” (608). This means she contends that there is definitely money, it is just being budgeted in a way that is beneficial to corporate and not the employees. I completely agree with this, their $220

This is most likely because they choose to mistreat and exploit their employees for higher profit gain. Based on quotes from former and current Wal-Mart employees and Olsson’s own words, a union is definitely necessary for Wal-Mart. From reading this essay, I see just how obvious the mistreatment is; constantly overworked employees are struggling to keep themselves afloat as their superiors are pressuring them to work more with no pay. This has been illegal for well over 50 years and unionization was deemed lawful in the 1840s. This being said, I feel that Olsson’s claim of underrepresentation is completely