In the article Up Against Wal-Mart, Karen Olsson exposes the largest retailer in the world by listing many of the retailer’s flaws such as worker mistreatment and discrimination. Throughout the article, Olsson uses anecdotes from employees that have worked at the company and statistics to support her arguments. Ultimately Olsson’s piece serves to harshly criticize Wal-Mart due to low pay wages, unpaid overtime, and gender inequality. From the start, Olsson relies on actual employee interviews to support her arguments against Wal-Mart. By introducing Jennifer McLaughlin, a young woman who has been working for Wal-Mart for three years but makes under $17,000 a year, the author builds tension between the worker and the company.
The author goes on in detail about Walmart’s employee selection process and the unique attributes they look for. Walmart looks to employee staff that will not look to unionize the company and employees that are afraid they wont be able
In the essay titled “Labouring the Walmart Way”, author Deenu Parmar explains the unhealthy effects of Walmart, how to stop them, and the challenges of doing so. Parmar begins by detailing how Walmart has done little for local economies. By hiring financially vulnerable people, the franchise insures that no one would dare to unionize; thus ensuring employees will only earn the bare minimum, and thus out-competing local competition. Parmar also goes on to explain how a local community removed Walmart. They were able to do this through the use of fierce union protests that made the store unprofitable.
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.
I also found out that about 5,000 lawsuits are filed against Wal-Mart each year or 17 suits per working day.. Walmart is most commonly suited for workers exploitation. In foreign countries employees rights are violated often in order to stop this the International Labor Rights Fund filed a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart for violating workers’ rights, arguing that Wal-Mart denied minimum wage, required overtime, and punished union activity. In the article called The Good, The bad, and Walmart written by Timothy Jordan said that workers argued that In some cases they were beaten by
‘Is Wal-Mart Good for America?’ On PBS Frontline, May 11, 2015 ‘Is Wal-Mart Good for America?’ is a documentary that examines the relationship between Wal-Mart’s rapid growth and its impact on the US economy ever since it blossomed in trade productivity in the mid 20th century. The documentary, published on February 2014 by PBS Frontline, conveys a deep understanding of how Wal-Mart changed the living standards of many Americans and took consumerism and retail logistics in the U.S. to another level; by cutting costs through offshore outsourcing to China and employing cheap Chinese labor. The documentary focuses on the changing relationship between big retailers and manufacturers and the transition in pricing and decision-making.
This statistic example has big number, and it is surprising to readers because Wal-Mart does not like to pay hard-working employees. Walmart owner Walton family scorn workers’ working, and Walton family does not realize labor consist his
Walmart employees have little room to complain and ask for reform as the company would just replace the worker. The companies exploitation of the poor and children should not be ignored and brought out to the public for them to judge for themselves. Moreover,
Over the past years, Best Buy took advantage of an opportunity to expand in the mobile and wireless market. The wireless market is one of the biggest that continues to grow therefore other companies are trying to find ways to enter into this area. I would classify this as a monopolistic approach since they have different products to sell. Today you can pretty much want in a Best Buy store and buy a TV, computer, camera, appliances, wireless phones, but you really can’t do that in an AT&T store or Sprint.
Many vendors and suppliers are forced by Wal-Mart’s low price guarantee goal by cutting down on their production costs to satisfy their organization's profit margin as well as Wal-Mart’s demands. For this reason, many of Wal-Mart’s vendors have taken heed of the mass retailer’s production move to cheaper production locations, such as China where the workers are paid minimal wages to produce goods for Wal-Mart, resulting in over $18 billion in goods which has an impact on the American workforce. In regard to the American workforce, Wal-Mart has been in the media for under compensating their employees by allowing minimal hours at minimum wage, resulting in part-time jobs with no healthcare benefits. (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2013).
I strongly agree with the author’s statement that Wal-Mart should not be allowed to build a new store in downtown Los Angeles for the following reasons: the small businesses would be forced to close down and more importantly, the wages that Wal-Mart pays are very low. I am convinced that in the present economic situation, small businesses can hardly survive from financial prices. More and more shops close their doors because of the “fierce” competition. Besides being a cause of the lessoning of the competition, the new Wal-Mart store would be an obstacle to small businesses that are trying to thrive. It is known that Wal-Mart is one of the most popular companies in the U.S.
In 2003, federal agents held a massive raid on sixty-one stores in twenty-one states, finding 250 undocumented workers. Wal-Mart’s janitorial staff, which was hired through a contractor, was also found to have undocumented workers. In the end, Wal-Mart settled with prosecutors to the tune of $11 million [2]. The cherry on top of the labor issues at Wal-Mart is the healthcare offered by Wal-Mart, or lack thereof.
YISHENG ZHANG MACROECONOMICS - WRITING ESSAY FEBRUARY 27, 2017 Walmart, as one of the world’s largest company it’s corporation contains grocery shopping, pharmacy, electronic sales, an outside garden etc. It is very convenient for people all around the world and low income families who are unable to afford other expensive goods made in the United States. Since Walmart is considered a world wide’s supermarket, it has investments outside of the United States such as in China, United Kingdom, and south America. When the prices are less, people are able to afford these products and throughout the century, it’s easy to tell that Walmart has made a huge impact in the United States economy.
The push Walmart is making to build stores in Mexico, South America, and China means that Walmart management in those countries may face the temptation to bribe foreign officials to give Walmart preferential treatment to zoning and other matters that require foreign governmental approval (Ferrell 414). Walmart has already faced this issue with its Walmex branch of operations, which has been accused of bribing Mexican officials to streamline zoning and permit issues that are often more burdensome in Mexico than in the United States (Ferrell 414). Certainly bribery may be more common in the developing countries that Walmart intends to expand its operations into. Therefore, Walmart officials are likely to continue to face the issue of how to ensure that its management of overseas operations maintains ethical standards and avoids the temptation of bribing government officials to give Walmart preferential treatment (Ferrell
Walmart has a major position in the retail market in the United States. In 2015, Walmart made two major strategic and operational business decision. According to the annual report 2015, Walmart made a strategic decision by investing $1 billion in employee initiatives within U.S. business. Across the U.S., Walmart increased the wages to a minimum of $9.00 per hour for all entry level full-time and part-time hourly store associates. Walmart also plans to provide access to training and control over associates own work schedules.
