In his article “Progressive Wal-Mart. Really.” Sebastian Mallaby argues that Wal-Mart’s $50 billion in discounted gains is helping the well being of American shoppers. Malay concludes with “If critics prevent the firm from opening new branches, they will prevent ordinary families from sharing in those gains. Poor Americans will be chief among the casualties”(623). Mallaby is arguing if critics don't allow Wal-Mart to open new branches poor Americans won’t be able to share in gains like savings, jobs, and better local economy. Wal-Mart might have all these gains for the American shopper, but he doesn't talk about the negatives. For every gain there’s a loss. I disagree with Mallaby’s argument; Poor Americans, including Wal-Mart employees, are excluded from sharing in those gains because they work unpaid hours, and the inability to get health care coverage. Wal-Mart keeps these employees from sharing in these gains by keeping them in scared and in poverty. Ever since I started working at a market I then realized not only Wal-Mart excludes its employees and the poor from sharing in gains. The low paid employees at Wal-Mart will never share in gains as long as they work at Wal-Mart. Mallaby admits Wal-Mart can treat their employees and other retailers unfairly, but as a result everyone can share in the 50 billion in savings that American shoppers consume annually. The pay that employees get is the price they must pay for low priced merchandise. Because of the minimal pay to employees, Wal-Mart strengthens its’ consumer buying power. Giving the American shoppers the savings they need, Wal-Mart’s has ultimately been them successful. Wal-Mart has potentially wiped out the middle class as an employer, but the employees can now work and ... ... middle of paper ... .... Food 4 less lets the government and taxpayers deal with employee’s financial and medical assistance. Taxpayers are paying the price for Wal-Mart and Food 4 Less. Wal-Mart employees probably don’t care about discounted gains; they cannot afford to get heath care coverage. Living under poverty circumstances, workers most likely live in small apartments, drive beat down cars, and have filed for bankruptcy. However, at the end of the day they can't get low prices they cant even afford. Although I do not agree with this business model I have a job and it helps me pay for my expenses; I have no choice. Many others in my positions are losing out on gains that we can only hope to share on in the future. Critics should prevent Wal-Mart from opening new branches because ordinary families and their own workers will never in share in those gains under poverty conditions.
“Doing the right thing and doing things right” (Devin) spoken by their CEO at a conference on their profits and annual reports, however this does not pertain to their employees or their suppliers even though he states “the Wal-Mart way is to stay the course, because Wal-Mart is too important to individual families that are stretching a budget, to important to the suppliers who employee millions of people, to important our associates who we value and love so much." (Devin). Wal-Mart values its employees and suppliers so much; “since 2011, Wal-Mart has spent over $35 million and hired more than 300 outside lawyers, accountants, and investigators to deal with bribery issues” (Sethi) and Wal-Mart’s “penalties under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Securities Exchange Commission regulatory filings are likely to be in the $100 millions, which is such a small fraction of Wal-Mart’s earnings” (Sethi). If only this mega retailer could reinvest this negative...
Wal-Mart has been of a great advantage to the US economy, being the world’s largest private employer thus providing more jobs. Wal-Mart is currently employing 1.5 million which equals to the population of 12 states. In addition, Wal-Mart has caused the lowering of prices of competitors known as the ‘Wal-Mart effect’, this saved Americans approximately $100 billion in 2002. (Hansen) On a smaller degree, this caused an individual American to save 15 to 20 percent of their income on necessities, allowing the surplus to be utilized in a fashion that allows an expenditure which fulfills a specific luxury to the individual, for example a car etc.. From my point of view, this allows the less advantaged to be able to purchase beyond necessities, and causing more money to spread through the market rather than the recycl...
Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower).
A Macro-Sized Microcosm describes how Wal-Mart is a ‘macro-sized microcosm’ for America’s socioeconomic problems. New technology in the marketplace has created a conflict between labor and capital. This is ruining the U.S. manufacturing base. This reading states that Wal-Mart benefits by relying on suppliers and subcontractors. Wal-Mart buyers demand the lowest price possible, making it competitive with their suppliers. A way they do this is by adding cost efficiencies. These demands make it difficult for suppliers to provide employees with decent wages and suitable working conditions. The government endorses these circumstances. The federal and state governments support Wal-Mart with about $4 billion. This includes “free or reduced price land, tax breaks, sales tax rebates, state corporate income tax” et cetera. Most Wal-Marts in the U.S. receive government subsidy. This makes the price of commodities low and keeps them ahead of the
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
C. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, received a $25,000 loan from his father-in-law in 1945 after returning as an Army officer in WW2. He then used that loan to open up his first discount store in Newport, Arkansas and later opened his first Walmart in 1962. Over the next 2 decades Walton managed to turn that one store into a franchise worth $45 Billion. Now that’s what I call the “American Dream”. Walmart is criticized for actions that aren’t true and can be backed up by facts if necessary. People make assumptions about it without knowing the truth behind what they are saying. These assumptions should be changed because Walmart is indeed a very successful cooperation and benefits the economy and communities around it.
There are three articles that will be referenced during this analysis. The first article is taken from the mainstream media publication USA Today. “Wal-Mart takes hits on worker treatment: Lawsuits, unions slam megaretailer”(Armour, 2003) argues that Wal-Mart is coming under attack from critics who argue workers are underpaid, women are discriminate against, and illegal tactics are being deployed to kill unionization efforts. Armour (2003) states, “company officials say they don’t know why the attacks are coming now, and they also say the allegations are unfounded.” The next statement made during the article states that Wal-Mart employees agree with the statement. The author continues reporting on the issues at stake, but focuses mostly on how unions may be less relevant in today’s world. The article makes mention of both sides of the argument, but the rhetoric and terminology used leans towards the portrayal of Wal-Mart as a victim of biased attacks to further union interests in the market.
The Wal-Mart Corporation is a multi-billion dollar low-cost retail organization, consisting of 6400 stores and 1.8 million sales associates worldwide. Wal-Mart’s influence on the retail world and the enormity of their corporate size is unparalleled. Wal-Mart can easily report sales of $312.4 billion dollars per fiscal quarter and net profits of $3.8 billion dollars. Wal-Mart promises her customers "Always low prices. Always!" and upholds this motto by providing low prices to her customers and high return on investment to her stockholders. One way that Wal-Mart has managed to maintain a competitive edge over other low cost retail giants and provide low prices is by cutting wages and by not offering too many company benefits to their employees. Full-time employee working at Wal-Mart only make $8 an hour, while only 45% of the workers can afford to be covered by health insurance. Wal-Mart also increase part time employees from 20 percent to 40 percent so that they do not have to cover all of their employees for health insurance . Although Wal-Mart may not provide excellent benefits to her employees, it successfully performs as a legitimate business operating in a capitalistic society. Wal-Mart upholds the primary fiduciary duty to satisfy her stockholder and follows free the market libertarianism model, which states that a business should not interfering with the free market. In a free market Wal-Mart has a direct responsibility to her primary stockholders rather than the employees of a company.
The main criticisms of Wal-Mart involve: low labor compensation, loss of jobs, impact on competitors and communities, contributing to the trade deficit, as well as insensitivity to the environment. Wal-Mart has been publically accused for its mistreatment of workers, these claims mainly including low wages and lack of benefits. Critics argue that these force Wal-Mart employees to rely on public assistance programs, making the local economy worse off than before. It is also argued that this carries over to other stores who are forced to compete with Wal-Mart and lower their own worker’s wages and benefits in response, thus making the impact even larger. Another major criticism of the Wal-Mart superstores is that they cause local companies to go out of business because they do not have the necessary resources to be able to compete with Wal-Mart’s everyday low prices. As a result, the workers that were employed by these local companies become unemployed, thus having a negative affect on the particular local economy in which the Wal-Mart moves into. In addition, Wal-Mart opposers state that since Wal-Mart imports a lot of the goods in which it sells, that they are directly contributing to the cou...
Walmart has had a long-standing presence in America society since the middle of the 20th century, seen as a place to get everything done, Walmart has become a fixation in our society. From grocery shopping, to changing your oil and even filing your annual tax returns, Walmart is always there, everyday. Started by Sam Walton in 1962, it began as a small operation catering to a small Arkansas community. It was started on principles very similar to small local businesses in small towns. Today Walmart has gotten a different, darker reputation. On the surface, Walmart may seem like the solution to everyday issues. Low-income families are attracted to the low prices, and people who work odd hours benefit greatly from the 24 hours a day that many Walmarts are open. Lately, Walmart has also managed to be publicly recognized as a store that sells many of today’s green products, including organic food, environmental conscious cleaning products, as well as, paper products made from recycled paper. However, underneath all this, Walmart has a different side. Exploitation of its workers is widespread amongst Walmarts who do not belong to a union, especially in the United States. Wal...
The success of Wal-Mart has yielded admiration and sometimes condemnation from numerous stakeholders. While some people applaud the retail giant for improving the living standards of citizens, creation of jobs, and improving the welfare of its employees, others argue that the retail giant has disrupted communities, brought down small retailers and compromised the living standards of
Bianco, Anthony and Zellner, Wendy. (October 6, 2003). Is Wal-Mart too Powerful? Low Prices are Great. But Wal-Mart’s Dominance Creates Problems for Suppliers, Workers, Communities, and even American Culture. Retrieved on March 30, 2011 from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40/b3852001_mz001.htm.
Wal-Mart has been the center of employee wages exploitation and for years they have been practicing the same labor abuse throughout the nation in order to save their labor expenses and maintain profit. Weldon Rich Olson, a former W...
Walmart is one of the biggest retail stores around the world. There are over 6,300 stores worldwide. Therefore, we must evaluate the impacts these stores bring to employees and consumers. Over the past couple of years, there has been thousands of law suits against Walmart for mistreatment of employees and even protests on building new Walmart’s in towns due to the negative impacts on communities. Walmart’s negative outlooks over the manufacturing companies, employees, and impacts on cities have caused controversy around the world concerning their services to their customers. Either talk about papa or the amount of people that lose their job at Walmart
Wal-Mart, the corporate retail giant known for promising customers “Always low prices, Always!” has been both praised and attacked in regards of financial treatment to shareholders and stakeholders respectively. Investors that own shares of Wal-Mart are content with the company, as its decision to annually spend $7.6 billion to repurchase stock is seen as a strategic move in increasing shareholder wealth. On the other hand, Wal-Mart has received scrutiny for violating corporate social responsibility, in the waking trend of its employees earning wages below the poverty level and the impact this has on the economy.