Wal-Mart founded in 1962 by Sam Walton is now the largest American retail corporation. With thousands of chains of stores and warehouses Wal-Mart monopolized the American retail industry. In addition, Wal-Mart is the second largest retail corporation in the world employing two million employees world-wide. As one of the most valuable corporations in the world Wal-Mart continues to improve their sales annually while offering some of the lowest prices available. Wal-Mart’s famous low price guarantee comes at a high expense of the environment, the small businesses, education, the rights and safety of the consumer, but most importantly their employees. Although Wal-Mart plays a dominate role in American economy, this “American” corporation shows little remorse in the actions they take that negatively impact people, because they are gaining a financial benefit.
Over the years Wal-Mart has established thousands of new warehouses and stores in cities and towns nationwide. Although, Wal-Mart promises to bring an economic gain to the areas that they are built on. The building of their infrastructure and the traffic it brings along with it comes at the expense of schools, which lose money due to the subsidy granted to Wal-Mart and not them. In addition, the environment is also harmed by the building process and the chemicals and pollution that the stores and warehouse manufacture. For example, in the documentary a certain Wal-Mart received numerous complaints regarding the chemicals and pesticides that they had stored in their parking lot from a Brettenville, Arkansas EPA officer and resident. These chemicals would wash into the rivers nearby, when it rained, polluting the drinking water of the town. The chemicals were not removed unti...
... middle of paper ...
...they depend on the opportunity to receive promotions without discriminations, they depend on the ability to obtain affordable health care insurance from their company, but Wal-mart has failed and neglected these families. Full time workers shouldn’t have to go on Medicare, WIC, and other government aid programs just to provide their families with the bare necessities. People should not have to worry about getting robbed or assaulted while shopping for groceries. They shouldn’t have to worry if the water is safe to drink, or what will happen to their family not that their business closed. In all, Wal-Mart is a selfish corporation, if not regulated it will continue to dominate and negatively impact the lives of many Americans.
Works Cited
Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Prices FULL MOVIE. Prod. Robert Greenwald. YouTube. YouTube, 06 May 2012. Web. 03 Feb. 2014.
But Wal-Mart’s care for us goes beyond that simple relationship. As many of us have seen if we have been to a Wal-Mart, they hire people who normally would not be able to get a job. The company knows that by broadcasting itself as positive and helpful in nature it can increase its revenue and in turn increase the amount of assistance it provides to us the consumer. “In 2004 Wal-Mart donated over $170 million. More than 90 percent of these donations went to charities in the communities served by Wal-Mart stores.’ Even more heartfelt than this, Wal-Mart was the leader in goods based relief efforts for victims of hurricane Katrina. “Walmart’s response to the hurricane was lauded even by its critics: it donated more than $20 million worth of merchandise, including food for 100,000 meals, and it promised jobs for all of its displaced workers.” And the first supply truck to arrive at the superdome was a Wal-Mart truck.
Walmart is bad for America, as some say. The Globalization essay that was handed out in class had many good points. It states that Walmart puts many smaller businesses out of service. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, "The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets," uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employmen...
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).
Wal-Mart, a "Big-Box Retailer" employs more than 2.1 million associates worldwide and has two-thousand seven-hundred stores in the United States with many more in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Central America, Chile, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, India, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom, making Wal-Mart the largest retailer in the world. "Wal-Mart accounts for upward of 30 percent of U.S. sales, and plans to more than double its sales within the next five years" (Lynn 29-36). Why is Wal-Mart so successful, and is Wal-Mart actually bad for America?
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.
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
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...
Within an excerpt from, “The United States of Wal-Mart,” John Dicker explains that Wal-Mart is a troubling corporation. Dicker begins his article by discussing why the store is so popular within the news in an age of global terrorism, coming to the conclusion that Wal-Mart has a huge scope in the United States and that it has more scandals, lawsuits, and stories than any other supercenter. Continually, he goes on to explain that Wal-Mart outsources jobs and their companies demands makes it hard for employees to have livable wages and good working conditions. Furthermore, Dicker addresses the claim that Wal-Mart provides good jobs, by destroying this perception with statistics showing how employees live in poverty and that their union scene
Besides all the points that I have stated, Wal-Mart has had to pay fines due to breaking Child Labor laws and Illegal Immigrant laws; fines up to $11.5 million for just those two types of laws. Wal-Mart is not good for this economy, for the people, and the company, in a whole, is criminal. If the people let Wal-Mart stay on the track it is on, the United States will not have anything but Wal-Marts. Wal-Mart will become a monopoly and put everyone, who started with something more than greed, out-of-business.
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 ...
Quinn, Bill. How Walmart Is Destroying America (and the world), And What You Can Do About It. Third Edition. Ten Speed Press, 2005. Print.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is in the discount, variety stores industry. It was founded in 1945, Bentonville in Arkansas which is also the headquarters of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart operates locally as well as worldwide. It operated 1209 discount stores, 1980 super centers, and 567 Sam’s Club by January 31, 2006. It has also extended its operations to many international countries. It runs its retail stores in two forms: Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart Stores. The Sam’s Club sells assorted product lines such as hardwares, electronics, jewelry, and to mention a few. The Wal-Mart stores also offer similar products in addition to the following: health and beauty products, apparel for women, men and children, household appliances etc (www.yahoo.finance.com). The Vision Statement, Mission Statement, Values and Code of Conduct, Corporate Governance: Directors, Executive Management, Committees and Stakeholder will be the key elements that will discussed in this report as it relates to Wal-Mart. In addition to that, the major trends in the general/macro environment and industry will be analyzed.
Walmart is a company that can be seen from many different perspectives. Due to its vast size; it can be easy to identify its faults and environmental issues surrounding the company. However, they are well aware of these problems and criticisms and have made many efforts towards issues around the world. The motivation and desire Walmart have to improve the world we live in today can be seen through their treatment of employees, suppliers as well as their efforts towards the environment and other humanitarian issues. Given this, there is still endless resources on the web proving the company to be one of a negative burden on society.
The first Wal-Mart store opened in July of 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton who believed that the future of retailing was in discounting and to avoid competing with established giants like Sears and Woolworth, Wal-Mart’s stated out of the large cities in the beginning and this strategy help avoid competition, while in rural areas Wal-Mart began growing their customer base by offering ways to save money and shorter travel distance, Sam Walton felt the best way to make customers happy was to provide the low prices every day (Farhoomand, 2006). The company needed to continually find ways to control the operating costs so the savings would then be passed on to Wal-Mart customers in the form of lower prices than the competitors. Walton was opposed to having any kind of employee unions for its company and saw them as a disruption and an inconvenience (Farhoomand, 2006). The continued search for lower prices made him aware of business related travel cost, Wal-Mart executives stayed in low cost hotels when they traveled and the cost related to the services provided by suppliers, Wal-Mart helped suppliers improve operations and efficiency to produce lower cost. Walton wanted the suppliers to correct any nonessential or insufficiencies existing in their business structures as a way of gaining lower prices and higher value products for its Wal-Mart stores. To further push savings Wal-Mart forced cost down by eliminating the middleman and buying directly from the manufacturers. This cost saving also applied to executive salaries Walton felt providing employees with stock options, training opportunities, and allow employees to grow and develop would be a better way to engage and involve them in his vision (Farhoomand, 2006).
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...