Retail and the Media
Today's media focuses more on a corporations mistakes and less on what the companies give back to the community, making it impossible for the public to see the truth. In every large corporation, there is going to be a fair share of so called ‘scandals’. Unfortunately, the media preys on these scandals to bring us, the public, juicy gossip to get through the day. In my opinion, most of the scandals brought to the public’s attention have no bearing on the products and services a company brings to the consumer.
Low Pay rates
One of the many topics retailers are hit for is low pay rates. A survey done in 2003, showed the average pay rate for workers in retail to be $6.49. Unfortunately what the media leaves out is “the relatively low pay of sales workers is strongly influenced by the large numbers employed in the retail trade industry” (Buckley, 2003, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9). It does not take a lot to run a register, stock a shelf, zone a side counter or unload a truck. You get paid for the job you do.
Although the pay rate for a sales worker is low compared to the wage in other areas of interest, most retailers offer other benefits. These benefits include, but are not limited to, the following: 401k plans with company contributions; health care; stock purchase plans with company contributions; critical need funds for employees who come upon hard times; and some companies even offer college scholarships to employees and their families.
Now as you move up in a company, your pay increases with the position. In the same survey done for the average wage of the sales worker, it shows the average rate for a manager is $33.26 (Buckley, 2003, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2). This tends to be something that is overlooked in the media. You can compare it to starting out in an office as a mail clerk. Sure, you work for a big corporation in a big building on Wall Street, but you still are not making the bank. But as you work your way up, your pay rate reflects it. In any job, you have to start out on the bottom and work your way up to career status.
Here is an example of a mother who stuck with her low paying job and in the end got the pay off:
Levy, Michael, Barton A. Weitz, and Dhruv Grewal. Retailing Management. ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2014. Print.
From the perspective of the retail employee, the world is always ending. The store is always a mess and the customers are always rude. There have been countless stories and memes about the types of customers that retail workers have had to deal with, whether it is the “Can I speak to a manager?” haircut, obnoxious prepubescent
Walmart exclusively? It is a product of the times we live in and neither helps nor hinders. It's merely a part of a system of retail service that does exist and would exist with or without Walmart. The strange focus on places like Walmart but not Target or Home Depot or JCPenny or Kohl's always flabbergasts me. Like, because Walmart is the biggest, it's the guiltiest or something. Which is dumb. Nobody fucks workers like "softlines" retail. Walmart doesn't even come close.
Public relations are the practice of distributing the information between an organisation or individual and the public. The aim of PR practitioners by the client is often is to persuade stakeholders, partners, employees, investors and most importantly, the public. The practitioner’s communication stance is reaching the individuals or organisation ultimate goal. However many can examine and scrutinize public relations ethics to assert a PR problem within the industry. All PR organisations and individuals have a code of ethics of which the professionals are expected to follow. Regardless of these guidelines, ethics in individual practices seem to prove continuous and consistent violation worldwide. The James Hardie Industry, a company that is known for knowingly using products that caused thousands of people throughout Australia to grow to become sick and even resulting in death, from its products that produced massive profits is a prime example of the PR problem. However ethical communication and critically reflective practices are procedures that benefit both the public and the organisation when use correctly, opposite to the James Hardie case.
Several acts of unethical behavior by upper-level Management large organizations have made it very difficult to know who to trust with your money. Especially, when our government officials did not act with normal citizens in mind. Both, the company 's and our government officials are driven by the need for money. However, businesses continue to lose investors and taxpayers’ money. As recently as, 2015, large companies have lost investors finances, due to bad decisions or
The average wage of all U.S. cashiers was $11.22 an hour, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. “Last week Wal-Mart surprised reporters by announcing a pay hike for its most poorly paid workers. The company declared it will raise its minimum base wage to $9.00 an hour starting in April and will boost the minimum hourly pay of all its current employees to no less than $10.00 an hour in February 2016.” While this is great news for Walmart employees affected by the pay raise, it is still only approximately a 15% pay raise. This will bump a couple of 2 just over the federal poverty line, while still keeping any couple with a child below the
The cost of education is a lot more money today, not only college are expensive also we have these private and catholic school that are charging a fortune to get kids to go to school to just get a better education. In today’s world if your parents are making minimum wage, their children cannot attend school because their parents cannot afford to pay for their education. Paying people the right amount, shows respect and acknowledgement of the value they deserved and contribute to your business. This problem can be improved, minimum wage must be raised for us to survive our modern society. The minimum wage should be raised today due to the fact that the cost of living in Florida has drastically gone up. Paying
Wages in the U.S. economy have remained flat even when corporations have made record profits; one company, Aetna which raised the minimum wage from 12 dollars to 16 and even added additional medical benefits to the mix. The article also argues that there is a direct correlation between economic growth and equal pay by citing statics from the 1950’s economic boom. The article uses a very good quote which sums up the authors case very clearly, “If you pay people better, they are more likely to stay, which saves money; job turnover was costing Aetna a hundred and twenty million dollars a year. Better-paid employees tend to work harder, too,” (James Surowiecki, New Yorker). The article sums up by stating that there is no economic imperative for corporations to pay their workers so little, rather a horrible group think has developed that makes paying workers as little as possible while at the same time placing increasingly hard task upon them as the
Walmart has one of the lowest prices of goods and products in the retail business. Jeffrey Garten a dean at Yale says, “The essence of Wal-Mart is it is propelled by one thing: offering products at the lowest possible price” (24). While having, low prices is good Walmart is taking its toll on their employees. Having such low prices forces Walmart to pay their employees so little. A point made to Garten was “Walmart
Many organizations have been destroyed or heavily damaged financially and took a hit in terms of reputation, for example, Enron. The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word called Ethos, meaning “The character or values particular to a specific person, people, culture or movement” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2007, p. 295). Ethics has always played and will continue to play a huge role within the corporate world. Ethics is one of the important topics that are debated at lengths without reaching a conclusion, since there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s basically depends on how each individual perceives a particular situation. Over the past few years we have seen very poor unethical business practices by companies like Enron, which has affected many stakeholders. Poor unethical practices affect the society in many ways; employees lose their job, investors lose their money, and the country’s economy gets affected. This leads to people start losing confidence in the economy and the organizations that are being run by the so-called “educated” top executives that had one goal in their minds, personal gain. When Enron entered the scene in the mid-1980s, it was little more than a stodgy energy distribution system. Ten years later, it was a multi-billion dollar corporation, considered the poster child of the “new economy” for its willingness to use technology and the Internet in managing energy. Fifteen years later, the company is filing for bankruptcy on the heels of a massive financial collapse, likely the largest in corporate America’s history. As this paper is being written, the scope of Enron collapse is still being researched, poked and prodded. It will take years to determine what, exactly; the impact of the demise of this energy giant will be both on the industry and the
Sales associates usually will make anything from ten dollars per hour to thirteen dollars per hour; allowing employees’ room to earn a raise encourages him or her to work harder at his or her job (Anthropologie Salaries). A stock clerk will make from $25,000 to $29,000 annually and an apparel department manager makes from $39,000 to $49,000 annually (Anthropologie Salaries). The benefits Anthropologie employees receive include three items per month that are sixty percent off after that is reached everything is forty percent off (Anthropologie Salaries). All of the jobs at Anthropologie are important to the store as a whole. Allowing room for growth and giving benefits to employees’ helps the store run more efficiently and
Stores open on Thanksgiving Day have caused controversy worldwide. Both positive and negative sides of the argument are being heard this holiday season. According to the article “Many stores look at the pros and cons of being open on Thanksgiving Day” it states, “Many big stores do enough business to make the extra expense worth it.” This shows that larger stores already make enough money to pay their employees when open on a holiday. Based on what I read, smaller businesses may not be as fortunate when staying open on Thanksgiving, but the majority of stores will not be penalized when doing so. In addition, the author also stated that “Workers have complained that stores are putting profits over workers’ time to be with their families.” This
As the turn of the 21st Century evolved, it appeared as if Adelphia Communications Corporation was on a direct path of success; unbeknownst to their investors and the public, they were in reality on a direct path of destruction instead. Unfortunately, Adelphia is not the first major company in the history of the United States’ business world to lose the trust of the American public, but it is certainly one of the most notable ones to do so. As the events surrounding the Adelphia scandal unfolded in full view of the public eye, a multitude of media outlets were there to broadcast the destruction and distrust to the masses leaving many wondering if the term “business ethics” was actually nothing more than just an oxymoron. Throughout this paper, we will discuss the events surrounding the rise and fall of the Adelphia Communications Corporation and identify two of the ethical problems associated with the scandal while applying them to the deontological framework and Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
Thomas Sowell (2004) helps finish them: a third of those workers making $18,800 or less per year are part-time, and another third of those workers are no more than 25 years old. Now that we have the full statistic, we can understand that not all jobs provide a living wage, and they are for teenagers, young adults, unskilled people, and those that are looking for that supplementary income. A teenage or part-time worker will not earn the same as a full-time adult worker. Management understands that these minimum wage workers are developing skills and provide the necessary training and assistance. This commitment to the employee’s growth, influences the worker to continue on that path, which inevitably increases pay. Which leads to the next unfinished statistic listed previously by Business Week: the workers in the bottom 20 percent are not the same workers over the past 30 years. The bottom 20 percent of workers do not remain inexperienced for 30 years. (Sowell 2004). The role of management is to ensure that the employee can gain experience by leading, motivating, and
The major groups that were directly affected are investors, employees, and suppliers. Here we should make the distinction between different types of investors. There are two major types of investors: insiders and outside investors. Insiders are the investors who know the information that is not known publicly and may benefit them in some way. Outside investors are the investors who only know publicly known information. In our case, outside investors was the group that lost the most. On the other hand, insiders, notably Mickey Monus and David Shapiro, were the one that gains millions on IPO. The group who suffered was employees of Phar-Mor. After the scandal was revealed, most of the stores were closed to cover up losses. As a result, thousands of employees got fired. Another party that was damaged by the scandal was Coopers&Lybrant, the firm that did the audit for Phar-Mor, lost its reputation as a firm who does an audit with integrity. The secondary effect of the scandal was the overall mistrust among investors. They thought that if a giant retailer can forge its accounting books, why smaller companies wouldn’t do the same. As a result, investors became reluctant in investing into businesses that caused harm to the economy as a whole. The last but not least group that was affected by the scandal is Phar-Mor’s suppliers. Mickey Monus was fiercely fighting with them to make the chipset deals to cover up his losses, sometimes using inappropriate pressure and causing suppliers making unprofitable deals. In additions, Monus forced them to pay fees and sponsor his basketball League using buyer power of his company. In addition, a lot of bills for supplies were unpaid for months by Phar-Mor. Some suppliers said that they hated doing business with Phar-Mor, but had no choice since it had an access to vast amount of customers.