Mart's Negative Impact Of Wal-Mart And Its Impact On The Economy

In 2001, Donnell Battie sued Walmart because a 16-year-old shopper picked up the store’s public address microphone and announced “Attention Walmart customers: all black people must leave the store.” Battie claimed that this incident caused him “severe and disabling emotional and physical harm” and sued Walmart for $1,000,000. Battie’s lawyer argued that his client was a subject of racial discrimination because Walmart did not properly secure its speaker system. The outcome of the case was not stated but Walmart was forced to change the PA systems throughout all its

Is Wal-Mart ruining the local businesses in America? Most professional business men can agree that Wal-Mart affects the United States economy in many different ways. Wal-Mart is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. It is the world's largest public corporation by revenue according to the 2008 Fortune Global 500. However this corporation has contraverisal issues about how they do their sales and the long term affects they put in the economy. Professionals will agree that Wal-Mart has hurt many community businesses as Wal-Mart open in areas around them. There have been common statistics for when a Wal-Mart

On July 2, 1962, Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas. Over 50 years later, Wal-Mart became known as the largest private employer in the United States and the largest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart have expanded to over 4400 stores across the globe. Americans truly love Wal-Mart. When there is not any groceries at house the first thought comes to mind is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart have the cheapest and lowest price that everyone can afford, so when the groceries are scarce at home most often Wal-Mart will be the next stop. People love shopping at Wal-Mart since it is more convenient than any other store around. Wal-Mart plays a tremendous growing role in America’s economy. More than 100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every week, but is Wal-Mart good for economy? This a question that many Americans never assumed or inquired. Wal-Mart is effecting America in a lot of ways. Wal-Mart has devastated thousands of small industries and innumerable manufacturing jobs over the past decades (Economy in Crisis). Wal-Mart has become so massive in retail that it sells five times more than any other retailer in the country. Sadly, 85% of the items on Wal-Mart’s shelves comes from foreign countries. This in turns hurts America’s economy, taking thousands of jobs away and taking countless revenue. Wal-Mart is a textbook illustration of where our economic system is headed.

Walmart has been detrimental to the American economy in many ways. First of all, between 1980 and 2011, the United States of America lost seven million manufacturing positions to overseas companies (demos.com). Of these jobs, many of the positions were held by middle-class workers who lost their ability to provide for their families, and had to search for employment elsewhere. Although Walmart is not a manufacturing company, it has largely affected the manufacturing industry in America. The reason that Walmart has had such an impact on American manufacturing is because they offer their products at such a low price.

“Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olsson, a senior editor at Texas Monthly and who’s article appeared in Mother Jones, introduces her article through the perspective of a Wal-Mart worker. She focuses on the negatives of Wal-Mart by telling the real life struggles of different Wal-Mart employees. “Progressive Wal-Mart. Really.” by Sebastian Mallaby, a columnist for the Washington Post, focuses his article on what Wal-Mart critics say and attempts to defend Wal-Mart by comparing Wal-Mart to other retailers. Even though Karen Olsson and Sebastian Mallaby both examine the negative effects of Wal-Mart, Olsson berates Wal-Mart’s unfair treatment towards employees and the unlivable wages that the world’s largest retailer provides while Mallaby

Not only Wal-Mart is saving money for consumers, Wal-Mart creates jobs, improve economic conditions and overall improve the areas in where they operate. Wal-Mart usually open in rural and down trotted areas. A perfect example is Carol Foote. She and her friend Paula Beaulieu started a petition to open a

Some may claim a Walmarts’ arrival in a community is helpful to improve the growth and development in the community, but others tell a different story. Many claim that a Walmart is great way to create new jobs in the community. They are partially right, between construction and development, plenty of jobs are created. Also, about 300 retail jobs are created based on the amount needed to run a Walmart super center twenty fours a day, seven days a week. However, Kenneth Stone, a professor of economics at Iowa State University, conducted a study in which two Super Walmart centers in two different states were evaluated. The study lasted about two years and showed that for every one job Walmart had created, 1.4 jobs were lost in local communities (Davidson 1). Walmarts’ low prices come with additional costs that we are

Wal-Mart would rather bribe factories money to move on and brush it under the carpet instead of taking responsibility for their involvement. So, one would have to think this is not due to the lack of knowledge of the practices in the factories, but the choice to ignore and not care of these practices. In 2012, Wal-Mart choose to “make payments to Mexican officials of more than $24 million noted by The New York Times and in Asia there were 90 reports within a year and half period” (Sethi) to cover situations up demonstrating that money talks.

However, in 2008, there was a change from $8.63 to 10.83 per hour. Managers at Walmart do not respect employee's rights, and they sometimes treat employees in a way that is against the law in the United States. Managers even sometimes force employees to work off the clock and skip lunch, and it is again against the law. The CEO needs to pay attention of such a situation. Because of the labor-related issues, there were several lawsuits against the company in 2008 in the following States: Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, etc. There was also a gender discrimination situation where Women claimed in 2007 they were not treated fairly by the company. Even though people consider Walmart the company that employs more than 1.4 employees, it does not pay good salary to its employees. It is against the law to treat people in such a way. In 2002, Walmart used a type of competition that was not normal

Since 2009, 3,044 federal court lawsuits have been filed against Walmart and 12% of those have involved issues with employment (Van Voris & Fisk, 2012). One plaintiff who won her suit against Walmart was Meredith Boucher, an assistant manager at a Walmart store in Windsor, Ontario (Fairchild, 2012). She had been a Walmart employee for ten years and had received several work awards from her employer. She sued for mistreatment in the workplace and was awarded $1.49 million, more than she asked for (Fairchild, 2012). Meredith claimed she was a victim of mental and verbal abuse and was bullied by her store manager, Jason Pinnock; he ridiculed her in front of other employees and referred to her as a “gong show” and “stupid” (Fairchild, 2012). He made her count a row of skids to prove she could count to 10 in front of her coworkers (Canadian Press, 2012). Meredith started having physical problems from the workplace bullying and stress; she began vomiting blood and

Walmart however claims that their managers can handle complaints and grievance and that their employees do not need to pay a union to advocate for them.

Walmart is the world's biggest retail business as well as the biggest private employer in both the United States and Mexico, Walmart is a very successful company in the aspect of making profits. However, as they are successful they are as well unethical in various aspects such as in their treament towards employees, poverty-level wages, and, etc.. Kim Bobo stated that “Wal-Mart has a history of cheating workers, of paying them low salaries, of offering very few benefits,” (as cited by Schmid, n.d.) Walmart pays below poverty wages and offers very few benefits to its employees as a strategy to keep the company finanncially successful in making and gaining profits. Usually every employee that works at Walmart has such poor income that they are dependent

“The complaint, filed with the National Labor Relations Board, alleges that Wal-Mart violated federal labor law by "bribing" employees to report on co-workers who favored a union.” (www.washingtonpost.com). But Wal-Mart denied the charges that were brought against the company. Thus, Wal-Mart is wrong by bribing employees for it encourages dishonest behavior. If Wal-Mart wants to avoid a hearing or a lawsuit in this situation, they need to post notices saying the retailer will not oppose employees talking to union representatives. In addition, if Wal-Mart takes more seriously the employees’ complaints, it might encourage them not to unionize.

The jobs Walmart creates are no doubt great for the locals, if jobs in the area are poor or rare. The National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that “homes in the half mile radius from a Walmart rose in value over 3%” (Riper). The NBER also concluded that an “additional Walmart per 100,000 residents increased the average obesity rate by 2.3%” (Riper). The current controversy is that Walmart doesn’t treat, or pay its employees enough, which could be said about a lot of businesses all over this country. I would like to touch on the fact that as it may be the case that they do not pay for what is given by their employees, it is still a job that offers benefits.

With every company there come strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and Wal-mart is no exception. Wal-mart sits at the number one spot when it comes to retail businesses but they have had many issues; in particular labor law violations because they did not allow their employees to take required lunch and meal breaks.