Sex Discrimination at Walmart Essay

In “Labouring the Wal-Mart Way”, Deenu Parmar discusses Wal-Mart’s poor business practices and mistreating of their employees. Parmar is biased in that she focuses primarily on the negative aspects of Wal-Mart and discusses mostly from the employees’ point of view. The essay attempts to sway people to stop shopping at Wal-Mart because the author portrays it as unethical by focusing on the poor wages, anti-unionization, and paying off charges instead of properly addressing the laws being broken. Parmar does point out that people will continue to shop at Wal-Mart, seemingly guilt-tripping those who do shop there. The whole article relies heavily on an emotional appeal, which forces the reader to sympathize for the employees of the company without

The women in this case felt discomfort when they felt mistreated from their male managers in the form of sexism along with unfair pay and lack of promotions. In this case, a woman was told to doll up and to wear makeup in order to advance which is a perfect example of one’s boundaries being pushed while making them feel uncomfortable. The next conflict event was annoyance. According to the Huffington Post article regarding the case, there was a significant difference between the level of experience between male and female workers along with their opportunity for promotions. The male workers with less experience got promotions compared to the female workers with years of experience and positive performance reviews. Male workers were also paid more compared to their female coworkers. Being passed over for jobs was evident to the women identified in this case which lead to the awareness of gender discrimination, the next conflict event, in a diverse workplace with men and women with their only similarity being that they are Wal-Mart employees. The awareness of gender discrimination faced by thousands of female employees led to conflict, the last conflict event where a class-action lawsuit was filed against Wal-Mart despite them saying that they were a diversity encouraging, fair treatment, and nondiscriminatory company (Shapiro,

Wal-Mart has been accused of discriminating against women. Women had been denied training and promotion opportunities that are offered to men. In addition women are underpaid. That is, men are paid more than women. According to Hoover’s handbook of American business, “in June 2001 a group of six current and former female Wal-Mart employees filed a sex discrimination lawsuit (seeking to represent up to 500,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers) against the company.”(Hoover’s Handbook, pg.907) The suit was filed because Wal- Mart failed to provide equal employment for women. In fact, there are over 70 percent of women working at Wal-Mart, but only a small amount of those women are managers. So, men are

The employees were getting paid a low hourly wage and they were not receiving any benefits. Sam Walton was chasing after power, it might not have been the power of having money, but making sure whenever someone talked about him in a positive way. Employers such as Walton are not generous and they are more than harmful when they stifle activism; for example “[w]hen workers tried to join unions and Wal-Mart ruthlessly crushed them, firing anyone foolish enough to speak out”(Packer,354). This example shows how the employees were powerless while working at Wal-Mart. Consequently, Wal-Mart was not the only company. If the Wal-Mart’s corporate heard anything about any worker wanting to receive more benefits about what was actually happening they would quickly act upon that and fire the employee. In addition, the power that corporate would show when other workers saw this would prevent any further action. While the workforce might be powerless, at least they are protected from the streets. On the other hand, women living in the ghetto who do things for safety is a source of power for them. In both of these situations, they are doing more harm than justice. Joan Morgan explains the struggle that takes place in the black community and more so in the black women’s community. Both groups, the low paying employees and African-American women are born to fail, but sadly either one are doing anything to try changing this problem and allows it to continue. The employees at

Walmart employees, customers, and suppliers have seen their fair share of Walmart’s bad side. While Walmart’s founder, Sam Walton, claims to make their employees feel like they “are working for them” and that they care Walmart has done such a horrific job with the way they treat their employees that one day, the workers decided to walk out and go on strike. They walked out on the grounds that they “were emblazoned with the workers’ grievances: poverty wages, miserly benefits, dignity denied” (Eidelson 1). They felt like they weren’t only taking a stand against Walmart, but also taking a stand for the younger generations to come. Walmart’s employees are getting treated unfairly and are underpaid. The CEO’s, Michael Duke, annual salary gives him more money in an hour than an employee who works full-time would make in an entire year. In Bangladesh, over 100 workers “died in a factory without outdoor fire escapes, NGOs blame Walmart for pushing deadly shortcuts” (Eidelson 1). Not only are the employees being poorly paid by Walmart, but they are paying their life to Walmart just to make enough money to barely get by. Walmart even made a pregnant employee work around chemicals that eventually made her ill. After a trip to the doctor, Walmart allowed her to be put on a lighter duty, so they made her a door greeter; however, they

In the reading “Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olson, she explains the tactics used by Wal-Mart in order to avoid paying their employees the fair wages they deserve. By training their employees to be anti-union, they can keep their pay lower while getting more labor out of them. In doing this employees are less likely to ask or receive promotions because they do not expect it to happen. Many of those who have worked at a Wal-Mart speak out on the mistreatment because they want a fair wage for the work they are putting in. The main focus for the way Wal-Mart runs their business is to teach their employees about working in a place union free. Those who disagree do not gain much change because they are quickly put down.

Although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many women continue to undergo unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace. Even though women have come a long way, they are still being discriminated against in certain fields of work. High-end jobs, most commonly large companies and medical fields, continue to discriminate against women even though they have the same job qualifications as men.

As a marketing manager you have recently turned down Nancy Conrad for a position as sales supervisor.  Nancy believes the denial was due to her gender and she has filed a sex discrimination charge with the EEOC.  Explain the steps the EEOC will use to process the charge; include Nancy’s options during the process.  Determine the likelihood of success of Nancy’s discrimination claim from the EEOC data base (available through www.eeoc.gov). Describe the basic precautions you should take so you might prevail in her claim.

In this case, Betty Dukes, a female Wal-Mart employee, with five other women, filed a class-action against the violation of civil rights by the Wal-Mart company. The claim was that the

“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

Women are one of the most groups being discriminated against today. They try very hard to fit in and be successful in their careers. Discrimination against women is found in many workplaces. Some managers try to fix this problem, but others just ignore it. Companies that pretend that gender discrimination doesn’t exist are usually the ones that get sued for it more often. Other companies try to avoid law suits by dealing with gender discrimination and resolving conflicts before it gets to the law suits.

Discrimination continues to run rampant throughout organizations in both the United States and worldwide. The Supreme Court case, Dukes vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., dealt with 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees that claim that they had been a victim of gender discrimination. The ensuing pages will discuss the specific issues that the plaintiffs encountered, followed by suggestions from a human resource manager’s stand point in rectifying adverse impact within the Wal-Mart organization.

It is not up for debate whether women are discriminated against in the workplace, it is evident in census data; in 2013, among full-time, year-round workers, women were paid 78 percent of what men were paid. It is said that the organizations that are pro-equal pay, including some unions, support the idea that the government should set wages for all jobs. To the contrary, the organizations that are proponents of equal pay are not for job wages being set by the government-they wish to have the discrimination taken out of pay scales from within the company. Commonly, this pay gap is attributed to the fact that women in the United States are still expected to attend to familial obligations over work.

Wages and benefits are not the only complaints Wal-Mart is now facing. Recently, Wal-mart was accused of denying women equal pay and opportunities for promotion (Bianco, 2003). Wal-Mart attempts to distract from their past and present diversity issues by devoting an entire section of their webpage to this subject but until Wal-Mart can show statistical proof reflecting their claims of fair wages, good benefits, and equal treatment, the complaints by the unions and consumers will continue. These upper level management decisions are having a negative impact on the company and providing an unhealthy organizational culture for the organization.

In the United States Walmart effects negatively retail worker wages as well as retail employment. In addition, University of California researchers found that workers in Walmart earn on average 12.4 % less than retail workers as a whole (UNI Global Union, 2012). Walmart’s workers demonstrated thier dissatisfaction with working conditions and low wages by protesting on Black Friday 2012, which is the day the company is making the biggest profit. Walmart workers stood up and more than 1,000 demonstrations in a hundreds encouraging Walmart to act ethicaly towards them. For workers protesting it was a huge risk as they are oficially not protected by any labour union (Progress, 2012). Another evidence that Walmart treats its employees unfairly are discrimination claims. Women workers in California pursue discrimination claims saying that Walmart systematically treats them unfairly. According to women workers retail giant denied to pay raises and promotions due to gender bias (Levine & Gupta, 2011).