Wal Mart 's Latest Ethics Controversy Essay

There are many opinions on the ethics of the Wal-Mart model, both favourable and unfavourable. The article “ROB Ranks Wal-Mart Among Canada’s Best Employers” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 287) offers a favourable viewpoint of the model, and the article “The Cost of Walmartization” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 288) offers an opposing unfavourable view. This paper discusses the theoretical approaches used in each article, along with the supporting evidence that was used in an effort to be convincing.

Wal-Mart, the multi-billion company and the second largest employer in the world, is the most controversial corporation in the world. Wal-Mart is a global powerhouse and affects many people around the world. Wal-Mart is constantly getting attacked from unions, human rights groups, small towns and small businesses. Wal-Mart is accused of treating their workers poorly and driving small businesses out of business. But however these accusations are false or over exaggerated. Wal-Mart offers families and low income people quality products. Also, they pay their workers competitive wages and treat them with respect. Wal-Mart opens their stores in rural and under developed areas. Wal-Mart improves the lives of the people who live rural area and

Walmart is one of the biggest retail stores in the world. Walmart operates worldwide with current total count of its stores reaching 9.667 stores worldwide (Walmart Corporate, 2011). Interestingly, Walmart is an organization that is currently non-unionized. This paper will provide brief background information on Walmart organization. Legal issues and obstacles that Walmart could encounter will also be identified. The writer will determine which federal, state, or local laws could be broken because of the legal issues and why. Finally, recommendations to minimize possible litigation will be provided.

Wal-Mart’s management behaves immorally towards its employees. They do not value their employees’ needs, rights, or the labor laws that the US put into place to protect them. Wal-Mart’s low price on everyday household products is what sets them apart from other discount retailers. Their employees help make it possible for them to dominate their competitors in the

Wal-Mart’s strongest tool in fighting off unionization efforts is the weak penalties for employers that violate U.S. labor laws. Wal Mart has enormous monetary resources, which gives the company the ability to break various labor laws and only see minimal consequences from their standpoint. Ultimately, this gives Wal-Mart little incentive to obey U.S. labor laws, as the consequences for breaking the laws are minimal.

Walmart has created the Global Ethics to promote its ethical culture to all associates, customers, shareholders, suppliers, and any company or individuals conducting business with them. The Global Ethics provides a Statement of Ethics which serves as a guide and resource in order to reach an ethical decision. Walmart is one of the largest corporations in the United States with a social responsibility to both the customers and the people it employs which is outlined in their Statement of Ethics.

Firstly, Wal-Mart is a non-union employer, it pays lower wages to their employees than other grocery stores and retail, and it does not offer any benefits to their employees. Wal-Mart supports unethical offshore outsourcing corporations. Some people think consumers need to unite and urge others not to shop at Wal-Mart until its Board of Directors promises they will pay better wages with benefits to their employers .But Some said this is a free competitive economy, it has own strategies to survive and those that cannot should dissolve. Nowadays, Wal-Mart has become pretty strong and threaten other organization to pay the wages and benefits.

Jeffrey Seglin, a business ethics columnist for the New York Times, participated in an event sponsored by Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. He described two Wal-Marts one as evil and one as good. The evil company is very, very big and does everything to grow bigger. They use illegal immigrants to mop floors and are accused of locking employees inside overnight. They practice gender discrimination, pay low wages and deteriorate suppliers and competition. The bad one "is the enemy of all that’s good and right in our nation" (Seglin, 2004).

Walmart was frequently accused of not providing employees with affordable access to health care, but the top managers and HR managers know their focus was just to try their most to implement the “low-cost” strategy. Finally, from the labor relations perspective, Walmart couldn’t have done better to show us how the contingency model of “best fitness” works. Walmart has strong anti-union policy. Allegations of firing workers sympathetic to labor organizations have been made, all new employees are shown a propaganda video tape which said joining a union would have bad implication for them, and the employees should never sign a union card. In the UK, it was reported in the Guardian that Walmart is facing the prospect of a bruising legal battle

Examine the manner in which Walmart’s business philosophy has impacted its perception of being unethical towards supply and employee stakeholders. Provide one example of Walmart in an unethical situation. Wal-Mart stores, Inc. is the world’s largest retail enterprise. It is also the world’s largest employer. Mr. Walton the founder of Walmart always believed that customer service and low pricing where the main ingredients for a successful company. Mr. Walton had a 10 foot rule from the beginning which meant that if his employees where within

After analyzing the video on whether or not Jim's actions were ethical by not reporting the injury incident, I would have to imply that his dilemma was not only morally unethical, but lawfully unethical as well. By utilizing the deontology model that states to uphold certain underlying principles whether right or wrong and regardless of the circumstances, it is clear this ethical stand-point of "rule-based" approaches has been breached and a company's standard operating procedures were not met. This scenario and terrible decision could possibly result into a world of trouble for Wal-Mart Corporation that can be timely, expensive, and disruptive. Whether illegal or not, because the proper steps were not taken, the injured employee can legally

A 48-year-old man, Michael Rice, works for the supermarket firm Wal-Mart. While Michael was at work, he was helping a customer carry their newly purchased television to their car and collapsed to the floor. A week later, Michael unfortunately passed away and an insurance company ended up paying out $300,000 for loss of his life. From the beginning, it seemed to be a sad and not extremely unusual. Until there was a twist regarding who benefited from what the insurance company paid out. Unfortunately it was not Michael’s family, Wal-Mart ended up getting every dime of the pay out. This was not the first time an incident like this happened. Wal-Mart had thousands of policies on employees regarding an incident similar to this. Every time an employee passed away, the corporation enjoyed money from the pay out of insurance companies.

I believe Wal-Mart’s labor policy and practice is based on greed and its ambitions to make and save money. Wal-Mart initially could just had an utilitarian ethical perspective in which it was practicing to do the greatest amount of good for the largest group of people(Wal-Mart’s people and its bottom line), however, Wal-Mart crossed the line when they started to put employees’ safety at jeopardy and violating employees’ rights. Wal-Mart’s actions of doing a Cost- Benefit Analysis and deciding it was cheaper to wash workers’ blood from clothing before shipping the clothing overseas for sale than it was to provide gloves could only be define as greed. They are no longer taking in consideration what is the greatest amount good for Wal-Mart since

Last but not least when the topic of unethical competition is brought up it's a common topic that is encountered in every day to day business for example Wal Mart's strategy of low prices which usually are hard to dispute hence their biggest customers are low-income people who shop there just to get by and rather than being mindful , they use this to their advantage.

Walmart is now a trans-national corporation. All such corporations have major problems in the labor front. The reasons are various. Firstly Wal-Mart's motto is to give quality goods at very cheap prices. All its operations are therefore designed to that end. Walmart has suppliers who offer competitive prices. Since the company has to serve various parts of the globe, they have the policy of sticking to the most reasonable prices. Thus the awareness of cost, customers, and need for investing in continuous improvement and the bifurcation of the various retail units to small supplier stores as individual firms have made the company's functions seamless and cost effective. However it cannot be sustained for long and the natural result is that the company looks out for cheap labor and less cost of production and supply units. Thus it regards the labor at the overseas units as lesser and tries to push costs down. Thus it can be seen that in controlling cost and being conscious of costs the company has all along made the labor at the receiving end. (Christopherson; Lillie, 2005)