Week 2-strategic plannning: Walmart being socially irresponsible

Walmart (strategy to beating competitors)

At some point Sam Walton made the decision to achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales prices lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. By 1970, he had eleven Walton's stores Inspired by the successes of other discount department store chains, Walton opened the first store in his own discount chain in Rogers, Arkansas that year. Responsible for the purchase and maintenance of signage, Walton's assistant, Bob Bogle, came up with the name "Wal-Mart" for the new chain. By 1967, the company grew to 24 stores across the state of Arkansas, and had reached $12.6 million in sales, and by 1968, the company opened its first stores outside of Arkansas in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Walmart being socially irresponsible

Walmart is aggressively anti-union; fails to pay a living wage to its full-time workers, who start out at about $10.11 an hour or $21,000 in annual salary; fails to provide adequate and affordable health benefits to its workers and their families; pollutes the environment; violates child labor laws; and drives mom and pop retailers out of business. Additional alleged or proven sins include supporting foreign sweatshops and constantly squeezing suppliers to reduce their product pricing so that these companies struggle financially or go out of business. Walmart also has been accused of or has lost lawsuits or paid fines for exhibiting discrimination against women and Hispanics, forcing employees to work off the clock, denying workers their lunch breaks, using cleaning contractors that make heavy use of illegal aliens, and locking workers in stores at night.Here are a few specific facts regarding Wal-Mart's dark side. Wal-Mart faces the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history. It is the subject of a class action lawsuit involving about 1.6 million current and former female employees.In addition, Wal-Mart's annual turnover of hourly workers is 50%. Some 46% of Wal-Mart's employees' children are uninsured for health care or rely on state-subsidized health care programs. Finally, a 2004 Congressional report found that a typical Wal-Mart store with 200 workers cost federal taxpayers an estimated $420,000 per year in hidden costs, such as Medicaid, children's health insurance, free school lunches, and housing assistance.

1 comment:

STUDENT MAIL BLOGOctober 18, 2010 at 10:05 AM
Good blog so far. Remember that the text of your blog should be your own, not cut and pasted from another source. If you use material from another source you must attribute that to the original source.

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walmart

Over the last decade or so Wal-Mart has become involved in thousands of lawsuits for a variety of reasons. The majority of the suits are class action lawsuits in which employees are suing for unpaid wages. They have also run into many discrimination cases in which employees are suing for being profiled out of money or out of jobs. For instance, there were two separate cases, one in 2004 and one in 2005 in which African Americans were suing two different Wal-Marts for denying them jobs based on race. These became so popular that the reverend Jesse Jackson spoke during both of the proceedings. There are also many lawsuits in which women are suing Wal-Mart for discriminating against them. In one article written in 2004 USA today mentioned 32 different lawsuits that involved women suing Wal-Mart. All of this has not affected Wal-Mart financially however, according to Fortune 500, Wal-Mart still had $351 billion in revenue ($11 billion in profit) in 2007, a new high for the corporation.