The Toxic Organizational Culture at Wal-Mart

Keeping prices low keeps Wal-Mart from offering the high wages, high position or high benefits to all their employees. The records showed a lot of Wal-Mart employees were only paid minimum wage and children of workers were on state free insurance or uninsured. “Wal-Mart Stores Inc is cutting health insurance for another 30,000 part-time workers and raising premiums for its other employees, as U.S. corporations push to contain costs in the wake of the federal health-care law”. However, a lot of the jobs at Wal-mart do not need a special degree or special training so minimum wage or a little more is good enough. Plus with such low prices the store has plenty business which is job security and plenty of work at all hours which is a good thing even for the employees which hold low rank positions. However some of these low price item seem to have come from sweatshops oversea and four worker’s in California, ``Investigation after investigation of Wal-Mart's operations and suppliers reveal that Wal-Mart is an unrepentant and recidivist violator of human rights,''( Reuter,2005). There were also several cases during 2003-2005 where illegal immigrants in the United States were used to clean Wal-Mart stores. Wal-Mart also does not have a union which for the stakeholders could be a bad

Low wages and insurance coverage at Walmart locations have been a problem. “A report from the National Employment Law Project states that the low prices at Walmart provided to the customers have a hidden cost to the workers”(Jamieson). To have Walmart’s low prices and still have a profit they have to pay low wages to their employees. It’s low wages have an effect on all the 2.2 million workers Walmart has.This makes it harder for their employees to buy food, housing and to pay other necessary bills. “Walmart has lowered the wages the employees get by hiring people that don’t work for the company to do their work ”(Jamieson). “The employees at Walmart do hard work and most of their employees don’t know about the workers right abuse. They also don’t know where they can get compensation from the wrong things Walmart has been doing to them”(Jamieson). This is a problem because if the employee doesn’t know about this law,

Although unions are one of Walmart 's biggest setbacks, many more complications come along the way. The main unethical behavior I came across first was the disgraceful acts of Walmart dragging down these communities in every area they are built in without realizing it. These small town “mom-and-pop” stores are being taken down by walmart because of excuses like

According to Forbes, Wal-Mart is one of the largest employers in the United States, and largest companies worldwide, with an estimated workforce of 2.2 million, and growing everyday. Although the company often touts the fact that it states it’s minimum hourly wage at $1 over the prevailing federal standard, there has been a lot of controversy over some of their labor practices. Employees have often complained of the poor working conditions at many of the corporation’s more than 11,000 worldwide locations. While some of these can be related to Wal-Mart having far more employees, and thus more complaints, there is ground to these reports. One common area that is often controversial has to deal with workplace health and safety, as well as employee’s

More than 2/3 of all Wal-Mart employees are women. Wal-Mart has the same 10% of top store managers who are women who they had in 1975. An internal survey conducted by a Wal-Mart executive showed that the company pays female store managers less than men in the same position. This

The plaintiffs involved in the Dukes case claimed to have endured sexist comments while receiving lower pay and watching their male counterparts advance at a quicker rate. (Bernardin & Russell, 2013). They also claimed that the male dominated departments such as sporting goods, hardware, and garden, generally paid higher wages while offering more opportunities for advancement (Bernardin & Russell, 2013). Statistically, women in hourly positions at Wal-Mart make $1,100.00 less annually than male hourly employees, and the salaried gap is $14, 500 a year (Hart, 2006).

There are many unresolved issues with Wal-Mart that have made the news. The hourly pay scale for employees at the store level is below the Federal poverty level, many of the employees can't afford health care, and inequality of hiring women for management positions. "The average Wal-Mart employee earns $8.00 an hour, with the average work week being about 32 hours. This equates to $256 a week or $13,312 a year. The Federal poverty level for a family of three is $14,630" (Brownstein 2005). Wal-Mart's personnel polices are directed to keep wages cheap. Wal-Mart does this so they can maximize their profits. The health benefits for a Wal-Mart employee costs 20% of the average employee's paycheck. Of their 1.2 million employees, 2/3 of the employees can't afford the health benefits. Over the last 12 years,

Wal-Mart Ethical Dilemma Wal-Mart is a variety store that has had its up and down through the years since its first opening in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. The year was 2008 when the company decided to settle 63 federal and state lawsuits for a sum between $352 and $640 million dollars in total. This reason for this was the multiple lawsuits filed for unpaid hours most of which were in the form of overtime wages. Although this is not the only ethical dilemma the discount store, neighborhood mart, or supercenter has had to face, it raises many aspects as to how Wal-Mart handles certain dilemmas.

Wal-Mart could avoid lawsuits, but they need to give more job with responsibilities and opportunities to women and they should get paid as much as male employees. Even though Wal-Mart is such a successful company, they can do better if they stop discriminating their women employees and they will save money on lawsuits.

Wal-Mart’s practices can be seen to be unethical due to the effect it has had, predominately on factory workers, and manufacturers, but also other citizens in the United States as well. However, the benefits that China and some other countries have reaped due to the massive amounts of revenue that Wal-Mart and other companies

Sam Walton, founded Wal-Mart over forty years ago, where it started as a five-and-ten store in Bentonville, Arkansas (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009). Since then it has become one of the largest retail stores in the world, with an estimated annual sales of close to $300 billion (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009). His business philosophy was to provide low prices to its customers everyday (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009). With such tremendous success in profits and growth, it has also brought many challenges relating to ethical issues in regards to; off-the-clock-work, sexual discrimination, health benefits, the role of unions,

Furthermore, the interview continues by interviewing several managers and employees who previously worked for Wal-Mart. The manager claims that the high sale numbers drives Wal-Mart employees to work an extra hour. The CEO of Wal-Mart claims that the company provides many job opening opportunities and they provide the employee with competitive wages and benefits. Opposed to the CEO claim, Wal-Mart employees stated that their hourly wages are low, about $7 per hour. The benefits, particularly health care benefits, are not affordable for the Wal-Mart employee. The company avoids hiring a fulltime worker to minimize their cost of the benefits. Workers are forced to use government assistance to support their healthcare, food supplements and housing.

All associates and their families are provided with health coverage and this program is being implemented currently (Health & Wellness, n.d.). It also uses a lot of technology in its operations such as cash registers being shut off automatically so that associates can take their break and relax and also to account for accurately the amount of time that they had worked. There is also a very open culture where people are encouraged to come up and resolve issues. Though there have been a lot of criticism in the past of Wal-Mart being a bad employer, not giving enough chances for women to get promoted, exploiting workers with very low wages, (Miller, G. 2004) it seems that they appreciate these issues and are working on them to find a solution.

Job satisfaction or employee satisfaction has been defined in many different ways. Some believe it is simply how content an individual is with his or her job, in other words, whether or not they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision.

Job satisfaction is an orientation of emotions that employees possess towards role they are performing at the work place. Job Satisfaction is the essential component for employee motivation and encouragement towards better performance (Raziq & Maulabakhss, 2014) .