Wal-Mart

It is amazing to know how much one corporation can affect the lives of many. It allows of understanding how much power a group can have on its own environment. Wal-Mart has created a new situation in the United States, which I believe is going to take a lot of time to grow out of. Wal-Mart allows us to find products at low prices, which helps the lower class sustain the “American Dream” in their own way. It allows us to travel a distance and purchase everything we need from A-Z. But, we have to ask ourselves the distances these products are traveling in order to get onto the shelves. We have to consider the takes that the employees are getting. How could we support a company, which purchases bulk, sells it at a low price, creates a high demand and profits more than anyone else? And yet, they refuse to treat their employees with dignity. Throughout evolution we have seen ourselves depending on someone else to clean up the dirty work. We advance our education in order to avoid jobs that we do not want to do but we always expect someone else to take care of it. How could we support a company, which is adding on to all the global issues that we are suffering through today? You may ask yourself how a company that sells cheap can impact us so greatly. The products travel an average of 1500 miles a day, they are not grown locally, full of insecticides to increase growth, the animals are not treated properly. Free-range animals aren’t really “free”, instead they get three weeks to run around freely. Then, they are back to a packed barn where their beaks are removed to avoid any hurting. The products are dependant on corn products. The animals are fed corn products and the products we purchase are full of high fructose corn syrup. Of course, people who are low on wages and cannot afford any other product besides the one full of corn syrup. But we need to ask ourselves why the government even allows these products on the shelves. The government PROMOTES these commercials to be put on the television, and yet they know that the children are the ones that watch the television most. It is unfair to aim commercials at children’s eyes rather than the eyes of the parent. The parent is the one who develops the care and love for their child and cares about the product that is brought home.

What else are they doing? They are closing all of our local shops, which are the shops that are probably the best for us. But Wal-Mart has an upper hand to local stores. They are able to connect with their consumers and sell the goods that consumers want at prices they can offer (clearly because they have wiped out their competition). The lower prices and greater variety in one location has benefited the life of the consumers. Now Wal-mart is even doing car-repairs and all types of services that we would not typically find at a “supermarket”. We must understand that over time we are going to close all the local repair shops that we pass buy. What is next? Wal-mart has nail salons, hair salons, banks, and doctor offices in some super centers. Is it right for one company to hold so much weight in our society? Or are we allowing them to hold the weight because we are committed to them?

Overall, Wal-Mart is going to diminish other surrounding businesses, take employees at lower rates.

Alex Marshall states “Before World War II, the country made some effort to stop discount and chain stores and to protect smaller merchants. The fair-trade laws of the 1920s allowed manufacturers to set minimum prices for goods, thereby prohibiting deep discounts by stores in attempts to gain customers.”

However, an Article was released on December 3, 2009 stating that Wal-Mart is willing to pay $40 million to their workers. They have agreed to pay eighty-seven thousand of their employees the money they deserved. This has been one of the largest wage-and hour class settlements in the History of Massachusetts. The main issue was raised in 2001 when employees began to complain that they were being denied overtime and using time cards of lower-wage workers in order to pay less. The lawyer Philip Gordon states, ““For many employers, this settlement will serve as a reminder to take the payment of earned wages and benefits seriously.”

I personally am not concerned about the dollar amount that is being distributed back to the workers, what sparks me is allowing the company to understand the effect they have put on their workers. As a society, we all help each other succeed. A CEO is in charge of a company and must want the best for his companies. His workers should be treated equally in order to provide the best value and efforts.

When was the last time we heard a law suit like this appear in a local “mom and pop” shop. We need to consider bringing our local shops back. The greed of Wal-Mart will only increase and greatly increase its effect.

Perhaps the re-openings of local shops will help us more than we think. Products will not travel as far and in turn will decrease carbon emissions and lower rates of climate change. We are in a terrible state where we are concerned about our oil consumption and yet we add onto the problem. We will be able to develop closer relationships with our consumers and producers. Rather than hiring hundreds of employees and only knowing them by their ID number and wage, we can learn who were are consuming from and the impact of the product. We need to learn who were are consuming from. We must leave Adam Smith's idea which states that " these places or more broadly, situations in which there are many buyers and many sellers, none of whom can conspire with each other. Sellers don't care who buys from them , and buyers don't care from whom they buy. Both parties know what they are getting in terms of quality, so they wrangle over prices and quantities. No long-term relationships are involves. These conditions hold for the production of many goods and services." But, Nancy Folbre will respond by saying "but, they do not hold for the provision of caring labor."

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicalperspectives/wal-mart.html

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/12/03/wal_mart_will_pay_40m_to_workers/?page=2

Party's Over-Heinberg

Cartoon Guide

Ecological Intelligence-Goleman

Reasonable Life-Mate

Invisible Heart- Nancy Folbre