NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Wal-Mart is the largest American retailing company. There are close to 3. 000 Wal-Mart discount stores in U. S. alone. Nowadays, many people think of a Wal-Mart as the symbol of American consumerism, however, not many of them do realize that the word American is the least applicable, when it comes to describing the essence of Wal-Mart as commercial enterprise. This retailing company is nothing but the embodiment of pure greed, which is being spawned by the process of Globalization.
Long gone are the days when Company was able to exploit peoples patriotic sentiment, in order to boost sales, as it was in 1985, when Sam Walton announced the beginning of Buy American campaign. It is simply no longer necessary for Wal-Mart to pose as company, which bases its commercial activity upon certain moral principles, because Wal-Mart is about to become a sole monopolist on American retail market. In his book The Wal-Mart Effect, Charles Fishman makes a perfectly good point when he states: We cannot think of Wal-Mart outside of current trends in worlds economy (Fishman, p. 25). It is a true that people are able to buy cheap Chinese products in Companys stores, across America, but this comes at the price of destroying American industrial potential. Ninety five percent of its products Wal-Mart imports from China, which is directly resulted by the fact that labor is much cheaper in Third World countries.
The average workers pay at Chinese factories, where the products for Wal-Mart are being manufactured, is $ 10 a day. Many critics point out to this practice as being utterly immoral; however, as practice shows, the majority of Americans could not care less about it. At the same time, they are very concerned about the possibility of loosing jobs. Most of citizens do not realize simple fact that this threat directly derives out of American manufactures moving their production lines to China.
Wal-Mart is actually leading the way, when it comes to outsourcing. Charles Fishman had written many articles on the subject of Wal-Marts business ethics. In article The Wal-Mart You Don't Know, author proves that Wal-Mart is causing harm to American economy: One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U. S.
companies direct access to the American market. There is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China (Fishman). Therefore, the link between the rise of unemployment in America and the rate of new Wal-Marts stores being built is too obvious for anyone, who has at least some intelligence. Currently Wal-Mart has 1. 3 million people employed, which makes it the largest private employer in U.
S. The entry position salary is $ 8 an hour - the lowest among other retailing operators. Because of this, Companys employee turnover reaches 65 %, on annual basis. However, instead of actually increasing workers salary and improving their working conditions, Wal-Marts managers try to increase employees professional efficiency by instilling them with a team spirit, which is nothing but a pathetic attempt to gain workers loyalty, without having to provide them with any benefits whatsoever. This, of course, is the best indication that Wal-Marts officials are only concerned about one thing extracting as much profit as possible at any cost.
Let us not be fooled by Wal-Marts promotion of various charities, this is nothing but a publicity stunt. Only very naive people can believe that Wal-Mart has priorities other than increasing its already enormous profits. We cannot deny the fact that poor people like shopping at Wal-Mart. Richard Wedder and Wendell Cox in their book The Wal-Mart Revolution praise Wal-Mart to the sky by suggesting that: If is was not up to Wall-Mart, many poor Americans would not be able to meet ends (Wedder, Cox, p. 15). However, we can also look at this from another perspective: Wal-Mart encourages the marginalization of American society. The newly arrived immigrants from Third world countries are allowed to buy products at Wal-Mart, without actually having to work on improving their social status.
After receiving a welfare check, there are two places where they usually head out to straight away package store and Wal-Mart. At present time, Wal-Mart faces 40 lawsuits over its discriminatory practices towards women and ethnic minorities. Companys workers are not unionized, which allows managers to force them to work overtime, without pay. In his article Selling Wal-Mart, Jeffrey Goldberg says: Wal-Mart is notably unfriendly to unions; in 2000, when meat-cutters at a single Wal-Mart in Texas organized into a collective-bargaining unit, Wal-Mart responded by shutting down its meat counters across Texas and in five neighboring states (Goldberg). Wal-Mart has a scandalous reputation of hiring illegal aliens, who are often paid as little as $ 3 an hour. Thus, along with depriving Americans of their chances to get a job, Wal-Mart actually adds to the problem of illegal immigration, which is very acute in this country.
In its turn, this can be seen as undermining the American national sovereignty. FBI should have gotten involved in this issue long time ago; however, our President does not think that there is anything wrong about Globalization. Therefore, Wal-Mart continues to poison America, in spiritual, economical and political sense of this word. In his book The Bully of Bentonville Anthony Bianco comes to conclusion that Wal-Mart actually represents a danger to America, because strives to turn citizens into crowd of consumers, who are deprived of any sense of national identity and who only care about satisfying their anomalistic urges: Wal-Mart s ultimate goal is to turn its customers into the robots, who are obsessed with looking for bargains (Bianco, p. 157). It is very unfortunate that our government does not seem to realize that if Wal-Marts continuous expansion is allowed to gain a momentum, this company will eventually gain the status of country within a country, for which conventional laws simply do not apply. This already started to happen, because Wal-Mart continues to defy laws that prohibit the employment of illegals.
Companys top officials think that they are above all rules and regulations. Therefore, it is up to ordinary citizens to prove them wrong. A few aging moneybags, who own Wal-Mart, are mistaken if they think that they will be able to turn America into one huge retail store, because besides shopping, Americans sometimes engage in other activities, such as going on hunting trips. Bibliography: Bianco, Anthony.
The Bully of Bentonville. Sydney: Currency Press. 2006. Goldberg, Jeffrey Selling Wal-Mart. 2 Apr. 2007. The New Yorker. 9 Jul. 2007.
web Fishman, Charles. The Wal-Mart Effect. New York: Penguin Press. 2006. Fishman, Charles.
The Wal-Mart You Don't Know. 2003. Fast Company. Com. 9 Jul. 2007. web Wedder, Richard and Cox, Wendell.
The Wal-Mart Revolution. Washington: AEI Press. 2007.
Free research essays on topics related to: wal, wal mart, third world countries, marts, mart
Research essay sample on Third World Countries Wal Mart
