Why Wal-Mart?

Question

There are a few websites out there that condemn Wal-Mart for paying low wages and not offering very good health care plans. My question is, why Wal-Mart? Most of the people who work there would either be unemployed or working at a fast food place for even lower wages with no health coverage options at all. Why not talk about McDonalds or the thousands of convience stores across the country who are 10 times worse?

Answer 1

I think they focus on Wal-Mart because the company tries to give this image of how great they are to work for, yet under pay the employee. I think it is all bad PR because most retail establishments have horrilbe benefits.

Answer 2

I think it is mainly because Wal-Mart has been slowly taking over many small towns or even the big ones. Many small businesses are being wiped out by the competition that offers more for the dollar. So many towns are becoming destroyed... I think that with all of the anti-Wal Mart stuff, you should be able to find out more. It can also be because it is relatively new and fairly aggressive in its tactics whereas many of the other companies have now been around for a long time and no one would really dream of attacking them as full on. They are already part of the American "image." Just some ideas...who knows. Maybe Wal-Mart is just an easier target...

Answer 3

Because wal-mart and many companies like wal-mart, just not as big, are the reason we have no good jobs almost everything at wal-mart is made in china if these products were American made people would have better manufacturing jobs and wouldn't have to worry about low paying jobs like mcdonalds or convinece stores, just look at the 40's through the early 60s how much nicer this country was. Remember be American buy American

Answer 4

Walmart is no different than any of the other big retailers in terms of hours, scheduling, pay, and benefits. This is the nature of retail. I worked for one of the big office supply chains. The associates were paid $7-$8/hour. We were instructed to staff our stores with 70% part time and 30% full time employees. (The 30% included the management so there were only 1 or 2 full time hourly associates) Part time employees did not qualify for any form of insurance.
I'm still puzzled on why people think cheap health insurance is a right. I used to pay $50 every two weeks for so-so coverage. I think I had a $500 deductible before any coverage even kicked in. $25/week is not unreasonable. I understand that takes a big bite from someone only making $8/hour but insurance is not free.

Most retailers are beginning to embrace scheduling software which tracks the store's sales trends and schedules the staff when it predicts the store will be the busiest. Retail is not a Monday - Friday 9-5 job.

I think Walmart attracts a lot of negative attention because they are so big. I still shop there. I have compared prices on the same groceries and Walmart is much cheaper than the traditional (unionized) grocery store. If you don't like the working conditions, get another job. It can be done. When I got sick of working evenings, weekends, and holidays, having my store manager change my schedule every week, getting yelled at by customers who forgot to mail in a rebate and so on, I put myself back in school. Even before I finished my degree, I had a better job with double the salary.

Answer 5

Wal-Mart is the biggest and the best...All decisions made within this company affect nearly 2 million associates worldwide (Wal-Mart employs more Americans than the United States Government)....also, the vast majority of large scale organizations that publicly smear Wal-Mart are union backed - Wal-Mart has been the #1 target of unions due to the huge sum of dues fees they would be able to collect from all of the associates employed by the company - And you are right, associates at Wal-Mart are compensated at par, if not better than other major retail markets. Also Wal-Mart does offer insurance to part time employees...not something you can find with many companies...

Answer 6

The people I know who condemn Wal-mart claim its because Wal-mart is driving out all the mom and pop stores. We didn't even have a mom and pop store in our town before we got the Wal-mart. In fact, its our only retail store here.

I do agree that they could pay higher wages and at least offer better health care, but I agree with you, its a job.

Answer 7

Wal-mart was one of the places (if not the first) to start the whole, buying things sooo cheap from china and selling them here....its put sooo many people out of work here at american producing places- whatever you want to call them. those people could have been getting so much more money or doing something they liked but they got let go because america cannot keep up with what walmart is allowing the chinese to do....walmart is a major factor towards our national debt and a lot of unemployment. dont agree with me? watch frontline's whole story on how walmart "is it good for america"

Answer 8

Probably because Wal-Mart touts itself on being a good corporate citizen and is saving you money no matter how it does it.

Also untrue about the 10x's worse, it is 8 1/2 times.

Answer 9

I worked for Wal-Mart. I refuse to even shop there. They like to make you THINK that family comes first. Well, it does. THEIR family. I tried switching my hours to get a second job to help out a very ill family member and I wasn't able to do it. They made my life hell after that. When I had personal time saved up, I took it to help out my family. They fired me while I was off, claiming I quit. If you get injured on the job there, they will not only REFUSE to pay your worker's comp, you'll get fired as soon as you're released from your doctor to come back to work.

Answer 10

Because Wal-mart is the largest corporation they can go for. Other places are probably the same or even worse, but you always go for the big guys.