Wal-Mart pays its workers very low wages this act is very cruel and barbaric especially when it is seen coming from such a big company like Wal-Mart. In 2001 Wal-Mart was paying its sales associates only $13,861/ year whereas the minimal wage that should be paid is $14,630/ year. Its quite puzzling why Wal-Mart isn’t increasing the wages of its employees, they are the one who has taken them where they are and hence should give them a slice of the pie. Even if it decides to increase the wages of its employee by a dollar for each hour all it would only cost they half a penny increase on its product.
This is not a big amount and is far below the JND (just noticeable difference) so that means that they customers won’t even feel the increase in prices as it is so minor and hence their sales won’t be affected. Not only does Wal-Mart give its employees such low wages but also expect them to work overtime without compensation for such an act. It has faced about 57 lawsuits because of this. In mostly all of the cases the company was declared guilty and had to pay a very huge penalty which costs them millions of dollars. It was reported in 2006 that Wal-Mart covers only 43% of its employees health insurance needs.
This is very less even in the year 2005 the large corporations were able to cover approximately 66% of its employees insurance needs. Covering the premium and medicinal reductions is costing the employees 7-25% of their annual income this is why they chose not to get this insurance as they cant afford it. The costs of the premium are increasing instead of decreasing, this facility of health care is too expensive for the employees, they can barely make ends meet with their present salary let alone pay overly priced premiums.
It’s mind-boggling to see that such a successful company would be committing such an act of not providing people their basic needs. Wal-Mart has also paid a lot of fines of its environmental threatening activities. It violated the Clear Water Act and is polluting public streams. This shows that they don’t care about the future of the country. It seems as if Wal-Mart is expanding day by day, the corporation is making its stores on places that are inappropriate like in 2004 a Wal-Mart store was constructed near the pyramid of sun and moon. This is a sacred place and a construction of a shopping store is highly unacceptable.
Wal-Mart doesn’t consider where it’s constructed its store but is just making it, they don’t care about the sentimental attachments of the native people but only the money they can make. g) Work Safety- Based Criticism: The company was taken to court for not caring about the security of its employees the company was guilty for blocking the emergency exists for the staff. In the cases of emergency the employees were supposed to wait for the managers firstly to unlock the doors and then they were allowed to leave. This was similar to trapping the employees inside and endangering their lives.