Wal Mart And Team WorkEssay Preview: Wal Mart And Team WorkReport this essayTitle: Wal Mart and Team WorkAbstract: The purpose of this 2-page MLA paper is to determine, from research, if Wal-Mart effectively manages conflict, if they have policies and if they follow them; and by using examples of conflict and grievance if they are effective. Bibliography offers four sources.
Wal Mart and Team/Conflict ManagementWal-Mart has recently been involved in a lot of internal conflict based on the way that employees are treated; interestingly, it has decided to deal with the problems using multi-faceted solutions. Wal-Mart insists that it is a community-, team- and equal-opportunity employer, that diversions have been local problems and created by individuals that were not aligned with corporate policies. As the world’s largest retailer, it is very difficult to enforce policies and values across the board, but it has recommitted to doing so, instituting various solutions to improve the feeling of fairness and teamwork in the company, on the floor, and in general.
It is very important that Wal-Mart manage its troubles internally — it has strictly kept unions “out” of their stores, and wants to keep doing so, to keep costs of labor down. Their formal statement is that they are not against unions, but that unions are not consistent with their work ethics; when meat cutters in Texas Wal-Marts unionized, Wal-Mart eliminated the meat cutting functions in their stores. Unions say that Wal-Mart severely underpays employees while the company insists they are well-paid.
New job classifications for employees will raise salaries and allow promotion opportunities previously unavailable to most rank-and-file workers. A newly created corporate compliance team of 40 people will oversee new policies and report back to management.
The company also has been accused of preferential treatment of some employees and lack of equal opportunity for others; it created an office of diversity last November and named Charlyn Jarrells Porter senior vice president in charge. In addition, stores have been putting employees through formal diversity training (Halkias, 2004).
Wal-Mart management and board members have committed to the solutions; indicating that if the policies and goals are not met, they will cut their pay and eliminate their own bonuses.
Some conflict came from the fact that workers insisted that they were being overworked; legally-required breaks and lunches were not being provided, for example. Wal-Mart took this out of the subjective and into the objective realm by introducing technology as a tool; for example software programs will lock up registers if cashiers arent relieved for lunch breaks.
Wal-Mart has team and management policies in effect for grievance procedures; usually these follow a chain of authority; yet what the policies are does not reflect the fact that the company is well-known for its sexist practices. If you really need your job and you’re supporting your family and your manager is keeping you from decent wage hikes and promotions, you may have no other alternatives. Until recent problems and lawsuits, Wal-Mart’s hierarchical management has enforced unspoken policies of discrimination and unequal pay and opportunity. Additionally, employees say that the grievance system, the policy of the “open door policy” was actually used against them, to identify “troublemakers” so that they could be targeted for termination (Cox, 2001). I can report that policies for conflict management exist, but I also have to point out that they are not used for benefit of the employees or for effective decision making, team building or conflict management.
Example: The current large class action suit is named for Betty Duke and the story reflects the inadequacy of Wal-Mart policies to address equity and other conflict: “Betty Duke, a 52-year-old African-American woman who still works at Wal-Mart. First hired by the company in 1994 as a part-time cashier in Pittsburg, California, she was an eager employee with a sincere admiration for founder Sam Waltons “visionary spirit.” A year later, with excellent performance reviews, she was given a merit pay raise and a full-time job. Two years later, after being promoted to the position of customer service manager, she began encountering harsh discrimination from her superiors; she says she was denied the training she needed in order to advance further, while that same mining was given to male employees. She was also denied the opportunity to work in “male” departments like hardware, and was made to sell baby clothes instead. “I can mix a can of paint,” she told
” I didn’t think it would be a good experience.I left.
A quick look at this page illustrates the problem of discrimination in Wal-Mart, a company that has an appalling history of treating women as criminals while giving them free medical care.
A recent post on our blog, Wal-Mart vs. Women, stated that women who work at Wal-Mart are paid differently in wages than their men. The article goes on to state that the company’s women’s compensation policies are, in general, “designed to reduce the impact of discrimination on working women.”
At Wal-Mart, we are extremely proud to stand with and support the men who are fighting for human rights and equality and, through their actions, are helping keep our company operating and operating on a sustainable business success story.
When we first learned about the discrimination at Wal-Mart, we were all excited but at that time some of us had no idea of the scale of the problem, and yet we had not been denied the opportunity to be part of a powerful and diverse community. Today we are living in an era of massive racial inequality at Wal-Mart.
Today, one in three of WMT’s employees work at a Wal-Mart as interns, an 8 per cent decline since 2000. During this time, our average salary at the firm (excluding legal and accounting, clerical & support work, administrative, and administrative duties) has soared by nearly 50 per cent.
The reason why a company like Wal-Mart treats women differently is because they have different cultures and traditions compared to their men counterparts. Wal-Mart treats women as commodities at all times. It also does not treat men as employees, as this does not apply to women. Instead, Wal-Mart gives them the training and perks of being an executive in their preferred job:
For their most prestigious jobs, the men of WMT have earned a solid $5-8 million per year: $2 million more than their average white employees;
$100,000 less than the average black worker;
$20,000 less than the average Hispanic worker;
$35,000 less than the average white American (i.e., the average Hispanic is a “passer”, not a “white”);
$25 million less than the average black American with an IQ under 5, or the average Hispanic (i.e., the average Hispanic with an IQ of 5 or higher);
And even more significantly, the CEO hires his female employees out of desperation to get paid the same as his male employees.
When a CEO goes to work for a company he hires out of fear that a black employee can get fired, the women in their line of duty will lose both the pay and benefits of their men. Many women, especially African-American women, have not paid the same or higher wages than their white counterparts under the same management conditions and with the same practices. In fact, some women have been subjected to discrimination in Wal-Mart’s stores while not being allowed to join the company. While we support the male employees who work to keep the jobs open, these men still work for Wal-Mart and still are often denied health insurance coverage to keep working. Some of these men are even denied the right to vote as a result of their employment by several of WMT’s managers. Among the top ten employees at Wal-Mart, the man with the lowest pay, at $40,000 a year, is the only other African-American WMT employee with the highest paid pay in the company. WMT is a top employer in the African-American community, and it allows women on the bottom rung of the ladder to secure the same privileges and benefits they
” I didn’t think it would be a good experience.I left.
A quick look at this page illustrates the problem of discrimination in Wal-Mart, a company that has an appalling history of treating women as criminals while giving them free medical care.
A recent post on our blog, Wal-Mart vs. Women, stated that women who work at Wal-Mart are paid differently in wages than their men. The article goes on to state that the company’s women’s compensation policies are, in general, “designed to reduce the impact of discrimination on working women.”
At Wal-Mart, we are extremely proud to stand with and support the men who are fighting for human rights and equality and, through their actions, are helping keep our company operating and operating on a sustainable business success story.
When we first learned about the discrimination at Wal-Mart, we were all excited but at that time some of us had no idea of the scale of the problem, and yet we had not been denied the opportunity to be part of a powerful and diverse community. Today we are living in an era of massive racial inequality at Wal-Mart.
Today, one in three of WMT’s employees work at a Wal-Mart as interns, an 8 per cent decline since 2000. During this time, our average salary at the firm (excluding legal and accounting, clerical & support work, administrative, and administrative duties) has soared by nearly 50 per cent.
The reason why a company like Wal-Mart treats women differently is because they have different cultures and traditions compared to their men counterparts. Wal-Mart treats women as commodities at all times. It also does not treat men as employees, as this does not apply to women. Instead, Wal-Mart gives them the training and perks of being an executive in their preferred job:
For their most prestigious jobs, the men of WMT have earned a solid $5-8 million per year: $2 million more than their average white employees;
$100,000 less than the average black worker;
$20,000 less than the average Hispanic worker;
$35,000 less than the average white American (i.e., the average Hispanic is a “passer”, not a “white”);
$25 million less than the average black American with an IQ under 5, or the average Hispanic (i.e., the average Hispanic with an IQ of 5 or higher);
And even more significantly, the CEO hires his female employees out of desperation to get paid the same as his male employees.
When a CEO goes to work for a company he hires out of fear that a black employee can get fired, the women in their line of duty will lose both the pay and benefits of their men. Many women, especially African-American women, have not paid the same or higher wages than their white counterparts under the same management conditions and with the same practices. In fact, some women have been subjected to discrimination in Wal-Mart’s stores while not being allowed to join the company. While we support the male employees who work to keep the jobs open, these men still work for Wal-Mart and still are often denied health insurance coverage to keep working. Some of these men are even denied the right to vote as a result of their employment by several of WMT’s managers. Among the top ten employees at Wal-Mart, the man with the lowest pay, at $40,000 a year, is the only other African-American WMT employee with the highest paid pay in the company. WMT is a top employer in the African-American community, and it allows women on the bottom rung of the ladder to secure the same privileges and benefits they