Case Scenario: Working Conditions at Wal-Mart if Wal-Mart, now the world\'s larg

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Case Scenario: Working Conditions at Wal-Mart if Wal-Mart, now the world's largest retailer, one of his core daluès the Walton foun was thet if you treated employees with respect, tied compensation to the performance enterprise, trusted the employees with important information and decisions, and provided ample o s for advancement, employees would repay the company with dedication and hard work. For years, the formula seemed to work. Employees were called associates to reflect their status within the company. Even the lowest hourly employee was eligible to participate in profit sharing schemes and could use profit sharing bonuses to purchase company stock at a discount compared to its market value. And the company made a virtue of promoting from within (two-third of managers at Wal-Mart started as ay At the same time, Walton and his successors always demanded loyalty and hard work from employees. Managers, for example, were expected to move to a new store on very short notice, and basic pay for hourly workers was very low. Stilil, as long as the upside was there, little grumbling was heard from employees E In the last ten years, however, the relationship between the company and its employees has been strained by a succession of law suits claiming that Wal-Mart pressures hourly employees to work without compensation, requires overtime without compensating them, systematically discriminates against women, and knowingly uses contractors who hire undocumented immigrant workers to clean its stores and pay them below minimum wage. For example, a class-action law suit in Washington State claims that Wal-Mart routinely (a) pressured hourly employees not to report all their time worked; (b) failed to keep true time records, sometimes shaving hours from employee logs; (c) failed to give employees full est o meal breaks; (d) threatened to fire or demote employees who would not work off the clock and (e) required workers to attend unpaid meetings and computer training. Moreover, the it claimg that Wal-Mart has a strict no overtime policy, punishing employees who more than forty hours a weeß but that the company also gives employees more work than can be completed in a forty-hour week. The Washington suit is one of more than thirty lawsuits that have been filed around the nation in recent years. arung thm to daim no Gurhi With regard to discrimination against women, complaints date back to 1996 when an assistant manager in a California store, Stephanie Odle, came across the W2 of a mal assistant manager who worked in the same store. The W2 showed that he was paid $10,000 more than Odle. When she asked her boss to explain the disparity, she was told that her coworker had "a wife and kids to support." When Odle, who is a single mother, protested, she was asked to submit a personal household budget. She was then granted a $2,080 rais Subsequently, Odle was fired, she claims for speaking up. In 1998, she filed a disc suit against the company. Others began to file suits around the same time, and by 2004, the legal action had evolved into a class-action suit that covered 1.6 million current and former female employees at Wal-Mart. The suit claims that Wal-Mart did not pay female employees the same as their male counterparts, and did not provide them with equal opportunities promotion they wan to toke nduan ago

Explanation / Answer

Answer 1: The root causes of the problems related to working conditions, discrimination and the hiring of illegal immigrants at Wal-Mart are, more work assigned to the employees as compared to the 40 hours week schedule with ‘no overtime’ rule, overtime is not documented, female employees were not paid as same as the male colleagues and no opportunities for career progression, hiring of illegal immigrant at lower wages for the housekeeping work.

Answer 2: The problems will impact at every management level of Wal-Mart going forward if they are not fixed, such as, the decision making capability at the top level of management, middle level management may have issues when translating organizational level strategies into functional level plans, lines managers may not be able fulfill the day to day operations. Thus, the entire set of organizational structure will face problems due to improper control over employee with no chain of command which will lead to low productivity, low morale or motivation among employees, loss on brand, lesser business profits and opportunities.

Answer 3: In the last ten years the Wal-Mart got involved in several lawsuits due to various reasons and most of the reasons were related to low wages or employee suing or discrimination, creating stress to employees for overtime with no compensation and use of illegal immigrants on low wages. These issues lead to poor work conditions (no extra benefits to employees, no trainings, no record of the work time, etc.). Issues were evolved when Wal-Mart was operating in smaller area but as they grow faster and big, the strategy planning and formulation was not taken seriously and issues happened. Ethical issues ate workplace were not treated properly.

Answer 4: In my view, Wal-Mart should focus on employment practices, should have maintain right level of diversity, offer work-life balance work conditions to employees, extra rewards to appreciate employee efforts, salary corrections or raise to the required ones, more employee friendly policies, etc.

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