Kevin Collins
English 105
Argumentative Analysis
October 26th 2010

In 1962 Sam Walton grew tired of grocery shopping. Once Sam retired from the military life, he settled down with his wife Helen Robson, and decided to develop his own store. After several attempts, his father-in-law granted him the 20,000 dollars he needed to develop his first store, a Ben Franklin franchise variety store near his home in Arkansas. His idea was to provide a vast array of products for his customers, while keeping the prices low to out compete the neighboring stores. His unique low priced strategies allowed him to boost sales and negotiate lower prices with his wholesalers. Once Walton’s retail operation started to take off, he decided to change the name to Walmart, by the use of his last name. He then established more than 9,600 factories, stores, and warehouses (Sam’s Club), throughout the United States, Asia, Mexico, Europe, and South America. Walmart has low prices, friendly workers, and many locations, but protesters will argue that the gender discrimination, harsh impact on the surrounding communities, and low wages, outweigh the benefits to Walmart. We thought gender discrimination ended with the ratification of the 19th amendment, but according to Wake-up Wal-mart.com, several cases have been recorded in the Walmart workplace. For example, in 2001, studies proved that for the same job classification, even after taking into account factors such as seniority and performance, women earned from 5 to 15 percent less than their male colleagues. Walmart was sued on this matter by six women claiming that Walmart systematically denied them promotions, and were paying them less than men. This lawsuit gathered more than 1.6 million women, which soon was declared the largest class action lawsuit ever. Due to these conditions, women and men wanted to leave Walmart and find other work, but due to Walmart’s predatory pricing, other local businesses could not stay afloat. Walmart has a large effect on communities as a whole, changing the environment from a small working town, to a busy, heavily trafficked commercial town. Walmart brings in over 19.7 million people everyday and over 84 percent of Americans have shopped at a Walmart. Walmart is growing and adapting new ways to monopolize the shopping experience by means of staying open 24 hours and using predatory pricing to run other competition out of business. The healthcare issue is something that has been increasingly frequented in news lately. However, Walmart offers its workers healthcare of its own. This healthcare seems beneficial on the surface, but in reality it causes more problems than it helps. First off, the healthcare only covers 54 percent of Walmart employees. That means 700,000 workers who thought they were covered, found out in the moment they needed it most that Walmart’s plan failed to cover the costs. Walmart has plan options with cheap premiums, which seems great, but they come with high deductibles, which means high costs for workers and their families. According to Wake-up Wal-mart.com, a family with a 4,400 annual deductible, would have to pay 5,102 dollars out of pocket, before Walmart’s healthcare pays a thing. And for a family whose income comes from a Walmart associate making average Walmart wage of 11.75 an hour, this equals almost 25 percent of their annual income. If the average wage is 11.75 an hour, that means that half of Walmart’s employees are making less. 11.75 an hour is already 2.5 percent below the average wage of any other retail sales person. With Walmart being the largest retail chain in the world, with over 400 billion dollars of merchandise sold in 2009, you think they could pay their workers better than they are. There have been 73 class action lawsuits filed of Walmart workers being forced to work off the clock, for no pay. Some employees were not even allowed to take their state mandated lunch breaks or even bathroom breaks. One plaintiff, Nancy Braun, was not allowed bathroom breaks while working, and she said, “ I ended up soiling myself several times” (Wakeupwalmart.com). The 54 million dollar settlement Ms. Braun received due her lawsuit is the equivalent to an hour and eleven minutes of Walmart’s sales.

Walmart does have a variety of upsides to its presence in most communities today, and that in part is why Walmart is so successful. When you walk into Walmart with your shopping list, on that list you might find completely different things. You might see food items, a replacement tire for your car, or clothes and diapers for your newborn baby. A perk to Walmart is that you can find all of those items and more within ten minutes of walking into the store. The various products keep consumers returning for their one stop shopping trips. These items can be inexpensive as well, and during the economic crunch, this helps everyone out in a small way. During this economic downfall, Walmart has been one of the only companies to actually offer more jobs than to terminate people. This means that Walmart has actually helped the community at large over the past few years by selling their products cheap, and offering jobs to struggling individuals. In 2005 when the nation witnessed one of the top five deadliest hurricanes in New Orleans, Walmart was quick to send out help. They sent trucks and relief packages to help those in need. They also sent hundreds of volunteers to offer their services in any way possible. Walmart also helps the community by offering several college and high school scholarships. They recently made a two billion dollar commitment through the year 2015 to aid hunger relief efforts in the United States in order to support the record 1 in 6 Americans who do not know where their next meal will come from. Walmart also supports other local dealers by offering them a highly trafficked location to establish a store or business. Walmart has in its stores companies such as: Wetzels Pretzels, Nail Salons, McDonalds, Eye Centers, Money Loaning Centers, Hair Salons, Redbox, and many other stores. Walmart also has walk-in medical clinics in the majority of their stores, where last year they administered the highly needed flu shot in over 4,100 of their stores (Prnnewswire.com). Walmart impacts communities in both negative and positive ways. About sixteen percent of Americans will not step foot in a Walmart because of the gender discrimination, low wages, poor healthcare, or the negative impact on the community. However the other side of this argument has 84 percent of America believing in Walmart. They think that Walmart is a good place for one stop shopping, where you can get the majority of what you need for low costs. Walmart gives back to the community by the means of scholarships and helping across the nation when someone is in need. Overall there are several view points on whether or not Walmart is beneficial. Sam Walton says it best when he said, “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
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