In “Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olsson, the girl finds inescapable fact regarding how Wal-Mart treats their customers and even more importantly how a million dollar business treats their employees. In this essay, Olsson strongly feels that Wal-Mart keeps the stores understaffed and their workers overworked and underpaid, with minimal choices for fair benefits.
Olsson begins with an individual employee, Jennifer McLaughlin, who is a mother of just one child, and is also currently utilized with Wal-Mart in Paris, Texas. She actually is a very hard worker and sets in a lot of effort daily.
But the girl with not able to afford life, with all the amount that the company compensates her. Health care insurance is too very much to afford on her behalf wage, and so she has to rely on govt assistance to provide her child the things this individual needs. She is forced to operate over time, can be underpaid and in addition treated illegally. According to Olsson, “On a given change McLaughlin might man a register, hop on a mechanised lift to retrieve some thing from a higher shelf, get fish from an army tank, run over to a new department to assist locate something, restock the shelves, pull out the bicycle racks, or field questions about potting soil and yard mowers” (607).
In other words, Olsson highlights that Wal-Mart does not hire enough employees and also overwork its personnel.
The other issue may be the company Wal-Mart is not unionized. The employees at Wal-Mart have began to try to make a union. Although a union at Wal-Mart was never formed as a result of company’s anti-union group that created simply by Wal-Mart, which in turn employees who also voted pertaining to the union were fired. Olsson claims that “Wal-Mart has taken care of immediately the union drive by simply trying to stop workers coming from organizing—sometimes in violation of federal labor law” (609). Here the girl proves that Wal-Mart is usually against the union and will perform what it can to stop 1 from forming. This essay shows that Wal-Mart’s rapid development rate and lack of difference in fair treatment for its workers is only creating more insubstantial jobs to get poor people.
The topic of Olsson’s viewpoints about that Wal-Mart treats the employees desperately can be acknowledged from many different angles due to its complexity. Some people seem to think that Wal-Mart is bad for the indegent people although some tend to consider that Wal-Mart actually will help the poor persons. Upon a close examination of both sides of this issue, I have also developed my point of view. In person, I differ with Olsson’s view that Wal-Mart is bad for the indegent because she lacks intended for hearing opinions from both equally sides.
One purpose I cannot support the Olsson’s view is Wal-Mart’s “every day affordable. ” Wal-Mart’s low cost of products saves their consumers great per year. It does not only reveals job possibilities for poor families, but offers these people discounts upon food and necessities. Though Wal-Mart personnel are paid low wages, the low cost of food and other basics negates the low pay. For me, Wal-Mart in fact will help the lower income families on the globe because their prices are more affordable. Wal-Mart’s prices happen to be helping them purchase more food and basic essentials for their households than they will be able to order at different retail stores.
Works Cited
Olsson, Karen. “Up Against Wal-Mart. ” They Say/I Say, with Readings. second ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 606-619. Print.
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