Laboring the Walmart Way

Summary

Laboring the Walmart Way – Deenu Parmar

In the article “Laboring the Walmart Way”, Deenu Parmar argues about three rationales, which are paying low wages, crushing unionizing efforts and lowering industry employment standards, of how Walmart becomes successful with the lowest-price strategy. Firstly, author discusses about under-living-standard payment, which is one of the most frequent complaints about Walmart. In order to get this low payment, Walmart hires hard-to-place workers, such as new immigrants, seniors and single mothers, as well as applies intentionally-understaffed strategy so that it forces current staffs to work harder. In addition, it is alleged that corporation denied promotion’s chance for most female workers. Next, author presents about Walmart’s staunch anti-unionism from hiring process to during operating in order to lessen the power and rights of employees. An example given is about a store in Quebec, which is the first successful unionization within Walmart, is closed by corporation for being condemned as unprofitable. Although litigation is possible, it appears to be costly for Walmart's workers. The last reason for the store’s success is destroying achievements gained by other competitors' unions. Due to Walmart’s lower prices, other competitors must cut their prices at the expense of reducing their employees’ benefits reaped by unions’ efforts. Even worse, in case these local stores cannot hold their position, their employees may find themselves working at Walmart with less benefits. Despite these drawbacks discussed, Deenu Parmar reckons that it is unlikely that Canadians will stop shopping there, because of its good prices and widely admired business model and also suggests that both government and citizens should involve in remedying this social concern. Some people argue that it may raise Walmart’s prices and the poor cannot afford to shop there; however, in author’s opinion, the ability to buy at bottom prices does not address the systemic causes of poverty.