Submitted by: Submitted by fayen
Views: 10
Words: 471
Pages: 2
Category: World History
Date Submitted: 04/10/2016 10:45 PM
"In order for Walmart to attract good people we need to offer competitive wages and benefits, and we do," said Kory Lundberg, Walmart’s director of National Media Relations. "We offer pay and benefits that meet or exceed the majority of our competition in every location we operate, and that includes unionized competitors. We're clearly offering jobs that people want, because last year Walmart received more than 5 million applications to come work in our stores."
Most major retail chains that compete for customers with low prices pay relatively low wages to hourly workers. But as the largest private employer in the world, with 1.4 million workers in the United States alone, Walmart bears outsized influence on American working opportunities: It has largely set the standards for similar companies.
"In order to deal with competition from Walmart, other retail outlets have been forced into a reduction in wages and benefits across the board," said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California at Berkeley.
Initially devised to help standardize labor policies in response to costly lawsuits, Walmart’s pay plan has helped the company keep costs down by capping raises and regimenting employee movement within the company.
This formula has benefited company shareholders: Walmart’s profits rose 9 percent in the third quarter of 2012, to $3.64 billion, the company reported Thursday. Earlier this fall, the company’s stock hit a record high. But the compensation structure for hourly workers helps explain why many rank-and-file workers carry a sense of grievance that they have been denied a share of the spoils.
"How could a multi-billiionaire company such as this only afford to hand out one 40-cent raise per year to employees while the ones in the top portion of the hierarchy are riding high starting with the six-figure
store managers?" said Joe Lyon, a former sales associate at a Walmart in Sterling Heights, Mich.
The...