Walmart is one of the world's largest, most successful, and most vilified corporations. – Art Carden, 2010
And even its usual critics applauded when the company responded rapidly to Hurricane Katrina, sending truckloads of water and food, much of it reaching residents before federal supplies did. (p. 180)
Taken together, it is clear that Walmart has become an enormously powerful entity that can produce significant social good by providing consumers with low-cost products and services, but this clout can also cause significant harm. According to Shaw, despite Walmart’s impressive economic success, the company has also been criticized for a number of reasons, including the following:
Walmart’s buying power and cost-saving efficiencies force local rivals out of businesses, thus costing jobs, disrupting local communities and injuring established business districts (typically two retail stores close after a Walmart opens after a 5-year period);
Walmart is staunchly anti-union, pays low wages and does not provide health insurance for its associates;
The company has sought to reduce spending on health care and other benefits by discouraging those with disabilities by required some level of physical activity for all positions and by hiring more part-time workers;
Walmart usually demands tax breaks when it opens a new retail facility, meaning that there is no corresponding increase in local tax revenues;
Because of its size, Walmart also exerts a downward pressure on retail wages and benefit throughout the country; and,
Because of the low wages it pays, government subsidies are required to help support many of its poverty-level employees and nearly half (46%) of children of Walmart employees lack insurance or are on Medicaid (Shaw, p. 179).
Indeed, even in those rare events where the company has been faced with pressures to allow unions for its employees, Walmart has actually closed its stores rather than allow unions to affect its human resource practices (Moberg, 2013). Beyond the foregoing, Walmart has been criticized for allowing some of its supply chain partners in developing countries to use child labor (Isern, 2009). In addition, the company was the target of a 2011 class action lawsuit by more than one million employees in 3,400 different stores alleging sexual harassment, discrimination and failure to promote among other causes (Reed & Harding, 2015). Although the plaintiffs provide overwhelming statistical evidence that confirmed that Walmart had corporate policies in place that disadvantage female employees, the Supreme Court unanimously held in Walmart v. Dukes (131 S. Ct. 2541 – 2011) that the plaintiffs had failed to present a complaint that was common to all members of the class and the case was dismissed (Reed & Harding, 2015).
While Walmart succeeded in dodging this bullet, it has not been so fortunate in other cases. For instance, in 2013, tens of thousands of supporters responded to calls from Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) to support the 500 Walmart workers who staged a day-long walkout in about 1,000 Walmart stores (Moberg, 2013). According to Moberg, the Walmart employees were “fed up with what they saw as Walmart's inadequate pay, disrespectful working conditions and illegal punishment of workers who speak out” (2013, p. 31).
Clearly, Walmart’s business practices cause a number of good and bad results, depending on the perspective taken. The main tenets of utilitarianism hold that actions are morally right or wrong depending on their effects. In this regard, Nathanson (2015) reports that utilitarianism’s “core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their effects. More specifically, the only effects of actions that are relevant are the good and bad results that they produce”…
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