Walmart Is Bad For America Essay

Wal-Mart has been a massive presence in the supermarket industry throughout the United States for years. There are those that believe that Wal-Mart is beneficial for American society. However, there are also people that believe that Wal-Mart is affecting America negatively and that it should be shut down. This is the correct thinking. Wal-Mart is bad for America because it treats its employees badly, it causes smaller businesses to close, it prevents its workers from joining unions, and it mistreats its suppliers. Firstly, a reason Wal-Mart is bad for America is that it treats its employees badly. Wal-Mart has a long history of paying low wages to their workers. With so many workers employed at Wal-Mart’s around the country, there are countless …show more content…
Wal-Mart is known for being a business that refuses to let its employees join a union. Wal-Mart has gone to extreme lengths in the past to prevent its workers from joining unions; for example, “At the first sign of organizing in a store, Wal-Mart dispatches a team of union busters from its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, sometimes setting up surveillance cameras to monitor workers” (Olsson 609). In making this claim, Olsson feels that Wal-Mart is too aggressive when it comes to union busting, and that the measures taken to prevent its workers from joining a union are too harsh. Some people will claim that Wal-Mart and its workers are better off not being in a union. According to one expert, “The unions would rather someone not be employed at all than earning a wage they believe is too low” (Hoenig 47). While this may be true, it doesn’t change the fact that all Americans should have the right to choose whether they want to be in a …show more content…
In Wal-Mart’s quest to lower prices, often times they will not give suppliers a choice when it comes to how much they sell their products for. According to a supplier interviewed on Frontline on how Wal-Mart felt about Rubbermaid after resin prices went up, “You’re not going to tell us what to do, we’re not going to take your price increase, and we really don’t care what it does to you” (00:15:50- 00:15:57). In other words, Wal-Mart does not care about the suppliers that they buy from. Some people will argue that Wal-Mart is harsh on suppliers so that the consumers can save more money. While this may be true, the suppliers are also important in a business and shouldn’t be treated like they