Walmart Part Four
Walmart has ranked high on Fortune magazine’s list of “most admired companies”. Walmart is the one company that can creates more jobs to society. Before advancing to salaried management position, this company will recruits from within- a full 75% of store managers joined the company as hourly associates that the employee satisfied with this situation. Furthermore, management’s commitment to diversity is widely recognized among professional organizations-on gender diversity alone Walmart has received coveted kudos.
Based on the
articles of “World’s Top Employer Ranks High on Diversity and Employee
Satisfaction-But Not Everyone Hearts Walmart”, it shows that there has some
serious issue that Walmart cannot avoid. In 2000, Betty Dukes complained that
she was unfairly reprimanded and denied opportunities to advance in the
company. Five other female workers joined Dukes
lawsuit in 2001 to against Walmart on the issue of gender discrimination by the
company even though Walmart report that Dukes is having clashed with her female
supervisor and break down the rule of lunch-break policy. Dukes v. Walmart is now a national lawsuit representing over 1.6
million female workers after district judge gave the Dukes case “class action” status.
Walmart denied violations of the civil right of the six female
employees, but the individual cases are not on trial in a class action suit.
Female workers claimed that women, as a class, do not receive pay and promotion
equal to men. In Walmart’s immediate context, disparities in pay or promotion
may also be attributable to retail-related trends. Although the Dukes case had its astronomical $500
billion penalty, it is still a potential company killer. Hope that can dealing
with individual cases, Walmart has appealed the class-action designation to the
U.S. Supreme Court and the Dukes trial is scheduled to resume in 2011 or 2012.
In the end, high-powered law firms, not Betty Dukes, have the most to gain from
the lawsuit.
In conclusion,
Walmart should use a new diversity initiative that is multicultural teams.
Multicultural teams are made up of members from diverse national racial, ethnic
and cultural backgrounds. Discrimination should not occur in Walmart to avoid
employees not satisfied with the company. Walmart should be fair to female
worker so that Walmart can look into the female advantage.
Study Case
1.Why
does Walmart prefer to recruit new store managers from its large pool of hourly
associates?
Walmart
prefer to recruit new store managers from its large pool of hourly associates because
they have been with the company and might have been trained of some knowledge
of soft skill, hard skill etc. for a
while and may know than someone who has never worked there before are Walmart
company preference. This is because they want those who have the clear idea of
how they run the company and do not want new people who will require more
salary that what they are currently paying. Internal candidates have higher
success rates due to their familiarity with corporate culture, so recruiting
from this large pool is Walmart’s belief in being more effectives.
2.Explain how Walmart’s employee
diversity benefits the organization. What are some challenges of diversity?
Happier and
healthier work environment will usually evolve and find diversity to be
beneficial in solving many workplace issues and possibly foster innovations.
When a company has created a positive culture, they usually encourage training,
mentoring and education. These will add value to both management and the
workforce while developing healthier relationship internally. Externally, the positive changes should translate into a
company customer want to do business with. However, to get to this point, power
struggles and barriers created by company cultures and politics must be
identified and then become a priority for management to change. Therefore,
diversity can work to the benefit of a company if management creates the right
environment and empowers theirs employees with the tools to succeed. The
challenges of diversity in the workplace are tied directly to the culture and
politics of the workplace. Walmart’s has to nurture an environment
conducive to drawing out the talents diversity offers. Without the support
management, diversity is only a world and concept.
3.What federal
laws govern the main legal issue raised in Duke v Walmart?
Current and
former employees lost a lawsuit against Walmart in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme
Court rejected the Ninth Circuits certification in a class action. A lot of
money was at stake when the largest employer in the U.S. Walmart, with over a
million employees attracted extensive media attention. The practice of letting
local manager make subjective decision about pay and promotion made women
employees allege that Walmart was victimizing them.