Topic > Ethical problems in the Wal-mart company: case study on gender discrimination

IndexIntroductionWhat factor could explain the discrepancies discovered by the Drogin report?What should Wal-Mart do to correct these discrepancies?ConclusionIntroductionThe ethical issues raised involved the women in Wal -The Mart company discussed in the case study has shown that there is a great deal of discrimination in the workplace. The common knowledge among all workers, whether employees or employers, that discrimination in employment is technically unethical behavior. Discrimination means that that person is prejudiced against one another regarding their personality or moral attitude. There are six women who worked at Wal-Mart and have already been reported by them regarding their pay and the opportunity to be promoted with much less chance than a man working at the same place. This is becoming more and more dissatisfied, all those men who are promoted easily actually do not have very good performance, qualifications and experience compared to women. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay For the first issue, we found that women at Wal-Mart are paid less than men. This can be approved based on the research completed by Richard Drogin. He is a statistical expert who comes from California State University. He said that, in the Wal-Mart management company, employees are divided into two groups: salaried managers and hourly employees. Salaried group managers actually earn $50,000, but hourly employees can only earn $8,000 in a year in 2001. Example given in the case study, the district manager actually earns for the annual salary differently based on gender, that is, for men, they can earn $239,519 but women just earned $177,149. In reality the women receive less than $5000 than the men discovered after the investigation. The second issue concerned the chances given to women to be promoted less than men. By Richard Drogin, to see the gap between men getting promoted in 8.64 years versus women, they need 10.12 years to get promoted. Furthermore, he found that women actually perform very impressively compared to men. In the performance rating given to the employee, on a scale of 1 to 7, 1 indicates low performance and 7 indicates higher performance. In this case men get 3.68 and women 3.75. This approved in this case, men are giving less performance than women. In literal terms, moving and one of the company policies in terms of personnel is actually a factor in why it is very difficult for women to get promoted. William T. Bielby, an expert in sociology, is a professor at the University of California. He said there was no written guidance for managers, although they had written guidance on promotion criteria. This directly demonstrates that the “glass ceiling” actually impacts decisions to promote for women. To make it easier for them, a store manager told his sales assistant that retailing is not suitable for women. The third problem arises from the issue of compensation received by very different male and female employees. Drogin said in 1996 research that women were paid $0.35 less an hour than men. The pay gap between men and women continues to widen, reaching $0.16 an hour in 2001. In research conducted in the same year, 1996, male sales teams earn more than $0.20 an hour. associations ofwomen's sale. Any company must effectively implement rules and regulations, meaning all employees must enjoy full benefits and be paid fairly based on the right qualifications. Last but not least, the management of Wal-Mart, the existence of women actually inferior to that of men in the literal sense. Marc Bendick, a labor economist, said other companies have 56.5% female employees including management, but Wal-Mart has only 34.5%. This means Wal-Mart would need 4,000 more female employees. Important reason why we need to be balanced in creating employee diversity which consists of many types of employees, because we need many ideas from men and women, but different and varied, help many companies to grow. All the statistical data already explained above confirms that employment discrimination occurs in the Wal-Mart workplace. Be that as it may, at the beginning of 1990, Wal-Mart implemented an anti-discrimination sign but in reality it was not very useful in the company. From the lawsuit, Wal-Mart must be prepared with 10 billion dollars, it must increase employee pay by 60% to alleviate the whole case. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 helps employees prevent discrimination and protect them based on hiring, pay, religion, race and sex. What financial impact could the lawsuit potentially have on Wal-Mart? Financial impact can be concluded as any situation that required the company to go through but in a bad situation like a disaster, product failure or any other risk involved. Even workers who aren't even employed by Wal-Mart, which Wal-Mart technically forces to lower wages, live by standards among themselves. Because of this case, the company faces billions of dollars to repair all damages and pay back. Women deserve to win this case because they also have rights as workers or employees of this company. What should actually happen every working woman should enjoy the same benefits or advantages afforded by a company with male workers. Employment discrimination among female workers is illegal. Since the workers are women, this does not mean that the workers can be denied the rights to be promoted, enjoy holidays and other benefits. The Equal Pay Act states that all male or female workers must be paid equally. The Walmart company faces a problem if a lawsuit requires them to be liable for all workers' damages and be fined. From here we can see that Wal-Mart must be responsible for all the mistakes, even if it has to sacrifice its current money to satisfy all the victims. Another consequence that may occur is that the company's profit will decrease due to increased turnover among workers dissatisfied with management. Then, they have to pay all the workers so that the case will be resolved, but the profit will decrease until production or employees return to work. Moral Complaints of Women Suing Wal-MartWomen workers at Wal-Mart have sued the company with some major complaints regarding issues of promotion position, payment system, management training, and job assignments; Female employees received fewer opportunities and had to wait longer than male employees to promote to reach a higher position. While female employees performed higher than male employees, their compensation had a large gender gap. The female workers of the Wal-Mart company have unequal management training. Male workers get better job assignments thanthey increase their skills and abilities compared to female workers, even if they have better experience and qualification. I firmly believe that these complaints are justified because it has been clearly demonstrated above that female workers are treated unequally and discriminated against. Richard Drogin, who deals with a statistical report, found that in Wal-Mart, all employees are divided into two groups, namely; hourly workers who occupied the lower levels and salaried managers who occupied the higher levels. Wal-Mart's hierarchical job position can be defined in simple words as progressing from being an hourly employee, to a management trainee, to store manager or assistant manager, and finally to district, regional, or cooperative manager. The working standards of working employees, their compensations are becoming higher than each other. Statistics done by Drogin state that salaried managers earned around $50,000 per year while hourly employees earned $18,000. It also found that 65% of hourly workers are women, only 33% are salaried executives. At both levels, i.e. hourly employees and managers paid by female workers, they actually earn less than men. Drogin said female workers stay on the job longer than men at Wal-Mart, which has resulted in female workers having more on-the-job experience than male workers. However, female workers have to wait 4.38 years from the date of hire to be promoted, compared to male workers who only have to wait 2.86 years. Drogin notes that two factors that could influence women's ability to be promoted, first, store managers believed that management positions required geographic relocation of personnel, transfer this belief to women in war. Secondly, while the company can post positions, it is limited to word-for-word potential to choose only the staff it wants. Marc Bendick, a labor economist, noted that other retail companies have no problem promoting female employees to top management. But Wal-Mart is made up of only 34.5% women and 56.5% salaried managers from 20 comparable chains. The other thing they reported to Wal-Mart is the problem with its hiring practices. Due to gender discrimination, most of the hiring practices in the company are stereotyped about female workers, even if their personality and experience is very good, but the reasons of being stereotyped make them examine female workers based on their individual opinion. All these supporting statistics have confirmed that women are severely discriminated against. This is why six women suing the company presented concrete evidence in such important elements of this lawsuit. I don't agree that each woman in Wal-Mart should be considered individually, it should be determined individually if she was discriminated against specifically by Wal-Mart, because every woman's situation is different. According to Drogin, female workers earned about $5,000 less than male employees overall in 2001 at Wal-Mart. Drogin also examined that in 1996, women hired as sales associates were paid $0.20 an hour less than men hired as sales associates. All of these evidences stated by Richard Drogin are technically endorsed by the Wal-Mart company discriminating against female employees by not treating them fairly and equitably. What factor could explain the discrepancies uncovered by the Drogin report? The issue that I believe can explain the discrepancies discovered by the Drogin report is:misperception of a higher level between male and female workers, the subjective analysis of performance (work experience) and salary and promotion discrepancies. First, the issue of misperception of the higher level among male and female workers. Drogin found that 65 percent of hourly employees were women, but only 33 percent of salaried managers were. Hourly employees such as store cashiers, associates, stock clerks, department heads and service managers while salaried managers such as store manager and assistant manager, above them are the district manager, regional vice presidents and senior vice president. Apart from this, according to the Drogin report, female workers perhaps work to raise children or for some other reason and this causes women to abandon their jobs more than men. This means that most female workers were employed at a lower level than male workers. Second, the factors that I believe may explain the discrepancies uncovered by the Drogin report are based on the subjective analysis of job performance or skills. Based on the assumption that Drogin reports that women left their jobs more than men, perhaps to raise children or for some other reason. This would give women higher turnover rates and men greater expertise and seniority. However, Drogin found that women stayed in the workforce longer than men at Wal-Mart and therefore had more on-the-job experience on average than men. In addition to this, the Drogin report argues that it is inappropriate for female workers to turn to salaried managers because most salaried managers should be prepared to face more demanding challenges in their jobs, such as having to be willing to relocate geographically, and they communicated this belief to women. This causes many women to be unwilling to leave their accommodation. Therefore, while the company had a policy of advertising management positions on the market, the manager had the right not to advertise some positions and to communicate the availability of these positions via word of mouth to the selected potential candidates. Finally, the issue that I believe may explain the discrepancies uncovered by the Drogin report concerns salary and promotion discrepancies. Drogin found that, on average, women had higher performance ratings than men. Drogin found that women hired in the same position as men paid less than men. For example, he found that girls who were employed in hourly jobs in 1996 were paid $0.35 less per hour than men employed in hourly jobs in the same year. By 2001, the gap between the wages of these same employees had widened to $1.16 an hour; furthermore, women hired as sales associates in 1996 received $0.20 an hour less than men hired as sales associates that year. By 2001, the difference had grown to $1.17 an hour. Finally, Drogin ran many statistical tests to see whether discrepancies in promotions and pay could be the result of women not being available once the promotion was launched. What should Wal-Mart do to correct these discrepancies? Discrimination happens within the company. In order for Wal-Mart to correct these discrepancies, it should offer female employees the opportunity to advance in the organization. Female workers are able to manage and develop a business successfully based on the skills, knowledge and talent found within them. Women are capable of holding a job as integrity and also as a best manager. There shouldn't be one.