Up Against Wal-Mart #10

Karen Olsson finds the truth about the hard working retail associates at wal-mart in her essay Up Against Wal-Mart. She begins with an individual employee Jennifer McLaughlin who is a mother of one child and lives with her boyfriend, and is currently employed with Wal-Mart in Paris, Texas. She works as an associate but is not just told to do one job but in a days work can go from working one department to the next and even putting products out and helping customers. She is a very hard worker and puts in a lot of effort everyday and its getting her no where. She is not able to afford life, with the amount that they pay her. The company Wal-Mart is not union so she receives no benefits, so if she wants to carry health insurance she would have to pay out of her own paycheck to receive it. Health insurance is to much to afford on her wage and has to rely on government assistance to give her child the things he needs. The author then writes about how the company started and how from day one Wal-Mart has been looking for ways to cut corners to save a dollar. All Wal-Mart companies are non-union, they are actually very against it if an associate is even to bring it up they could possibly loose their job. Wal-Mart has been put through many law cases on unfair wages and treatment of employees but they just continue to keep doing it. Wal-Mart is a big enough company that they can not be stoppped by the associates they have working for them. Wal-Mart holds all the power and has enough money to prolong cases and even if they do loose can just pay the fine and move on to doing the same thing. Associates are asked to do incredible tasks not just perform hard labor all day throughout the store but they are even asked to work over time with no pay. Who would want to work for no pay? I would think no one would volunteer their time to work at Wal-mart for free but it is happening all over. Why? Because they have to the associates want to hopefully get promotions or not loose their hours that they are getting or even far worse loose their jobs so they continue to put forth effort with no reward. It is extremely unfair what these employees have to do I don't understand why either because Wal-Mart makes so much money all over the United States. The profit margin for Wal-mart must be enormous that they can do all this to their employees free labor, that is slavery. I believe something should be done to help the associates their and I believe in unions. They help retail employees a lot because they aren't being paid very much but a union offers benefits like health insurance which is very important.