5 Reasons You Should Despise Wal-Mart

As a consumer, I prefer low prices just as much as the next guy, because who wants to pay more when they don’t have to? Quality does not go hand-in-hand with price, but for many household and everyday items: this does turn out to be the case. Although I prefer low prices, I am not always willing to trade quality for price. However, for the occasions that I am, I usually frequent Wal-Mart to pick up what it is that I need at the lowest price.

With over 4,000 stores around the world, the Wal-Mart corporation is doing pretty well for itself. Every day the company accumulates roughly $36 million per hour, this works out to be roughly $2 million in profit every single day. With over $405 billion in annual sales, over 100 million consumers visit a Wal-Mart store every week. The majority of their visitors are families that are earning less than $40,000 annually. More recently, Wal-Mart sales haven’t been seeing the same profits that they once were: people don’t have a lot of money to spend, but somewhere their dislike for Wal-Mart surpasses the cost factor. Now, Wal-Mart is additionally struggling to keep up with other online competition and stores that offer similar low prices.

1. Wal-Mart And Third-Party Problems

Numerous lawsuits have been launched against the corporation, most notably those that claim Wal-Mart violated federal and state labor laws. A recent settlement for $21 million was reached between the corporation and Schneider Logistics, Inc., following years of labor violations claims and ongoing investigation into a particular Wal-Mart warehouse at Riverside County, CA. The labor violations affected over 1,800 workers who claim that the company paid them less than minimum wage, withheld breaks, benefits, and overtime compensation. The lawsuit covers workers from 3 Mira Loma facilities between the years of 2001 to 2013. It is a subsidiary of Schneider Logistics Inc. that will be forking over the $21 million dollar paycheck: it won’t be coming from the Wal-Mart corporation. Schneider Logistics Inc., oversees various warehouse properties and the firm is worth roughly $3.5 billion in annual sales.

Unfortunately, it isn’t so much Wal-Mart’s fault as it is third party businesses, contractors, logistics companies, and the like that Wal-Mart uses to keep down costs. Although, Wal-Mart does issue their own Standards for Suppliers mission of having safety and well-being for all workers across their supply chain, it is unclear how well (if at all) this is enforced. Wal-Mart teams up with various logistics companies, like Schneider, who then hire employees through subcontractors, and they should understandably be following the labor laws within their respective areas. Schneider Inc. has settled previous settlements that were of a similar nature, most recently was one from last December for $4.7 million.