Wal-Mart Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Wal-Mart - Essay Example This requires a benefit and wage package that accounts for the basic expenses and area-specific cost of living involved in supporting a family comfortably. By definition of their regions specific living wage standards are known to vary as compared to minimum wages offered by the federals. This is because the minimum wages do not begin to meet the family or the working people needs anywhere in the country; and on the contrary, it puts a child and parent below the poverty federal lines. This issue can effectively be addressed by the implementation of a more reasonable minimum and living wage at a local level that will not affect the family’s way of life. Our living wage standard like in many other municipal standards across the country combines some benefits with the wage standard to cater for employees and families that need it the most. The City of Washington, D.C government recently wanted to introduce a legislation that would ensure that large corporations running business i n the city would pay a "living wage" of $12.50 per hour to all employees hired in the city. Wal-Mart, one of the largest business corporations in the whole world responded by threatening to close stores in the city, and not to open planned stores because of the legislation. Such policies are meant to protect the public from exploitation by business companies and to ensure that employees are well remunerated. Is the living wage policy good? The question whether the policy is a good one can be argued from both ways, but on this paper, the argument will lean more on the positive aspects of the policy. This policy is good and its implementation would be beneficial for the employees, future employees, the families of the employees and ultimately the city of Washington, D.C. One advantage that can be achieved through its implementation is that the minimum income of the citizens would rise considerably. This will help in improving the lives of the employees and enable them meet their basic and secondary needs. In addition, it is also beneficial to women because over time they have been earning lower wages than the men have. The wage policy will ensure than women and men earn similar salaries that are based on their skills and work rather than gender. In this aspect, the policy would benefit most families of the employees. Through this, it can be regarded as an added benefit to the recovery of the economy as a whole from the family level. Others still view its implementation as an indirect form of justice for those affected by the economy crisis since within its implementation, there are dockets that would allow for effective compensations and responsibility mainly by the employers and managements and this would in effect protect the workers from any form of abuse. The policy is also beneficial to companies such as Wal-Mart because an increased wage will ensure that the employees are motivated to perform highly and yield more and high quality productivity. Due to thes e facts, it is clear that the policy is a good one. The people who support the implementation of the living wage policy state that all individuals should be provided with direct means of affording living costs in-terms of shelter, food, transport and usual basic needs, fiscal conservatives. On the other hand, those who do not support it refuse to uphold the idea of a minimum wage since according to them it makes it hard to determine the regional scale cost of labor appropriately. They adequately argue that the minimum wage increases the services and goods prices while also affecting disproportionally the minorities. Even with this argument and counter argument, it is still unfortunate that a major aspect is still not answered by this debate