Aaron L.

Burlew
Assignment 1 - Employee issue impact on a business manager
The New York Times article Walmart Workers Demand $15 Wage in Several
Protests (reproduced on the following page) discusses the growing
complaints from Walmart employees that they are underpaid and not given
sufficient hours. This employee issue could impact a Walmart manager in
several ways.
A manager needs to:

Have effective workers. If many employees are expressing negative

feelings toward the company or striking, they may not be motivated to
work as well as an employee who is happy with their job. The manager
will have to work hard to keep up morale and may have to monitor
some employees more closely if they are not performing adequately.
Organize successful teams. It may be difficult to get some workers to
collaborate with others if they have different feelings toward the
company; the manager will have to pay closer attention to the
dynamics among workers.
Relate to their employees. A higher paid manager cant relate to
someone who is living paycheck-to-paycheck or who cant afford to
wash their clothes or purchase soap. This will further the divide in the
company and between management levels. The manager will have to
put more effort into connecting to workers.
Communicate freely with employees and their superiors. Employees
have expressed frustration online, including a salary assistant store
manager in a letter to the website Gawker who claimed they could
never send an honest feedbackto anyone of authority at Walmart
without being retaliated. Many companies and schools, like Syracuse
University, use feedback to improve everyones experience. A manager
in a climate described above may have employees who have similar
fears in communicating; the manager would need to work hard to build
trust and relationships with employees so they begin trying to fix any
problems the employees are not being vocal about.
Address major issues. The article expresses how Walmart denies that
the wage problem is significant. A manager has to refrain from taking a
negative stance against Walmart when talking to fellow employees
regarding the problems. From my experience resolving conflicts as an
RA, I understand how difficult it can be to remain objective, especially
when emotions are involved.

Aaron L. Burlew

Aaron L. Burlew

Walmart Workers Demand $15

Wage in Several Protests
By HIROKO TABUCHI and STEVEN GREENHOUSEOCT. 16, 2014
As retail workers step up demands for higher wages and more stable working hours, a
trade organization has warned that many retailers cannot afford to pay more,
intensifying a debate over fair pay in a struggling industry.
Labor activists have long denounced retailers like Walmart for employing an army of
low-wage, part-time workers to staff their stores. As retail sales flounder in an uncertain
economy, those activists and even a growing number of retailers are linking those
sluggish sales to the retailers own low wages.
On Thursday, organizers of a group called Our Walmart took to the streets in New York,
Washington and Phoenix to draw attention to their campaign to change labor practices
in retailing and other low-wage industries like fast-food restaurants. By not paying their
workers a living wage, the activists say, such businesses squeeze the very people they
hope to sell to.
I cant afford anything, said LaRanda Jackson, 20, who earns $8.75 an hour working
on the sales floor at a Walmart in Cincinnati. Sometimes I cant afford soap, toothpaste,
tissue. Sometimes I have to go without washing my clothes.
Ms. Jackson was among 14 Walmart employees and 12 others who were arrested and
charged with civil disobedience Thursday after staging a protest outside the Manhattan
residence of Alice Walton, an heir to the Walmart fortune, demanding that Walmart set
a base pay of $15 for all its workers much like the demands of the fast-growing
movement of fast-food workers.
But the National Retail Federation, a retail industry group, has resisted demands for a
higher minimum wage. Given the tough winds facing the industry, the group said this
week, raising the minimum wage would simply eat away at many retailers bottom lines,
and ultimately threaten retail jobs.
In a report, the group said that retailers in fact offered jobs to millions of younger,
inexperienced workers, as well as workers like teenagers and college students looking
for scheduling flexibility, which was behind the concentration of low-wage jobs in the
industry.
The federation argued that retail workers earn above-average pay if temporary workers,
including those hired for holiday sales, are excluded. Retail workers ages 25 to 54 who
work full time for at least three consecutive months make an average of $38,376 a year,
slightly more than full-time workers in nonretail jobs, the group said.

Aaron L. Burlew
Now is not the right time to be mandating a minimum-wage increase, the federations
president, Matthew R. Shay, said in a briefing Thursday. Wed rather much be focusing
on what do we need to be doing to stimulate growth.
Walmart also stressed that many of its workers were quickly prompted to better-paying
jobs. At Walmart, it doesnt take too long to advance beyond the minimum wage level,
said Kory Lundberg, a spokesman for Walmart.
He said that Walmart had promoted 170,000 people last year to jobs with higher pay.
Its obviously a very important debate, but starting wage isnt the main issue, he said.
The main issue is the opportunity you have to grow and advance and take home higher
pay.
And speaking to reporters after a conference call Wednesday, Douglas McMillon,
Walmarts chief executive, stressed that less than 6,000 workers of its American work
force of 1.3 million currently made the minimum wage, and that the retailer intended to
eventually move them off that wage level.
Still, Ms. Jackson, 20, who has worked at Walmart for 15 months and supports her
mother and four brothers on her salary, said that low hourly wages werent the only
problem. She was sometimes assigned as little as 25 hours a week, greatly reducing her
take-home pay, she said.
With Thursdays protests, the Walmart protesters borrowed several publicity-winning
ideas from the fast-food movement: engaging in civil disobedience and holding protests
in media centers, like New York and Washington. The Walmart protests also adopted
the fast-food workers call for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. That demand helped push
Seattle to enact a $15 minimum wage while San Francisco is considering one.
Labor strategists had voiced frustration in recent months that the campaign to raise
wages at Walmart was getting far less attention and traction than the movement of fastfood workers.
The Walmart demonstrators have sought to turn up the pressure by personalizing their
campaign holding protests outside the Arizona home of Rob Walton, Walmarts
chairman, and the Park Avenue apartment of Ms. Walton, his sister. Both are large
Walmart shareholders and children of Sam Walton, the companys founder. The
demonstrators also protested at an office of the Walton Family Foundation in
Washington.
A number of retailers are now rethinking what they pay their workers. Ikea, the home
furnishings giant, said in June that it would raise the minimum wage at all its United
States stores starting next year, with average base pay for an Ikea employee rising to
$10.76 an hour.
Gap also raised minimum hourly pay for workers across all of its brands to $9 in June,
and said that workers will receive at least $10 an hour in June 2015. The company said

Aaron L. Burlew
in a statement at the time that the move would have a positive impact on its employees
and was good for business.
Over all, a growing number of retailers cited stagnating incomes and weak spending as a
threat to profits, the Center for American Progress said in a report last week.
Its simple. When Americans dont have disposable income, retailers dont have
customers, Brendan V. Duke, a policy analyst at the center, said last week. Its time for
retailers and the rest of corporate America to connect the dots and realize the only way
our economy can sustain consumer demand is by giving their workers a raise.
Correction: October 20, 2014
An article on Friday about a debate over pay for workers in the retailing industry
misstated, in some copies, part of the name of an industry trade organization that has
warned against raising the minimum wage. The group is the National Retail
Federation, not National Retail Foundation.