'Wal-Mart’s Unfair Labor Practices in “Down and Out in Discount America\r'

'In â€Å"Down and Out in brush off the States,” writer Liza Featherstone (2004) exposes the dirty maneuver and unfair business practices that fuel Wal-Mart’s supremacy as a giant retail union, and suggests effective strategies to defeat incorporate crime. According to Featherstone, Wal-Mart is one go with that liter ally wage and grows from the presence and worsening of destitution situations, as shown by the results of a study conducted by economist Andrew Franklin which revealed that â€Å"Wal-Mart operated primarily in scurvy and trade union movement communities.”Most of the retail friendship’s customers ar â€Å" over force-outingly female, and struggling to make ends meet. ” Featherstone argues that Wal-Mart ensures that its market in the low income segment continually expands by â€Å"creating much bad jobs worldwide. ” She also points out that Wal-Mart routinely employs extrajudicial and unethical business practices to maintain its competitive bank over other companies, including violating wage and roil laws that despoil workers of their living wage and health benefits.More importantly, this set-up â€Å"contri bute to an frugality in which, increasingly, workers can only afford to ca-ca at Wal-Mart. ” The biggest brunt falls on Wal-Mart’s overwhelmingly female workers. As a result, the company has been the fount of â€Å"the largest civil rights class-action suit in history” which â€Å"charges the company with systematically discriminating against women in pay and promotions.” The company has also been cleverly using public gold to subsidize its low wages by further its workers to apply for welfare assistance. Despite the company’s glaring offenses, however, suffering women continue to patronize Wal-Mart beca pulmonary tuberculosis it is all they can afford. Featherstone thitherfore contends that the success of a cooperative action against the giant c ompany lies in the tycoon of stakeholders such as labor unions to go beyond the consumer mentality, constructed by big business, in creating avenues of resistance.The author notes that â€Å"to effectively battle corporate miserables uniform Wal-Mart, the public must(prenominal) be engaged as citizens, not moreover as shoppers,” in order to form a movement with enough genial and political power to challenge Wal-Mart and to advance the reside of the poor and the operative class. Arguably, Featherstone’s article is one of the most convert and informative pieces there is that provides a balanced and level-headed interchange of an issue that is as inflammatory as â€Å"the â€Å"Wal-Martization” of American jobs.”â€Å"Down and Out in subtraction America” is clearly intended for a wide spectrum of interview. Featherstone assumes that her readers kip down Wal-mart but they do not know to the highest degree its unfair practices and illegal a ctivities. Through the clever use of rhetoric and data, the author delivers an es translate that is both(prenominal) knifelike and engaging. Featherstone uses both academic data and well-placed personal narratives of the workers of Wal-Mart to contour her case.In the process, she does not need to explicitly state that Wal-mart wage from injustice and deepening income divide, this is already substantiated by the real-life cases and backbreaking statistics that speak about the way the company â€Å"profits not only on womens drudgery but also on their joy, creativity and genuine dispense for the customer” and conditions its consumers to be heavily dependent on the â€Å"relief” brought by Wal-Mart discounted prices. It is interesting to note that Featherstone incorporates inauspicious ideas into her pieceâ€such as the welcoming location towards Wal-Mart held by poor womenâ€to illuminate and strengthen her stance.Thus, Featherstone avoids victorious the â⠂¬Å"boycott” stance that would have been too simple an answer to as big a difficulty as Wal-Mart. â€Å"Down and Out in Discount America” also does not have the demoralise tone that most articles dealing with serious hearty issues are often infected with; this is not to say that the article does not evoke an emotional rejoinder from the reader but that it presents an image of women workers, who, despite their discouragement and sad circumstance, manage to lend their anecdotes to show the multi-dimensionality of the Wal-Mart experience. 1 therefore finds it hard not to take Featherstone’s side against Wal-mart.The writer undoubtedly presents a reasoning(a) case that explores the Wal-Mart’s labor issues in both a personal and social angle, and attempts to convince the audience on the logic and soundness of why the poor should stop shopping at Wal-Mart (which Featherstone has already conceded is an proceeding in futility) but on why there should be m ore stringent policies to safeguard the poor from unfair labor practices and why there should be adequate legal measures to punish corporate criminal activities that prey upon the desperation of the poor and the working class.Featherstone is also right in pointing out the need for a political and social movement that would leverage the interest of the poor and the working class above corporate interests. This movement must be a compelling enough presence to generate political hale on the government and on big businesses to touch their social obligations.Clearly, â€Å"Down and Out in Discount America” is a searing portrayal of what happens when citizens literally correct their souls out for a â€Å"bargain” with big businesses, which has transform them into mere consumers whose participation in political and social decision-making is limited to individualistic shopping and purchase decisions. Fortunately, writers like Featherstone are there to remind consumers that they are, first and foremost, citizens and workers with stake not only in payday discount gross revenue but in the future and direction of labor and living conditions in the community and the country.\r\n'