Walmart has been around since 1962 and since that time it has manifested into one of the worlds retailing giants. In the United States alone, Walmart has over 4000 stores and just over 11,000 stores around the world. In 2019, Walmart had a net worth of just over half a trillion dollars! Walmart was originally founded by a man named Sam Walton in Rogers Arkansas and employed certain strategic tactics to reach its current global position.
Walmart’s mission statement is “to save people money so they can live better.” Within every store we can see the “consistently low prices” signs and when ever customers go into Walmart to buy one thing the generally end up walking out with many more items than intended. This is because Walmart has strategic supply chain and logistics operations that allows Walmart to buy in bulk and sell in retail at drastically low prices. In the sense of logistics, Walmart implements several distribution centers near their targets markets to have a continues flow of cheap and reliable goods.For the consumers, this is music to our ears, but for many small businesses Walmart swallows up any chance of potential success.
Walmart’s vision statement is “Be the destination for customers to save money, no matter how they want to shop.” We can see from this quote that Walmart shows no sign of slowing down their retail conquering and their desire to remain at the forefront of retail. Walmart continues to implement new forms of shopping for their consumers including curb-side pick-up and online shopping with home delivery. It’s clear the Walmart is looking forward into the future and will continue match the trends and habits of new customer technology.
Walmart hasn’t gotten to its level of prestige without getting their hands dirty in one way or another. The company has been constantly bombarded with allegations of corruption and mistreating their workers. In 2005, allegation of bribery came to light when an email was discovered about pay-offs to Mexican governmental officials in the amount of 24 million dollars. Walmart has also spent millions of dollars to keep their workers from unionizing and in recent years, and judges decision has made it illegal for Walmart to threaten workers with pay reductions and terminations of employment for voicing their opinions about unions.
In conclusion, we understand that Walmart is doing their best to provide the best prices for their consumers. However, the tactics that they use aren’t always the most ethical and it has casts a dark shadow over Walmart’s reputation.
https://mission-statement.com/walmart/
http://panmore.com/walmart-vision-mission-statement-intensive-generic-strategies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
http://laborpress.org/walmart-ordered-to-stop-mistreating-workers/
Armando's Blogg 
Lots of people share the same opinions as me- with Walmart’s history, many people facing unemployment, poverty or other poor living conditions are lucky to have an outlet like Walmart that delivers the same products at a lower price. However, there has also been a long history of HR and employee scandals, like what you mentioned. It’s a trade-off for the largest supermarket accessible to the public, and a shame that we have no place to turn other than Walmart. Even comparing their prices to other corporations like Target and K-Mart, there is no competition on where the people choose. As long as the prices are always down, the customers will flock.
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In my supply chain management class, we spoke a bit about how Walmart strong arms their suppliers to give them exactly what they want. For example, if Walmart wants 500 vacuums for an order and their supplier doesn’t have them, its likely that Walmart replaces that vendor. If not, Walmart buys any inventory that the supplier may have and has their order expedited before the supplier is able to serve any other customer. Failure to do so can cost the supplier their business partner deal with Walmart.
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I can see how people are so upset about Walmart keeping employees who are at risk to get Coronavirus when they have such a bad background in the poor treatment of its employees. It does make sense that Walmart can only achieve its low prices through some kind of scandal or by having wages too low for the amount of work being done. Buying in bulk may work well when it comes to consumer goods, but every individual worker should be treated with dignity by their employer and special considerations should be made for every person, not only during Coronavirus but always.
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I would like to do more research into their Human Resource department. It would be interesting to see how many complaints this department gets and the amount of complaints that are actually followed up on. A person’s life should not have a price tag on it and employers should do everything in their power to protect the interest of their employees. Its difficult to say if Walmart will learn from this situation and if they will begin treating their employers fairly. I also wonder in employees at Walmart are able to unionize of if Walmart hold a strict no-union policy. It would be interesting to see how a union would affect Walmart and how employees would feel about it.
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I agree with Marissa that employees should always be treated with the respect they deserve, ALWAYS. Not just during a pandemic. They need to feel appreciated as they greet us with a smile and asking us how our day is going. They deserve that kind of energy to be reciprocated.
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In a perfect world this would be true, but we live in a society where money rules over peoples lives. I certainly believe we can have a better life style and this pandemic has shown us that life is not only about waking up going to work and paying bills. We have the opportunity to see and interact with each other without treating anyone less than us.
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What always infuriates me is how much money companies will try to throw at the government and their lawyers to prevent paying their customers a livable wage and treating them like respected employees. Why not throw that money towards their employees instead? A happy employee is a more productive employee and thus creates profits and prevents strikes and lawsuits. Despite how many angry people in our world today think the majority just want hand outs, those people who do want hand outs are definitely not the majority in my opinion.
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i guess every case is different but without a doubt, employee voices should be heard. Especially in a time like now, when anyone is susceptible to the virus, employers should be extra careful when listening to the concerns of their employees. What if the manager that over saw Wando Evans had gotten the virus instead. Would he had been aloud to go home or would his superiors convince him that he needed to go back to work. And the fear that an employee can hold a persons living over their head makes the situation even worse. This is a different circumstance we are living in where we all have to adapt, and Walmart is not exempt from these new conditions.
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