Walmart and Team Work

Title: Wal Mart and Team Work

Abstract: The purpose of this 2-page MLA paper is to determine, from research, if Wal-Mart effectively manages conflict, if they have policies and if they follow them; and by using examples of conflict and grievance if they are effective. Bibliography offers four sources.

Wal Mart and Team/Conflict Management

Wal-Mart has recently been involved in a lot of internal conflict based on the way that employees are treated; interestingly, it has decided to deal with the problems using multi-faceted solutions. Wal-Mart insists that it is a community-, team- and equal-opportunity employer, that diversions have been local problems and created by individuals that were not aligned with corporate policies. As the world’s largest retailer, it is very difficult to enforce policies and values across the board, but it has recommitted to doing so, instituting various solutions to improve the feeling of fairness and teamwork in the company, on the floor, and in general.

It is very important that Wal-Mart manage its troubles internally – it has strictly kept unions “out” of their stores, and wants to keep doing so, to keep costs of labor down. Their formal statement is that they are not against unions, but that unions are not consistent with their work ethics; when meat cutters in Texas Wal-Marts unionized, Wal-Mart eliminated the meat cutting functions in their stores. Unions say that Wal-Mart severely underpays employees while the company insists they are well-paid.

New job classifications for employees will raise salaries and allow promotion opportunities previously unavailable to most rank-and-file workers. A newly created corporate compliance team of 40 people will oversee new policies and report back to management.

The company also has been accused of preferential treatment of some employees and lack of equal opportunity for others; it created an office of diversity last November and named Charlyn Jarrells Porter senior vice president in charge. In addition, stores have been putting employees through formal diversity training (Halkias, 2004).

Wal-Mart management and board members have committed to the solutions; indicating that if the policies and goals are not met, they will cut their pay and eliminate their own bonuses.

Some conflict came from the fact that workers insisted that they were being overworked; legally-required breaks and lunches were not being provided, for example. Wal-Mart took this out of the subjective and into the objective realm by introducing technology as a tool; for example software programs will lock up registers if cashiers aren't relieved for lunch breaks.

Wal-Mart has team and management policies in effect for grievance procedures; usually these follow a chain of authority; yet what the policies are does not reflect the fact that the company is well-known for its sexist practices. If you really need your job and you’re supporting your family and your manager is keeping you from decent wage hikes and promotions, you may have no other alternatives. Until recent problems and lawsuits, Wal-Mart’s hierarchical management has enforced unspoken policies of discrimination and unequal pay and opportunity. Additionally, employees say that the grievance system, the policy of the “open door policy” was actually used against them, to identify “troublemakers” so that they could be targeted for termination (Cox, 2001). I can report that policies for conflict management exist, but I also have to point out that they are not used for benefit of the employees or for effective decision making, team building or conflict management.

Example: The current large class action suit is named for Betty Duke and the story reflects the inadequacy of Wal-Mart policies to address equity and other conflict: “Betty Duke, a 52-year-old African-American woman who still works at Wal-Mart. First hired by the company in 1994 as a part-time cashier in Pittsburg, California, she was an eager employee with a sincere admiration for founder Sam Walton's "visionary spirit." A year later, with excellent performance reviews, she was given a merit pay raise and a full-time job. Two years later, after being promoted to the position of customer service manager, she began encountering harsh discrimination from her superiors; she says she was denied the training she needed in order to advance further, while that same mining was given to male employees. She was also denied the opportunity to work in "male" departments like hardware, and was made to sell baby clothes instead. "I can mix a can of paint," she