Wal-Marts employees Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Wal-Marts employees - Essay Example Given its big size and rapid expansion, Wal-Mart increasingly sets the standard for wages and benefits through the U.S. economy. Considering its market influence, the company sets the standards of what retailers pay to their workers. The problem is; this pay is not satisfactory enough for retail workers. It is interesting to note that for a company which averages $6.6 billion annual profit, the average hourly worker at Wal-Mart earns barely $18,000 annually (Karen, 602). Wal-Mart most of the time forces employees to work overtime without pay. Supervisors are pressured by company headquarters to keep payroll low, regularly deleted hours from time records and reports. As stated by Jennifer McLaughlin-one of the company’s employees-40% of the employees opt not to receive coverage under the company’s medical plan, which costs up to $2,844 annually. The company was also faced with sex discrimination lawsuit whereby it was accused on favoring male as compared to female when i t comes to promotions and equal pay (Karen, 605). In order to fight for their rights and to make their voices heard, workers launched a massive drive to organize a union at Wal-Mart, demanding better wages and working conditions. To counter the union drives, Wal-Mart’s management responded to the union drive by trying to stop workers from forming the union. This was against the federal labor law and in several accessions, the company had been declared guilty of interrogating workers confiscating union and firing union supporters by the National Labor Relations Board. For the company, the formation of the union will is a violation of the company’s policy (Singh and Neeraj, 65). To protect the bottom line Wal-Mart is as aggressive at fighting off unions as it is at cutting costs. The employees approached by co-workers about joining a union were scared to talk.  

Unit 3IP Green Power Sources Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Unit 3IP Green Power Sources - Research Paper Example Inherent conversion losses that lead to energy wastage also result from the power distribution and usage (Patrick, 5). Given that the sum of energy is constant, energy conservation can be achieved by maintaining high efficiencies in the machines used during energy conversion in order to minimize the amount of energy wasted during conversion. Adaptive power control can be adopted at the user end that will substantially reduce energy wastage and loss through the use of light loads. With adaptive power control, a tremendous amount of energy can be conversed since there is an automatic monitoring and control of energy consumption by optimizing the light load efficiency. The current appliances used at home only utilizes about 20-50% of load for a significant amount of time leading to lots of energy wastage. Adaptive control ensures an optimized light load efficiency through the use of automatic switching of the appliances and devices (Patrick, 23). Fossil fuel includes oil, natural gas and coal. The combustion fossil fuel generates high amount of energy that is considered to be of high efficiency. Fossil fuel is easily available and their conversion into a usable form is simple. Coal is cheap as compared to the other energy sources and can be easily transported from one point to the other. Transportation of oil and natural gas over long distances is also easy through the use of pipelines. Coal is plentiful and is easily available in addition to its low costs of extraction and processing. A major disadvantage of fossil fuel is pollution. The processing and conversion of fossil fuel into a usable energy form releases hazardous gasses in addition to the greenhouse gasses released during their consumption. The greenhouse gasses released causes global warming and acidic rain. Oil spills in deep sea destroys the aquatic ecosystem. Oil drilling and excavation is quite