What Would Motivate You to Work With Walmart Corporation Versus Target Corporation
Is Target Corporation Any Better for Workers?
By Chris Serres
Commencement published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2005
Information technology was the fall of 2001, and a chorus of boos erupted at Target'due south almanac sales meeting when a senior executive at the company flashed Wal-Mart's name and logo on an enlarged screen.
"This," he said, pointing at the logo, "is the evil empire."
For years, Target has cultivated an prototype of itself as the "anti-Wal-Mart," a retailer that refuses to sacrifice workplace standards in the pursuit of higher sales and stock prices.
Just now, after a decade of meteoric growth at both Target and Wal-Mart, labor groups say the two retailers are no longer very dissimilar in the mode they care for their workers.
Entry-level hourly workers in Target stores earn roughly the aforementioned pay and have more than difficulty qualifying for health care coverage than their peers at Wal-Mart. Both retailers oppose unions and have taken steps to prevent organizing efforts in stores. And both have outsourced jobs overseas to save costs.
Merely while Wal-Mart is perceived as a corporate giant that will do simply almost anything to maximize sales and profits, Target — thanks to its hip advertising campaigns and its longtime contributions to a diverseness of civic and cultural causes — is seen as a model corporate citizen and benevolent employer.
Accurate or not, Target'southward prototype is a cardinal advantage equally it races to build more stores.
In "bluish state" markets, such equally the Twin Cities, Chicago and New York, Target is often welcomed with open arms past metropolis leaders. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, faces community opposition at almost every turn, which has prevented it from expanding in many primal markets, including New York City .
In West St. Paul, virtually no one challenged Target's recent proposal to convert a new store to a SuperTarget. Withal 30 miles away in Ham Lake, Wal-Mart has spent more than a yr trying — without success — to persuade metropolis leaders to let information technology to build a Supercenter.
"Some people, their hackles just become up when you mention Wal-Mart," said Joseph Beaulieu, a retail analyst at Morningstar. "You lot could tell them that Wal-Mart pays more than [than Target], but they would nevertheless be convinced that Wal-Mart is evil."
Simply as Target continues its aggressive expansion — it plans to add together more than than 600 stores by 2010 — the company'southward labor practices will come under more scrutiny from marriage groups, consumer advocates and local zoning boards, labor experts predict.
"Unless Target moves to improve its wages and benefits, it's simply a thing of time before it is seen as just some other big-box retailer," said Brendan Cummins, a Minneapolis labor chaser for the Miller O'Brien house.
Already, Target is beginning to get some unwanted attending from labor groups that have been struggling to reform Wal-Mart'south workplace practices for nearly two decades.
Chief amongst them is the United Nutrient and Commercial Workers union, the largest union of retail workers in the nation. The UFCW has been trying to organize Target workers for years, without success. This week, well-nigh a dozen members of the UFCW tried to phone call attention to Target's wages and benefits by protesting outside the company's annual shareholder meeting in Minneapolis .
One of Target's newest critics is its principal competitor, Wal-Mart. At a recent media conference in Bentonville, Ark., Wal-Mart executives defendant Target of offering a less attractive benefit bundle and challenged reporters to conduct a comparison of their own.
Asked to respond to Wal-Mart'south criticisms at Target's annual meeting, CEO Bob Ulrich said he "didn't actually know what Wal-Mart pays" its workers but said that Target conducts regular wage surveys in all its markets to ensure it pays competitive wages.
"We believe Target is a great place to shop and to work," Ulrich said. "We have no difficulty alluring terrific team members."
Ulrich also dedicated the Target's antiunion stance, saying that the company "only doesn't believe that third-party representation would add anything for our customers, our employees or our shareholders. We just do non believe information technology's productive and adds value."
Few differences
Target declined to disclose details almost its compensation and benefits, but labor groups and former and electric current employees of Target in the Twin Cities say the retailer sometimes pays less than Wal-Mart.
Target pays betwixt $6.25 an 60 minutes to $8 an hr for entry-level, hourly positions in its Twin Cities stores, according to a contempo survey of local Target workers by the UFCW. That's in line with what Wal-Mart pays in this market, though some starting-level Wal-Mart workers can earn $9 to $x an hour, the UFCW said.
Both companies offer health intendance insurance to employees, just Target's is considered more restrictive. Two years ago, Target dropped health care insurance coverage for all part-time workers. By dissimilarity, Wal-Mart makes its medical plan bachelor to all workers, full- and part-fourth dimension.
Spousal relationship groups that take analyzed the two companies' policies maintain that Wal-Mart's also is more than equitable.
All Wal-Mart's employees, from store cashiers to chief executive Lee Scott, are covered under the same medical program. All employees can choose from the aforementioned iv deductible options and receive unlimited coverage for catastrophic expenses — such as organ transplants or cancer treatments — that can financially ruin an employee.
Target, however, offers multiple health care plans to its employees that vary past geographic location, co-ordinate to the company's employee handbook. At Target, store employees do not receive catastrophic coverage and deductible levels vary, according to sometime and electric current employees.
Wal-Mart estimates that 56 percent of its employees receive health care coverage. Target declined to disclose its percentage of insured workers, simply the UFCW estimates based on surveys of Twin Cities employees that less than half the company'southward workers receive coverage under its plan.
Target declined to contribute wage and benefit information for this article just said the information cited past others were inaccurate.
"Target has one of the best wellness care and benefits packages in the industry," company spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter said in a prepared argument. "Nosotros are an industry leader in providing a wide array of excellent benefits that allow us to attract and retain the all-time squad members."
However, the UFCW and others interviewed for this story stand by their data. "The only difference betwixt Target and Wal-Mart is that Wal-Mart is half-dozen times their size," said Bernie Hesse, a marriage organizer with UFCW Local 789 in St. Paul .
Wages and benefits are not the only criteria of a good workplace, and many employees at Target insist it'due south all the same a much ameliorate place to work than Wal-Mart.
The company is flexible with employees who desire to work role-time and spend time with their families. Its 401(k) retirement plan is considered among the all-time in the retail industry; it matches, dollar for dollar, upwards to 5 percent of all contributions made by employes. And all new workers receive a 10 percent discount on most merchandise purchased at Target.
"As far every bit its flexibility, Target was a wonderful place to work," said Jennifer Clark, who worked at a Target shop in Mission Viejo, Calif., before moving to Reno, Nev., final year to go an executive recruiter. "If I told the manager that my daughter was receiving an award at schoolhouse and I needed to leave early, he'd say, 'Sure, go alee. Take intendance of your family first.' "
Mary White potato, 39, of Chanhassen said she was proud when Target hired her every bit a cashier. She liked working for a company that gives 5 percent of its federally taxable income to the communities where information technology does business concern, which amounts to about $two million a week.
And she was impressed by Target'south "Take Charge of Education" plan, through which credit-menu holders can donate ane percent a year of their Target Invitee Menu purchases made at Target to a schoolhouse of their selection. Target besides donates 0.v pct of all Target Visa purchases made everywhere Visa is accustomed. Through this program, Target has donated about $138 one thousand thousand to schools nationwide since 1997.
Working at Target's master rival, Wal-Mart, was out of the question, Murphy said. She never liked the shop's crowded aisles, fluorescent lights and "all-around messiness." The female parent of iv also was turned off by reports that the company had violated child labor laws and discriminated confronting women by paying them less than men for many of the same jobs.
"I can't stand shopping at Wal-Mart, much less piece of work there," Tater said. Yet Murphy is no longer convinced that accepting a job at Target was the right determination. Hired as a cashier at $7.fifty an hour, Irish potato was told that she could receive a 50-cent raise, but she was expected to encounter Target's quota of selling at least nine credit cards a week to shoppers.
Managers would hover near the checkout lanes to make sure cashiers were pitching the cards with "the proper enthusiasm," Irish potato said. They were required to vary how they pitched the cards so they wouldn't annoy echo customers, but Murphy said she found the quota incommunicable to attain.
"I hired on to be a cashier, just they wanted us to be telemarketers," she said. "I didn't want to be known in the customs equally the 'Target Ruddy Card pusher.' " Potato resigned afterwards nine months without ever receiving the raise, yet she notwithstanding considers herself more fortunate than many of the other cashiers at the store.
Her hubby, an electric engineer, has health care coverage for the entire family unit through his employer. And her pay, though low, was nigh 25 cents higher per hour than some starting-level workers in the Chanhassen shop. Murphy said that betwixt 25 to 30 cashiers worked at the Chanhassen store at the same time she started. Afterwards ix months, she said she was the only one remaining. "If in that location was a union and a sense that things were going to improve, people might take stayed longer," Murphy said. "Right now, there is absolutely no incentive to stay there for any length of time."
John Hayden, 59, of Oconomowoc, Wis., lasted but six months loading and unloading boxes at a Target distribution center virtually his dwelling house.
Hayden said he liked his co-workers and managers, but he said the work was only too difficult for the wage — $11 an hour. Hayden said he occasionally had to unload tractor trailers total of 75-pound boxes. Target encouraged employees to request aid with heavy boxes, only the loading deadlines were so strict that Hayden often had to load them himself.
A yr after leaving the visitor, Hayden learned that he had a hernia and had to undergo surgery, which he blames on the stress of lifting up to 700 boxes a mean solar day. "At that place were some nights, I could barely movement," Hayden said.
To motivate its warehouse workers, managers often offered employees pocket-size gifts, such as coasters or flashlights with the Target logo, if they beat their goals. "They treated us like 3rd-graders, like we wouldn't work hard without gifts," he said. "It was insulting to older workers."
Hayden considered applying for piece of work at a Wal-Mart store in nearby Delafield, Wis., subsequently hearing from colleagues that it paid 50 cents to $1 more per 60 minutes.
"Two years agone, I'd say it doesn't matter, Target or Wal-Mart, I'd work for either i," Hayden said. "But at present, afterwards working at Target, I'd choose Wal-Mart."
For the time existence, withal, Wal-Mart remains the No. 1 target for matrimony organizers, largely because of its size. The visitor employs i.vii million people worldwide and is the nation'due south largest private employer. Its sales totaled $285 billion in 2005, more than the combined acquirement of Target, Sears and Costco.
Two national groups accept sprouted upwardly over the past nine months that have a unmarried purpose — to reform Wal-Mart.
One, "Wake-Up Wal-Mart," is funded past the UFCW and is run by Paul Bare, the former political director of former Autonomous presidential candidate Howard Dean. In less than two months, the group has clustered fifty,000 members, an army of people that tin distribute data virtually Wal-Mart's labor practices and to oppose new stores.
Marriage groups accept to focus on Wal-Mart because until the nation's largest retailer alters its labor practices, companies like Target volition accept no incentive to change, Blank added.
"No ane here is excusing Target or anyone else for failing to alive up to its responsibilities to its workers," Blank said. "But how do you change these very large companies? Y'all have to get after the source of the problem, and that's still Wal-Mart."
© 2005 Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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Source: https://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart_target_better/