On November 21st, Robert Reich posted an article about how today’s
largest private-sector employers pay very small wages to their workers compared
to before and the working conditions are also poor. Reich opens by comparing
average hourly wages earned by employees who worked for GM 50 years ago with
today’s hourly wages earned by Wal-Mart employees. He points out several
reasons such as globalization and technological changes but the main reason is
the decline of labor unions. “As a result, the typical American worker no longer has the bargaining
clout to get a sizeable share of corporate profits” while all of it is divided
among a few people only. Reich says that the workers have organized strikes
especially on Black Friday and Wal-Mart has been trying to fight against them
to avoid he strikes. One solution given by the author was to increase the wages
paid to the company’s employees, even though it would cost a large sum of money
it is a small percentage compared to its total earning and will help bring
thousands out of poverty while also increasing retail sales since the workers
would be able to buy more.
The author’s purpose in writing this article was not primarily to tell
readers why not to buy at Wal-Mart, but to make them aware of the problems that
exist in large companies especially the low wages. Robert Reich uses the title
and the example of Wal-Mart to attract the reader’s attention since it is a
well known retail corporation. Reich used comparison to show how the wages have
decreased drastically and supplies reasons for this decrease. The main strategy
used to persuade his readers to agree with his suggested solution was the usage
of statistics. They helped show that an increase in wages would help many
people and would not have a huge effect on the company’s earnings despite the
apparently large number.
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