One of the major reasons for Wal-Mart’s labor revision is its lack of gender equality. Throughout the past decade, Wal-Mart has sexually discriminated against women working in its stores everywhere. This sex-bias has only recently been acted against in what could become a very costly case for the corporation. In 2004 a gender discrimination lawsuit was filed against Wal-Mart in what is the largest private civil rights case ever (Armour A1). The 1.6 million women filing the case worked at Wal-Mart between 1998 and 2004 and claim that they were paid between five and fifteen percent less than men in similar positions. They also claimed that they received fewer promotions than men even when they were more deserving and qualified (Armour A1). A June 23 article in USA Today listed several statistics relating to the matter. In the U.S., approximately 65% of Wal-Mart’s employees are women yet only 14% of the managers are women (Armour A1). These statistics show a clear gender bias that should not exist. Although sex-bias suits similar to this one have been filed regularly throughout the nation, this particular case means more than most. Wal-Mart is estimated to employ 1/123 of all the workers in the nation. Punishing sexual-discrimination in this case could send out the message that it will no longer be tolerated in our nation. As Jocelyn Larkin, a women’s rights spokesman puts it, “They are the largest employer in America, and everyone is watching this” (qtd. in Amour A1). Wal-Mart has a decision to make, it can either choose to respect women’s labor rights, or it can be sued into submission.

Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, the pending gender discrimination case is only one of its labor woes. Another reason for labor reform in Wal-Mart has recently reared its head; Wal-Mart has been forcing employees to work through their lunch breaks without pay. On Thursday July 22, 2005 a Californian jury awarded thousands of Wal-Mart workers a combined $172 million dollars for being denied the thirty minute lunch breaks guaranteed them by California’s labor laws (Bacon A3). California law states that workers with shifts over six hours are to be given a thirty minute unpaid lunch break. The problem with this case is that it is not the only one of its kind. This class-action suit is only one of forty nationwide cases addressing similar violations at Wal-Mart stores (Bacon A3). A juror on the California case states simply that “Wal-Mart didn’t do their job, they didn’t pay their people” (qtd. in Lee A1). It is one thing to deny workers lunch breaks, but it is entirely another to make them work through the lunch breaks without compensating them for doing so. This is an outrage that should not stand. The court case was won in California, but the issue is having limited success elsewhere. The government needs to step in and show Wal-Mart who the real boss is!

These cases are only pieces of the worker abuse problem. Suppose that Wal-Mart did pay everyone what they were entitled to without being biased, would that fix things? The answer to this question is no. Unfortunately, the workers who are getting paid aren’t getting paid well. One would expect Wal-Mart to at least pay a living wage, “A wage sufficient to provide minimally satisfactory living conditions” (“Living Wage”). Oddly enough, Wal-Mart doesn’t even meet this basic need. Seventy-one cities in the U.S. have passed ordinances defining what their idea of a living wage is. The average of these values is estimated to be $9.68 an hour (EPI). Wal-Mart pays an average hourly wage of $8.23 according to an independent statistical analysis funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). In addition, a starting cashier’s wage at many locations is under $6.50 an hour. It’s sad to think that Wal-Mart doesn’t raise its average wage when simply increasing prices by an average of one percent would put the average wage at $9.54 an hour (Cox).

So, Wal-Mart doesn’t pay equally, fairly, or sometimes even at all. The company must at least give good benefits or people wouldn’t work there right? Wrong. Yet another area of Wal-Mart’s labor practice that needs a change is its healthcare benefits which are drastically inferior to the rest of the nation. In October the Center for a Changing Workforce examined Wal-Mart’s 2006 health insurance plan. The report this organization filed stated that Wal-Mart’s least expensive family health plan has a $6,000 deductible and can cost families as much as $10,200 in out-of-pocket expenses (qtd. in Adams). This amounts to 60% of an average worker’s wages (qtd. in Adams). Wal-Mart of course claims different numbers. Despite all the evidence against them, Wal-Mart executives claim that the healthcare costs no more than $11 a month for individuals and thirty cents a day for children. They clearly have been trying to cover up any information that would lead to a bad public image. So far its working but we can change that by exposing Wal-Mart for what it really is, a monster sucking the blood out of this nation.

In China, the conditions are much worse. The legal minimum hourly wage in China is set at $0.31 an hour (Cox). That isn’t too much for Wal-Mart to pay, is it? The answer to this question surprises most. In 2001, 15 factories manufacturing products for Wal-Mart in China were only paying $0.23 an hour! (Cox). In addition, the average number of hours worked per week per worker at those locations was 73 (Cox). The really sad part of this story is that CEO Lee Scott was paid an average of $23 million a year during his career at Wal-Mart (Cox). Wal-Mart is paying a wage so low that it is illegal in China (which is saying something) while also forcing people to work so many hours in a week that some workers are on the verge of death from exhaustion. It’s not hard to see how Wal-Mart became so profitable of a corporation. The sheer lack of worker compensation makes unbelievably low prices possible but it also increases the cost to human beings.

Perhaps the biggest problem Wal-Mart poses is not about its own labor practices, but instead about the corporation’s effect on labor practices elsewhere. Wal-Mart is a mega giant retailer that pays its workers next to nothing in order to maintain its unbelievable low prices. The problem with this is that other stores are being forced to apply many of the same labor principles to keep up. The story of how a Wal-Mart affected Spencer, West Virginia is a perfect example of what happens when a Wal-Mart comes to town. The town was slowly losing retail business and was hoping that allowing a Wal-Mart in would increase the retail sales by drawing sales to the small town’s other businesses. The arrival of the new store did increase retail sales in the town. Unfortunately, all of these sales went to the Wal-Mart. A local smalltime grocer stated that “We fared [well] against them the first year” but he admits, “I don’t know how we stayed afloat the past two years. We struggle every day to keep the doors open” (qtd. in Ginsburg). The grocer claims that he can’t compete on price. Other local businesses are struggling as well. The cities previous number one employer closed less than a year after Wal-Mart arrived and several other businesses followed suit. Since then, almost 500 jobs have been cut (Ginsburg). The city is now lacking in jobs and has had its economic structure nearly shattered under the weight of the Wal-Mart. This is the story of many other small towns around the country that have been taken over and become dependent on the Wal-Mart that was once dependent on them.

There are more problems still with Wal-Mart. One is that Wal-Mart single handedly established outsourcing by forcing corporations like Levi-Strauss to go out of the country for cheap labor. Levi-Strauss experienced a 45% decrease in sales between 1996 and 2003 mainly due to competition from cheaper jeans that were being sold at Wal-Mart (Cox). The sales increased six percent after Levi-Strauss began selling jeans made mainly overseas at Wal-Marts around the country (Cox). This seems all well and good but when you look at the number of jobs lost in the U.S. during this time, you notice otherwise. Levi-Strauss had sixty factories operating in the U.S. in 1981 when the company was at its peak (Cox). In 2004, after moving completely overseas, Levi-Strauss closed its remaining two U.S. factories (Cox). This change cost the nation thousands of jobs. Rubbermaid had many of the same problems with Wal-Mart as did many other large-scale manufacturing companies. The nation has lost numerous jobs because of Wal-Mart’s demanding low prices, yet the problem continues. 

Wal-Mart is a monster that must be killed. It is swallowing the nation with its corrupt business practices and business ethics. In addition, it devalues workers by taking away all of the compensation guaranteed them by law. Its workers are paid poorly and have little or no usable benefits. They have been denied breaks and in some instances even pay. By encouraging outsourcing, the corporation has encouraged taking advantage of soft international labor laws. In China, children are working overtime for less than the price of a pack of gum per hour. The United States is losing its jobs to these same children and there is only one way to stop the process. We must force Wal-Mart to reform its labor practices and strengthen our labor policies at the same time. Once the super giant falls, the rest will soon follow. If we do not do something now, I fear that our nation will be overtaken economically by Wal-Mart to the point where we are fully dependent on its poor paying jobs. If this happens we might as well throw our entire lifestyle away. We as a people have two options, we can either watch as our nation crumbles under the strain of Wal-Mart or we can take the fight to the government and demand better labor practice to ensure a safe future for our kids.

            Gordon brown is right. Yes, he is very right that capitalism must be bridled. What this gentleman is saying is that business must not be an end itself.

            Business, in its pure and genuine form must be a means to serve humanity and the planet. The recent sort of doing business that the world had experienced in recent history is a serious source of concern and the world must now unite to save itself from worse catastrophes than we have seen.

            The world today has enough food for every human being to eat but millions of people, nearly 200 million, according to the world food program are in urgent need of food. ‘Urgent need of food,’ means that they are on the brink of starvation.

            Why can this be the case when other several million people on are dying because they are eating too much.

            The reason is that the world had lost its heart and its soul.

            We all know that people, even in the prehistoric days were engaged in business, but those days, business was meant to serve humanity, not a single entrepreneur. Not a few shareholders, at the expense of a whole set of people. Business was not done the way it is done today.

            Mr. Brown is right as he advocates for ethics in the market place. He is right when he says we do not live by markets alone. He is right because what the point of business if the beneficiaries are just a few persons while the rest of society goes home suffering and at the brink of starvation.

            The pharmaceutical companies in particular must look at their profit motives as they serve humanity.

            Right, they spend millions of Dollars on research and product development, but there is need to price medicines in such a way that people can access them.

            Mr. Brown is right when he says about doing business that, values, such as treating people right, fairly, acting with responsibility and co-operating for the benefit of all, must be key elements in doing business today.

            His views must be supported, because the opposite of what he is saying has resulted in only less that 20 percent of the world population benefiting from the world’s resources.

            Capitalism must be controlled.

Many are not aware of the fact that the issue of business ethics is a happening and on the rise topic these days. This could be because we do not see headlines of business corruption or scandals on the local media that often. However, the former so-called boring subject of studies has become a major and important interest recently. With corporate scandals and multibillion dollar bankruptcies on headlines for more than a year and giant companies that were once considered as successful such as Enron and Worldcom on litigation, making business ethics a matter that have to be looked upon to in detail.

In the case of Enron Corp for example, they have failed to follow the basic principles of accounting for the sake to provide a false healthy view of profit generation in their organization. They had been using inappropriate accounting techniques to an elaborate use of special purpose entities to hide liabilities through off-balance-sheet accounting. This is indeed only one of their schemes. There were more that were obviously misleading and clearly providing only up to their own benefit and not the stakeholders.

On the surface, this topic could be view as universal at first; nevertheless there are still conflicting ideas of what should govern the solution to all business problems. There are parties that states although that the studies of business ethics is undeniably effective and relevant, the business and the internal control should be more focus on the what drives the business and understands it, in order to overcome many business conflicts and problem. In one way or the other, this should not be the issue because business ethics clearly states as an ongoing subject and deals with conduct directly. It is not merely a proxy of guidelines. It has its own grounds and value.

Besides further explaining the importance of business ethics in business organization, it is crucial to confine clearly and state the advantages of business ethics and how it works to combat many business problems. Thus, building the fact that business ethics should be the main tool in reducing company frauds and to restore the confidence of the public.

One issue that could be closely related to business ethics is fraud. The result to the research in the United States by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) in 1996 and 2002 shows that the estimated losses from fraud and abuse to be 6 percent of annual revenue, approximately about $600 billion. This figure may have increased over the years until today. The truth is that the actual figure of the loss is difficult to quantify due to reasons such as not all frauds are detected and even if it is, not all are reported. There are many other reasons that contribute to this problem. It is believe that fraud is a hazardous problem that occurs in all firms without exception, whether it is direct or indirect. Fraud is indeed an inevitable constantly occurring problem. Fraud is a matter of moral issues, and it can resolve to business ethics for solutions. Hall (2004) stated that:

Fraud denotes a false representation of a material fact made by one party to another party with the intent to deceive and induce the other party to justifiably rely on the fact to his or her detriment. Fraud in the business environment has a more specialized meaning. It is an intentional deception, misappropriation of a company's assets, or manipulation of its financial data to the advantage of the perpetrator. In the accounting literature, fraud is also commonly known as white-collar crime, defalcation, embezzlement, and irregularities. (p. 126)

The most substantial issue here is the relationship between fraud and business ethics. There are claims that stated frauds are of nature and occur nonetheless with or without the existence of business ethics dues to many enduring external factors. These factors are described as opportunities which place a person in a situation that enables them to commit the intended fraud. These opportunities too are of external in nature. Likewise, meaning to say that fraud is something that is out of a person's control and anyone could have done it. However, come to the main concern that fraudulent activities and business ethics are of close relation because both have dealings with moral aspects. Also, moral aspects is part of the build of a person's personal characteristics and in one way or the other, effects how deep a person could be dragged down through situational pressure that may be caused by the external factors mentioned before.

The bottom line is that business ethics initially outline the best of an individual personal integrity as well as ways to overcome business related pressures and influential opportunities. As suggested by Witzel (2002), “That the virtuous businessman was a virtuous man in general.” (p. 4). From his words, it can be extracted that a person who has good grip of business ethics and cautiously monitors his conduct to ensure his own integrity is most unlikely to be committing frauds. Indeed, business ethics may not be able to eliminate thoroughly the issue of fraud. Rather, it is the key feature as a set of control for reducing fraudulent activities in an organization.

Business ethics may have deals with a lot of other matter besides frauds and another importance of it is in its potential in restoring back the confidence of the public. Public confidence is a crucial matter and essential element in the existence of many firms. It is the survival factor of firms and without or lacking of it could cause catastrophe in any business entities.

One factor that has the tendency to erode the confidence of the public is internal conflict. Four main ethical conflicts confront leaders and managers in business as stated in a journal titled why discuss international business ethics? (2001) are:

Conflict of interest: an individual may be able to achieve personal gain from a decision he or she makes. Loyalty versus truth: an individual must decide between loyalty to the company and truthfulness in business relationships. Honesty and integrity: an individual must decide whether to be honest or lie, and whether to take responsibility for decisions and actions or blame someone else. Whistle-blowing: an individual must decide whether to tell others (media or government authorities) about the unethical behavior of the company or institution. (p. 40)

A company with a lot of internal conflict of interest will definitely affect the confidence of the people towards the company itself. Because of the term used is "official duty", the issue of business ethics is able to come into the whole picture. Business ethics deals directly with misconduct in the company and it is usually of the misuse of official rights in the company as well as irresponsible actions taken by the officials themselves. For example, you work for government and use your official position to secure a contract for a private consulting company you own. Another instance is using your government position to get a summer job for your daughter. Thus to say that conflict of interest is in direct relationship to the issue of public confidence and business ethics.

Some parties do question how business ethics could promote public confidence by saying that the matter of people's confidence is very much related to the company's performance itself and not to what extend business ethics they have adopted. But technically, business ethics deals with good ethical behaviours and thus good for a business in overcoming conflict of interest align with the objective of restoring the confidence of the public towards the company. In other words, it is to say that the best medium in promoting and restoring confidence for a company is by properly adopting business ethics.

Business ethics is not merely a current topic since it was discussed about way back hundreds of years ago. There are parties that maintained their bias ideas with regards to business ethics. These groups of people just could not accept business ethics as a solution to any business problems due to the nature of "business" itself. Even to this day, there are parties that feel that business ethics should be looked at as oxymoron; some ideas that is expressed contradictory to what is really happening. In other words, it is to say that business ethics is dysfunctional proxy of morality per se. This is due to their claim that said all commerce involves the exploitation of mankind by mankind. This can be seen from the system that governs business itself. For an example, take capitalism for instance, which promotes free market business that uses monopolizing and manipulating as their tool to gain wealth. it is argued that business ethics itself has deviate from its own purpose, and this is because of the business itself is unethical in nature. In short, business ethics is unable to prove anything as true and fair, what more than to reduce fraud or restore the public confidence.

But, this is simply a wrong assumption. It is true that business ethics can be seen in many different dimensions but to say that business ethics is immoral because business itself is unethical is somehow a shallow conception. There is no immorality in business but rather the acts of human could change it to be immoral. Ethics is needed in controlling and well as reducing these faults, such as fraud. In addition, a person with good moral conduct and ethical in behavior will surely win the trust of other people. That is why, a company that imposes and follows a good set of business ethics is look upon to and trusted by others. Besides that, business ethics is a dynamic subject because it adapts to what is current and what is past. The issue of whether business ethics could or could not be trusted should not in the first place be questioned. However, since there were so many groups of people trying to make business ethics look bad, people should go back direct to what is basic. Business ethics is used as to maintain ethical behavior in business dealings and should not be lop-sided in any case, as in the stakeholders' case. A company, by adopting proper business ethics will surely be able to maintain the stability of their company's existence, and along the way, comply with human values in life.

Marketing was a new science in the 1950's and few even had any concept of what it would bring about. It basically incorporated new methods of advertising in its simplest form and grew from there to branch into large scale prime time ads that would run into the millions for even short TV ads. Of course, they were strategically aired to return the greatest marketing impact. The quick sessions would employ the latest in ad conveying methods including some of the greatest fantasy content. Each message would be short but to the point and destined to create the greatest earnings return. It becomes fairly obvious that only the few top revenue earners could afford the extravagant costs to air their dedicated commercials.

Some Deceptive Practices Used In Marketing Products Have Gone Too Far

The art of advertising is fairly well based on persuasion of an audience and this group today is generally the TV viewer, which basically began in the early 1950's, at the time the idea of Marketing was conceived. In its infancy, these ads were fairly infrequent and conveyed a fair amount of “truth in advertising”. As time went on, some abuses of the sponsored messages began to arise and sexual overtones began to ensue. They figured this would attract more viewers. As time went on, the original message seemed to create the needed results of increasing profits, so these methods were incorporated into future ads.

We are finding that advertising proliferation is having a negative effect on our society. In many cases some advertising messages lead the listener astray into actually making a purchase of something that is not of the value advertised.

Advertising holds far too much persuasive power to be considered a mere tool for communication. By promising some unrealistic expectation, for example, advertisements that manipulate people to buy products they do not need, or free gifts that require purchase commitment prior to receiving their "free gift", so it is not free, but is misled to believe that you are "receiving something for nothing".

What Are Some Of The Latest Incidents Concerning Ethics In Advertising?

It is believed by most Americans that the recent voting by the FDA to let pharmaceutical ads air without being controlled in their excessive quantity and in many cases using unethical and highly persuasive methods as they have been over the past few years should have been turned down. Many Americans hope that the FDA gives some future study into this very important matter.

Whatever type of company you set up you should be honest. This is also known as business ethics.

Whatever type of company you start, whether it is an online company or an offline company, you must decide what are your ethical values.

Every business decision you make, you and your workers should think ethics.

If you are a fast food company, what are the ethics in the types of food on your menu. Sure, these are fast foods, but how to make these fast foods also nutritious. This is business honesty and business ethics.

If you have an online company, what is an ethical product to sell? What type of product do you feel that you can honestly market.

For example, there are many online casinos. Do you believe in gambling? Is it honest for you to have a casino just because it makes money if you don't honestly believe that people should gamble?

Then there are many other types of online businesses that you can start that you can start and be an honest and ethical business person.

Maybe gambling you think makes money. If you don't believe in this, then don't start an online casino.

Find out some other types of businesses that you can own and be the best and most honest and most ethical business person that you can be.

Think about honesty and ethics in starting your business and think about honesty and ethics in every business decision. You can be an honest and ethical business professional and also make money.