Conflicts
Many concerns have arisen concerning the treatment of Menards’ employees, and how situations are handled by the company. These concerns are often seen in how they treat corporate employees within the company. Menards utilizes fines and the threat of fines against future pay for violating their policies and procedures; for example, a two hundred dollar fine is assessed to any Menards employee that is involved in an accident that damages a Menards vehicle, even if the employee was found not to have been responsible or at fault for the accident. Failure to produce internal reports on time also result in fines. A typical disciplinary policy has been offering relocation, lower wage, and demotion when conflicts develop between executives and employees. This often results in the employee quitting his or her employment with the company. Other concerns surrounding Menards seeming lack of systemic store safety practices have surfaced. Unlike other big box home improvement operators, Menards does not employ back up alarms in their equipment at use inside their stores, nor do they employ spotters or aisle blockers to facilitate the safety of both patrons and employees while operating lifts and other such heavy equipment used to conduct stocking activities.
Other environmental conflicts include: - Wisconsin DNR officials have cited Menards at least 13 times since 1976 for ignoring or violating state regulations related to air and water pollution and hazardous waste.
- In 1994, Wisconsin obtained a civil judgment against Menards for the unlicensed transportation and disposal of ash produced by incinerating "CCA"-treated lumber. Wood treated with CCA contains chromium, copper, and arsenic – both chromium VI and arsenic are categorized by the US EPA as carcinogens. It is considered hazardous waste and requires proper disposal in a licensed landfill. The company was fined $160,000.
- In 1997, John Menard (Menards CEO/President/Founder) was caught using his personal pickup truck to haul plastic bags of chromium- and arsenic-laden wood ash to his home for disposal with his household trash. Menard pleaded no contest to felony and misdemeanor charges involving records violations, unlawful transportation, and improper disposal of hazardous waste. Menard and his company were fined $1.7 million for 21 violations.
- In 2003, the Minnesota attorney general charged that Menards manufactured and sold arsenic-tainted mulch in packaging labeled “ideal for playgrounds and for animal bedding.” Warning labels from the CCA-treated wood were found in the mulch. The EPA recommends that CCA-treated wood not be converted into mulch. The case is still pending (as of 2008).
- In 2005, Menards agreed to a $2 million fine after Wisconsin DNR officials found a floor drain in a company shop that they believed was used to dump paint, solvents, oil and other waste into a lagoon that fed into a tributary of the Chippewa River. The sanction broke the previous record fine of $1.7 million set by Menard in 1997.
- In 2006, the construction of a $112 million warehouse became a campaign issue in the Wisconsin governor’s race. The warehouse was to be erected by filling in a 0.6-acre (0.24 ha) bean field the DNR considers a seasonal wetland used by migrating tundra swans. Menards offered to build a wetland more than twice its size as a replacement, but was rejected by Scott Humrickhouse, a DNR regional director. Humrickhouse said that solution could be used “only when every alternative for saving the original wetland was exhausted.” The increasingly heated dispute got considerable media coverage, with a DNR warden calling Menards’ general counsel a “legal bitch” and the company threatening to move jobs out of Wisconsin. Tempers seemed to cool after Gov. Jim Doyle arranged $4.2 million in state aide to help the company expand its Eau Claire manufacturing headquarters. Menard had previously contributed $20,000 to Doyle’s campaign.
- Also in 2006: The US Environmental Protection Agency issued an administrative order against Menards for damaging a Sioux Falls, S.D., stream that ran through its property by filling in 1,350 linear feet of the stream and replacing it with a 66-inch storm sewer pipe.
Read more about this topic: Menards
Famous quotes containing the word conflicts:
“The extrovert and introvert, the realist and idealist, the scientist and philosopher, the man who found himself by refinding his life history and the individual who discovered his being in fantasy, these are the differences between Freud and Jung.”
—Robert S. Steele. Freud and Jung: Conflicts of Interpretation, ch. 10, Routledge & Kegan Paul (1982)
“They [parents] can help the children work out schedules for homework, play, and television that minimize the conflicts involved in what to do first. They can offer moral support and encouragement to persist, to try again, to struggle for understanding and mastery. And they can share a child’s pleasure in mastery and accomplishment. But they must not do the job for the children.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“In motherhood, where seemingly opposite realities can be simultaneously true, the role of nurturer invariably conflicts with the role of socializer. When trouble came as it surely must, was I the good cop who understood, the bad cop who terrorized, or both?”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)