Katherine Mui Business Ethnics 2/17/09 Reflection Paper #1 Wal-Mart would be less profitable if they adopted Costco's policies in how they treat their employees. Costco is very successful in making their customers and employees happy. They are more concern about them than their profit being earned. According to the greenhouse article, Bill Dreher, an analyst from Deutsche Bank complained last year stating, "It's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."Costco pays their employees $17 an hour on average. This is 42 percent higher than Sam's Club. Costco also have their employees pay less on their health costs. Sinegal has their workers pay only 8 percent toward their health costs while the retail average is 25 percent. This is about triple the amount employees should be paying, but they only pay one third of it. They ignore what Wall Street wants them to accomplish, which is to meet their profit demand and be less generous to their workers. Wal-mart and Sam’s Club has a lot more stores than Costco, so if they were to tell their employees to pay only a third of their health cost, they will lose profit. Currently Wal-Mart has less than 50 percent of their employees on health insurance. If Wal-Mart raises that percentage to Costco’s 85 percent, then their profit will also decrease since Wal-Mart has more employees to support. Costco actually pays more on their workers' 401(k) plans, which starts out with 3 percent of salary the second year and after 25 years it rises to 9 percent. Their insurance plan helps workers pay more dental expenses. In addition, part-time workers are eligible for health insurance a year and a half earlier than Wal-Mart. In my own experience as a waitress in a Japanese restaurant, I realize that I earn more money than the owners. I get paid $10 an hour plus a lot of tips. I don’t have to pay any expenses while the owners have to pay the workers, rent, utility, and supplies. The supplies of fish are very expense and the...