The teen clothing company, Wet Seal, has settled a class action law suit with their employees for $7.5 million. This comes after the large scale firing of African American workers and managers throughout the company. The company states that they were just changing their image, however, it seems as though there is much more to this issue than what they are saying.
If the company was truly “changing their image” how should they have gone about doing this as to not seem racist?
The company should have not fired anybody to start off with. Perhaps they should have just changed their signs and advertising campaigns rather than firing employees that were not of the race they wanted. The article seems to be biased, it seems that they only fired store managers, which does not make sense if they wanted to change their 'look'. I think there are details that the author intentionally did not include in this article.
ReplyDeleteI think that if they started firing people randomly, either way it would make people think that there would be some sort of discrimination. I agree with Ford, other than changing the image by firing employees, they should have changed the way that they advertise and present themselves as a company.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ford, firing all of their African Americans employees in order to get a "better" company image was not a good choice. What this company did was very racist and wrong. If they wanted to promote a certain look for their customers, they should not have fired all of their workers who did not fit their description of their targeted audience. They should have had all of their advertisements/models for their clothing showcase the image they wanted.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense what Ford, Hannah, and Brandyn are saying that Wet Seal should not have fired employees to get a certain image, but rather, they could have done other things. Instead of firing their employees, they should have changed their employees to fit their image. If the company is trying to appeal to rich, white kids, they should make their workers, even those of color, wear Wet Seal clothes. They could provide all of their employees with clothes that make them look rich and make them look like rich kids to appeal to their clientele. Also, the company should change their name, so people actually know it is a clothing company.
ReplyDeleteThere is no need to fire employees to help change your image. Rather, you can do this by selling a different product or going after a different audience. They could create commercials to help sell there product to a wider variety of customers. Honestly, I think it is stupid to fire African American employees and then say that it was just to change the image of the store. That to me sounds like they are saying that they don't want to sell to African Americans since they don't want any as employees. There are many other ways to change the image of a store. Change the product, change the advertising, or tear the whole thing down and start again.
ReplyDeleteI agree that they should've done a better job to avoid anyone pointing fingers and suggesting racism. By firing people for not apparent other reasons, racism became very obvious. They should have kept their employees, as Hannah said, and simply advertised differently. If they just showed certain races in ads it wouldn't have been obvious at all and no one would have thought the company was racist and unjust.
ReplyDeleteI personally don't see solution to creating a new image. I do not think that firing African Americans to create a new image is respectfully. If they really want to create a new image they should fire the employees when they had a legitimate reason to fire them. If they want to change their image then the commercials or advertisement posters can include white people on them so it helps change their image. Overall, I do not think that firing people based on race is professional. In order to solve this situation they should either keep the employees or fire then when they have an actual reason.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ford on that instead of firing employees they should have just changed the way the company was advertised. The people fired did nothing wrong to cause them being fired. Firing someone they don't look the part isn't acceptable because everyone is different. The company seems very focused on this one image, which is unrealistic because everyone buys these clothes and whether or not a specific person wears it, if someone likes the clothes they will still purchase them. In order to have avoided this wet seal should have not simply have fired workers for no reason.
ReplyDeletePersonally, it doesn't really matter what they were doing to "change" their look. It seems as though the company was being flat out racist by firing a great number of their African American staff. There are many simple solutions if a clothing company wants to change their look, and that could be done through creating a new store logo, switching up the styles, or even requiring a more strict dress code for the staff that works there, totally disregarding the color of their skin. You can not simply fire a employee based on the shallow idea that the company wants a white staff. It is ridiculous and sad, there is not much justification in this case to say that this company was not being racist and truly wanted to change their look. Any of the examples above, plus more considering I do not know much about the business of clothing apparel chain stores, would be a much better way to switch up the style and feel of the store.
ReplyDelete