7 Eleven Wage Issue Editorial

Print Media Editorial Task

The motive of this editorial task is to understand why two different printing media’s addresses the same business issue in their different ways. In this study we will be going through the role of corporate responsibility of media and governance of media. Also we will try to understand why these people flip the same coin but two different sides in context to the 7 eleven pay issue.

Two major media i.e., ABC and Fairfax has showed that most of the 7- eleven stores were following unethical practices. Most of these stores underpaid their employees. This issue was affecting since long but finally came into disclosure finally by these media.  

The Australian Newspaper published article about this issue, as they had an interview with the Australian 7- Eleven Chairman Russ Withers  , he accepted that the underpay for staffs had happened on the watch of their central management and head office (Baxendale, 2015) . This article directly attacks the business model. The company’s business model is such that above a half percentage of profit is harvested by the head office and only the remaining is left over to the franchise owners. Hence the only way for franchisee owners to make good amount of money is cutting down the operating cost. And in previous assignment, root cause of the British Petroleum was COST CUTTING. “Greed is destructive. It can destroy everything”. The idea of cost cutting have been realised in wrong manner. Cost cutting is to cut down unwanted cost, not the one which is essential. “Greed and affection are two root cause of injustice”. Hence, this model had made the franchisee’s to cut their pay to the staff’s so that they can make the overall profit to increase. The chairman refused about the glitch in their business model and said that they have been operating more than 600 stores in Australia with same successful business model. The Chairman accepted the underpay issue and took accountability to give back the remaining pay to the employees who were underpaid even though it is the franchisee’s responsible to handle the problem as they were in charge of the employing the staff , training  and paying them . He said he is in process to appoint a panel of members to make this done in the right way (Baxendale, 2015).

The article published by the Australian financial review, was 7- eleven wage scandal has lessons to teach all the directors in business as most of the employees working for 7- Eleven were international students and they had the limitation of work for 20 hours a week. This problem in 7- Eleven has brought the issue in fair work department and violating the visa immigration conditions for those who are on student’s visa and as the pay is low there wasn’t any tax taken away from the workers from the Australian taxation office which caused them loss of millions of dollars (Ferguson, 2015). The report explains that this practice was very destructive by itself. It caused damage to all the stake holder connected to the business. Also it had adverse effect on the nations economy. If we analyse it in deep roots,The report also specifies that the company was unethical as they didn’t bother too much as to control the payments was concern of the franchisee. They were aware of wrong thing happing below them but they did not stretch themselves as they were generating overall profit. The report again states the business model was not good as it let franchisee’s to rip of their employee’s salaries. It even tells that the direction of the company smith didn’t resign his post as it was a big issue to handle he rather sat on the hot seat and was there to sorting it out. The media say’s all the business director’s must learn from him as he is facing the situation and the other way around , he said he didn’t know what was happening under him.

Why two media print different?

‘The primary aim of any business is to satisfy the need of customer.’ Every business has its own target customers. Depending on the intension (need) of the newspaper reader, he/she buys the product. Is he buying the paper to forecast and take strategic decision for stocks & business or he has nothing to worry about and has a leisure time in life to read & borrow some paid worries for himself and gossip with friends and do nothing about it.

In connections with print media, ‘Give monkey a banana, Dog a bone’ the financial review targets the economic related customers which may think of tax fraud to economy. Share price of 7Eleven on ASX, goodwill and the upcoming trouble for them. Whereas, ‘The Australian’ is trying to mobilise Australian’s of the nation about the company who stood there and did nothing about the issue. They want to showcase that, look here is the issue, here is the company, here is the business model and here is the franchisee. They want us to think about which people owns the maximum franchisee? Why was company soo quite?  

The Agenda of ‘The Australian’ is to attack the image, goodwill and how irresponsible the company is.  And Agenda of ‘Financial Review’ is to highlight the issue and connect the dots with how it is connected to the backbone of the economy.

The role of the media is to collect, certify and repackage the information. By doing so they reduce the cost economic agents face to become informed (Alexander Dyck, 2006). Corporate governance is the system of rules and practices by which a company is controlled (Council, 2014). The News’s paper media’s write and print in the way that suits the way for their target customer’s. As their customers have a similar mindset they bring the news altered so that it pleases and make the customer’s read. According to The Australian paper it has a set of audience as common people so the word’s used are easily understandable and it doesn’t talk more about the statistical data. It has given a support to the 7-Eleven that even though they caught in fraudulent, the chairman has come forward and agreed on paying their staff’s the differences. Whereas the Financial review are a bit more complex and has a lot of business terms as most of them reading it are corporate people. It is mostly represented in a business view. Thus the managers of the newspapers are more concerned in paying back the share to the shareholders. The news from them is mostly supported with statistical data and analysis. The printing media is owned by a global company Fairfax who actually had done the reporting of the underpay issue (Hywood, 2017). According to the ASX corporate governance principles the company must safeguard the integrity in corporate reporting which the 7-Eleven had clearly violated (BaixiaoLiua, 2013)