Wal-Mart - Der Hohe Preis der Niedrigpreise

Trust me, I work there; they have---if you can believe it---gotten WORSE for the workers. They recently (within the last 2 months) changed our dress code---no hats (not so bad), everybody has to wear a blue clone shirt (a little bit worse), no more vests (so we have find other ways to carry the tools required for our job), and, just a couple days ago, no radios on the floor, which have been allowed ever since I started working there over 2 years ago. Also, within the last 2 months (this is the worst), they have decided we need to be to be timed on how long long it takes the stockers to work their freight. I mean, c'mon already, this is WAL_MART---not Ford Motor Company!!! If you want me to do piece work, then pay me piece work rate, not less than $10 an hour. Yup, Wal*Mart's lowering prices, alright---lowering the price they pay their employees (oops, sorry---ASSOCIATES).

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald has effectively made mincemeat of his targets in a couple of recent fiery documentaries - Rupert Murdoch and the FOX Network in "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism", and the Bush administration in "Uncovered: The War on Iraq". His latest is no exception as he lays into Wal-Mart, its CEO Lee Scott and Sam Walton's heirs in this probing 2005 critique of corporate injustice. Instead of providing a single narrative voice, Greenwald structures his film as a series of vignettes focusing on discrete instances of where Wal-Mart has violated fair market practices, passed over women and minorities for leadership positions, restricted movements toward employee unionization, taken advantage of cheap labor in China and India, and disregarded environmental standards.

The grievances seem endless, and the film even discloses the embarrassingly paltry amounts each Walton family member has given to charitable causes (compared to Bill Gates, of course). The most touching episodes focus on victims like Red Esry, who are experiencing the closure of their multi-generational small businesses in small towns where Wal-Mart opens and cannibalizes the competition. Much of the treatment seems ham-fisted, especially in the juxtaposition of Wal-Mart commercials and in-house training videos within the context of those being crushed by the corporation's economic clout. Moreover, the one segment about the rape of an employee in a parking lot, while horrific, seems more generic in nature than Wal-Mart's accountability in the incident. The abundance of conjecture and the lack of attributable facts tend to affect some of the film's credibility.

However, Greenwald makes his points with clarity. Especially effective is the use of archived footage of Scott asserting to a massive audience of his employees that Wal-Mart has done nothing but good for the economy, even though many of them have to go on welfare to get medical care. The film ends with a montage of people who have successfully lobbied against the construction of stores in their towns. At the same time, Greenwald has not made a monomaniacal diatribe, as the takeaway never feels like the destruction of Wal-Mart but more a call for a severe overhaul of their internal practices. The filmmaker has certainly come a long way since his 1980 feature film debut, the ludicrous "Xanadu", and he seems to be continuing his streak of confronting those corrupted by their power.

The DVD has several extras, the best being a twenty-minute making-of featurette and a separate 16-minute short, "The Big Meeting", on how the film came about. Greenwald also provides a commentary track, though much of what he shares can be gleaned from the featurettes. There are a couple of deleted segments that do seem redundant if they were included in the movie (one set in Quebec, the other in England), as well as a brief clip of local religious leaders condemning Wal-Mart's practices. Lastly, there are several fitfully funny Wal-Mart commercial parodies that apparently served as commercials for the documentary. Those looking for a more-in-depth analysis of Wal-Mart's business impact may want to read Charles Fishman's "The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy".

There are some "viewer posts" on this site that are fake. Someone at WalMart's rapid response team is posing as a Wal Mart employee, and providing facts regarding how wonderful Wal Mart is.

One fact I know is that COST PLUS pays its employees a respectable wage, and WAL MART does not. In one study, WAL MART's SAM'S CLUB STORE was found to pay its employees A $11.52 per hour, while COSTCO paid its employees $15.97, 40% Less. (Source: Business Week Online April 12, 2004)

Note: I am NOT associated with any business, labor group, political party, association, or group of any kind. I'm just sick of WAL MART paying its employees disgusting wages, and then paying politicos big money to provide RAPID RESPONSE PUBLIC RELATIONS sound bites, attempting to defend the indefensible. They should start by not lying about who them are, when they post submissions on IMDb.

This movie presents information available from other sources. Yet the way it's shown here is still compelling. The overall impact is powerful. The movie is worth watching. Most disturbing are the types and numbers of crimes committed in Wal-Mart shopping lots, aided by lack of security. Shoppers could be protected but that would cost money ...

There's a glaring omission. Wal-Mart gets its main strength from us, the consumers. That point is made eloquently in South Park's episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" (season 8, episode 9, Nov 2004). Another good critique is PBS's Frontline in "Is Wal-Mart Good For America?"

If we didn't shop there, there would be changes. We get what we pay for.

Rating: WWW (Well Worth Watching)

I had a generally low opinion of WalMart before, and Brave New Films' documentary only made them seem worse, but I still have questions. WM is well known for persistent, and often illegal, anti-union activity, which is reported in this film. WM is also known for beating down prices, which is not reported. I didn't know that WM has high turnover, or that many stores are purposefully under-staffed.

The sad stories of the losing competitors do not sway me. Mom and Pop operations of all kinds have been giving way to big box operations for many decades. Olive Garden killed my favorite local Italian restaurant, Lowe's is killing my favorite local hardware store and a planned Home Depot will finish the job. That is just competition in the developed world.

What annoyed me were the subsidies and tax breaks that WalMart manages to get from localities. In one case a WM is shown skipping across the town line, abandoning the subsidized big box stores, just before their sales taxes kick in. But more annoying was a lack of perspective: How many big chains and franchises get subsidies? If many do, that would be the logical counter-argument, so I'd like to have gotten the information.

I was also annoyed that WM employees were on public assistance of some kind, but again: How common is this in retail? Do KMart employees get a lot of public assistance? Or not? Apparently there is a lot of crime in WM parking lots. Is there less crime in Walgreen lots, or more? Brave New Films doesn't say. WM sells products from Chinese sweatshops. Hey, even I know they aren't the only ones. WalMart's habit of stockpiling lawn products in the parking lot often leads to toxic runoff, but they aren't the only ones that do that, either.

I still think that WalMart is a very bad employer, and now I know how much of a drain they are on the local economy, but I think Brave New Films failed to demonstrate whether WalMart is all that much worse than the other businesses on the strip, or simply the biggest of a bad lot. Either way, that would be good to know.