Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
by Robert Greenwald
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DVD details
Director: Robert GreenwaldDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full length, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Brave New Films
DVD Reviews of Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
DVD Review: A Shocking Documentary, But I Still Shop There
Summary: 4 Stars
I heard a lot about this documentary and finally set aside time to view it. From the title alone you know that the film is going to be a Wal-Mart bashing story from beginning to end. With documentaries and television news features like this I normally begin with a bias favoring the defendent -- in this case, Wal-Mart. I expected to hear the usual digruntled rantings of lazy terminated employees and other crazies who thrive on complaints against their "oppressive" employers.
After watching the film I decided that my preconceived notion was incorrect. Though there may be some professional conspiracy theorists interviewed in the movie, there are such a variety of current (as of 2005) and prior employees, both management and associates, involved in this project that there must be validity to their complaints.
The one thing that bothers me about the film is that it lacks balance. We never get Wal-Mart's side of the issue except for pirated clips from corporate videos and short interview snippets that were lensed by someone else. These clips are always presented with commentary, captions, or ominous music that automatically characterize them as Wal-Mart propaganda. Surely there must be at least one current or former Wal-Mart manager or associate willing to stand in front of the store in the parking lot to say something good about the organization.
There are a lot of givens with Wal-Mart. One of the movie portrayals is that Wal-Marts have destroyed old fashioned downtown businesses. Face it, most downtown businesses with their limited floor space and modest hours deserved to go the way of the dinosaurs. I remember years ago living in a small Georgia town where the Main Street businesses, complete with shoddy Mayberry awnings, already looked as if they were half abandoned. Those still operating opened but a few brief hours and did not accept credit cards or personal checks. These were the types of stores where you often found yourself waiting, sometimes in vain, for assistance at the register because the clerk thought it more important to finish telling his epic hospital stay or fishing story to some other flannel shirted crony. In the case of this particular Georgia town, when it was announced that Wal-Mart was moving in there were the usual complaints about a mega store dooming Main Street businesses. How can you doom something that is already terminal? Those Main Street businesses that could modernized their images, rebuilt their store fronts, set up tables on potted flora on the sidewalk, and did other things to attract customers to an environment they cannot find at a mall or department store. Others simply played the "woe-is-me end of the family owned business" card and shut down.
The documentary tables a lot of issues about Wal-Mart. The most shocking is the way its employees are treated and compensated. Low wages, unpaid overtime, threats, and at-will terminations without reason if the person is deemed a union instigator. One premise set forth by the movie is that Wal-Mart installed security cameras not so much for controling store pilferage, but to ensure that employees are watched and dissuaded from any lawful assembly. This is hardly late breaking news. Wal-Mart is not alone in the way it treats its employees. I worked for years in a large grocery store chain where managers doctored time cards (when we actually used time cards) to work underage employees well past their legal evening curfew, deferred overtime hours to subsequent days so as to avoid overtime, and greatly reduced the hours of tenured employees while at the same time provided additional work days to new hires with much lower hourly pay rates. As such I heartily disagree with the way Wal-Mart treats its employees. On the other hand the Wal-Mart penny-pinching workhouse philosophy is not new to the industry.
Way back in the early 1980s I never heard of Wal-Mart. Living in the Northeast and later in the Southwest there were either no or very few Wal-Marts in those areas. It was not until we moved to Georgia that I was exposed to the Wal-Mart phenonemon. Remember too that Wal-Mart creator Sam Walton still held the reins to this up and coming giant. The stores at the time were almost identical. They were clean and I do not think I ever had an interaction with an employee that was ever unpleasant. In fact, those were the days where it was not uncommon for a store manager to randomly ask you if found everything you were looking for. Wal-Mart was also very big on selling American made products over foreign manufacture whenever a US product was available.
Of course that was before the sudden growth surge of Wal-Marts across country and in Europe.
Wal-Mart is traditionally non-union. The documentary spends a lot of time on Wal-Mart's battle to keep unions out. According to the film Wal-Mart has a multi-million dollar response team that flies out on a moment's notice whenever there is a hint of union activity. Here too it must be pointed out that Wal-Mart is hardly the only large chain store that is not unionized. However in Wal-Mart's case maybe it should be if for no other reason but to ensure that employees are offered affordable dental, health, and prescription plans. Many of the employees interviewed in the film discuss the high cost of Wal-Mart's health care. More disturbing are the allegations that Wal-Mart employees are reportedly encouraged and coached to apply for state and Federal aid programs. If true the bottom line is that our tax dollars pay the health "benefits" for Wal-Mart employees.
While watching the film I thought about the amount of times I shop at the retail giant. Even though I initially walked away from the movie with a firm resolve to never frequent Wal-Mart again, I found myself driving there the following day for lawn care and back to school items. The other similarly distanced retailers did not have what I needed and were already setting up Christmas displays -- and it is still summer. Despite the telling evidence of the movie I have yet to find a more convenient store to pick up all the things I need at once.
The bottom line is that after watching this documentary you have to draw your own conclusions as to the absolutes: What allegations are true, which are exaggerated, and whether any or all of the evils tabled about Wal-Mart are significantly different from those perpetrated by other retail giants.
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