Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

I just had to watch this for my Media Criticism course. I was rather surprised by some of the information included in this documentary. Although from knowing people who have worked for other chain stores and fast food places, Wal-Mart is not the only one with questionable practices.

I shop at Walmart once in a while...

I have never viewed the movie but walmart scares me. They are so cheap that the mom and pop stores are forced to close.

I've watched this. My only advice is "Vote with your dollars". If you don't like how a store treats their employees or agree with their policies, shop somewhere else. If no one shops in these stores, they would not be here. Obviously some people really agree and support Wal-Mart. Vote with your dollars!

Wal-Mart through efficient and aggressive management has saved millions of Americans billions of dollars over the last couple of decades. They are the best managed and motivated organiztion I know of. They use their size and organizational agility to keep the prices down and I appreciate that.

They provide employment for many who would not be employed if not for Wal-Mart
and this is killing the union movement. They would have every employee paying them dues, striking and staging slowdowns so they could impose a set of work rules favorable to the union freeriders.

I am a retired, farmer, business owner and manager - Who do you work for Joy???

I shop at WalMart ALL THE TIME!! My husband yells at me about the way the employees are treated, etc.

I just say if they are treated so bad - don't work there. Get another job.

I talk to the ladies in there every time I shop and they are happy. They have the same people working there year after year. If they were so HORRIBLE to work for - why are these same people staying?

Who do you work for Joy??? asked Bill H.

Not Walmart, how about you?
I work for an agency that helps low income families. A few of my clients work and have worked for Walmart.

Bebe Shelby, you have the right to shop where you wish.
Many people I know have quit working for Walmart for many reasons noted in the film.

This is a very good topic.
Walmart SUCKS. It is cheap and trashy, not to mention an eyesore.
If you must choose low price at least go with Target LOL

My brother was offered a regional managers position at Walmart, he turned it down due to its treatment of employees.

Joy I thought you'd enjoy this.

For others please
before you defend Walmart read some facts and watch the film




SHOPPERS BEWARE: THE TRUTH ABOUT WAL-MART
Wal-Mart is now the world's biggest corporation, having passed Exxon/Mobil for the top slot. It hauls off a stunning $220 billion a year from We the People (more in revenues than the entire GDP of Israel and Ireland combined). Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, we're-just-folks-from-Arkansas mage of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls "this devouring beast" of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors, and suppliers. Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet.
Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltons -- the ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London's "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion (£45.3 billion) in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way -- by roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier. With more than one million employees (three times more than General Motors), this far-flung retailer is the country's largest private employer, and it intends to remake the image of the American workplace in its image -- which is not pretty.

Yes, there is the happy-faced "greeter" who welcomes shoppers into every store, (although the greeter at my local Wal-mart doesn't always look so cheerful) and employees (or "associates," as the company grandiosely calls them) gather just before opening each morning for a pep rally, where they are all required to join in the Wal-Mart cheer: "Gimme a W!" shouts the cheerleader; "W!" the dutiful employees respond. "Gimme an A!" And so on.

Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they are held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70 percent of its workers are full- time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year. Health-care benefits? Only if you've been there two years; then the plan hits you with such huge premiums that few can afford it -- only 38% of Wal-Marters are covered. Thinking union? Get outta here! "Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization," reads a company guidebook for supervisors. "You, as a manager, are expected to support the company's position. . . . This may mean walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct."

Wal-Mart is in fact rabidly anti-union, deploying teams of union- busters from Bentonville to any spot where there's a whisper of organizing activity. "While unions might be appropriate for other companies, they have no place at Wal-Mart," a spokeswoman told a Texas Observer reporter who was covering an NLRB hearing on the company's manhandling of 11 meat-cutters who worked at a Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Jacksonville, Texas. These derring-do employees were sick of working harder and longer for the same low pay. "We signed [union] cards, and all hell broke loose," says Sidney Smith, one of the Jacksonville meat-cutters who established the first-ever Wal-Mart union in the U.S., voting in February 2000 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. Eleven days later, Wal-Mart announced that it was closing the meat-cutting departments in all of its stores and would henceforth buy prepackaged meat elsewhere.

But the repressive company didn't stop there. As the Observer reports: "Smith was fired for 'theft' after a manger agreed to let him buy a box of overripe bananas for 50 cents, Smith ate one banana before paying for the box, and was judged to have stolen that banana." Wal-Mart is an unrepentant and recidivist violator of employee rights, drawing repeated convictions, fines, and the ire of judges from coast to coast. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has had to file more suits against the Bentonville billionaires club for cases of disability discrimination than any other corporation. A top EEOC lawyer told Business Week, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law."

Likewise, a national class-action suit reveals an astonishing pattern of sexual discrimination at Wal-Mart (where 72 percent of the salespeople are women), charging that there is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." Workers' compensation laws, child-labor laws (1,400 violations in Maine alone), surveillance of employees -- you name it, this corporation is a repeat offender. No wonder, then, that turnover in the stores is above 50 percent a year, with many stores having to replace 100 percent of their employees each year, and some reaching as high as a 300 percent turnover!

Then there's China. For years, Wal-Mart saturated the airwaves with a "We Buy American" advertising campaign, but it was nothing more than a red-white-and-blue sham. All along, the vast majority of the products it sold were from cheap-labor hell-holes, especially China. In 1998, after several exposes of this sham, the company finally dropped its "patriotism" posture and by 2001 had even moved its worldwide purchasing headquarters to China. Today, it is the largest importer of Chinese-made products in the world, buying $10 billion worth of merchandise from several thousand Chinese factories. As Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports, "In country after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst," adding that the bottom-feeding labor policy of this one corporation "is actually lowering standards in China, slashing wages and benefits, imposing long mandatory-overtime shifts, while tolerating the arbitrary firing of workers who even dare to discuss factory conditions."

Wal-Mart does not want the U.S. buying public to know that its famous low prices are the product of human misery, so while it loudly proclaims that its global suppliers must comply with a corporate "code of conduct" to treat workers decently, it strictly prohibits the disclosure of any factory names and addresses, hoping to keep independent sources from witnessing the "code" in operation. Kernaghan's NLC, acclaimed for its fact-packed reports on global working conditions, found several Chinese factories that make the toys Americans buy for their children at Wal-Mart. Seventy-one percent of the toys sold in the U.S. come from China, and Wal-Mart now sells one out of five of the toys we buy.

NLC interviewed workers in China's Guangdong Province who toil in factories making popular action figures, dolls, and other toys sold at Wal-Mart. In "Toys of Misery," a shocking 58-page report that the establishment media ignored, NLC describes: 13- to 16-hour days molding, assembling, and spray-painting toys from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. or even midnight, seven days a week, with 20-hour shifts in peak season. Even though China's minimum wage is 31 cents an hour -- which doesn't begin to cover a person's basic subsistence-level needs -- these production workers are paid 13 cents an hour.

Workers typically live in squatter shacks, seven feet by seven feet, or jammed in company dorms, with more than a dozen sharing a cubicle costing $1.95 a week for rent. They pay about $5.50 a week for lousy food. They also must pay for their own medical treatment and are fired if they are too ill to work. The work is literally sickening, since there's no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint- dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there's no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day.

As for Wal-Mart's highly vaunted "code of conduct," NLC could not find a single worker who had ever seen or heard of it. These factories employ mostly young women and teenage girls. Wal- Mart, renowned for knowing every detail of its global business operations and for calculating every penny of a product's cost, knows what goes on inside these places. Yet, when confronted with these facts, corporate honchos claim ignorance and wash their hands of the exploitation: "There will always be people who break the law," says CEO Lee Scott. "It is an issue of human greed among a few people."

Those "few people" include him, other top managers, and the Walton billionaires. Each of them not only knows about their company's exploitation, but willingly prospers from a corporate culture that demands it. "Get costs down" is Wal-Mart's mantra and modus operandi, and that translates into a crusade to stamp down the folks who produce its goods and services, shamelessly building its low-price strategy and profits on their backs. Worse, Wal-Mart is on a messianic mission to extend its exploitative ethos to the entire business world. More than 65,000 companies supply the retailer with the stuff on its shelves, and it constantly hammers each supplier about cutting their production costs deeper and deeper in order to get cheaper wholesale prices. Some companies have to open their books so Bentonville executives can red-pencil what CEO Scott terms "unnecessary costs."

Of course, among the unnecessaries to him are the use of union labor and producing goods in America, and Scott is unabashed about pointing in the direction of China or other places for abysmally low production costs. He doesn't even have to say "Move to China" -- his purchasing executives demand such an impossible lowball price from suppliers that they can only meet it if they follow Wal-Mart's labor example. With its dominance over its own 1.2 million workers and 65,000 suppliers, plus its alliances with ruthless labor abusers abroad, this one company is the world's most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class aspirations of workers everywhere.










http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/WALMART.html

I have been in a Wal Mart once or twice. Not recently. My wife is boycotting them, for many of the reasons stated herein. I have read recently that they are making an effort to make their stores "green." Reduced electrical power consumption, etc. That's laudable. It also saves them money. Nothing wrong with that. It's the way they treat their suppliers and their employees that should be changed.
I suppose it comes down to a basic question: In a free-market capitalistic society, does a business have a responsibility to anybody but their stockholders? Is maximizing profit the ONLY criterion for success? Do they have an obligation to their employees, their suppliers, or the public at large? Many companies give donations to local charities in their communities, provide special services and facilities for employees, etc. Obviously, money spent for such things is coming right off the bottom line. I have my own opinions on this, but what do you-all think?

Good questions Bert.
I do think they have an obligation to their employees, their suppliers, and maybe even the public at large.
The going green idea is a good one. I would like to see them cut back on stores being built for one, then better treatment for employees ect.

10 ++++++
After seeing the movie I started comparing prices and found that many items at wall mart are higher priced and lessor quality. I will not shop there anymore. Lowes and Home Depot are as bad. After they drive out the small business the price goes up.

A good example: Nikon Coolpix camera at Staples $129, same camera at wall mart on the same day $259!

"Big Box Mart" exploits a lot of what annoys me most about humanity. I avoid shopping there whenever possible, and will go quite a long way out of my way to shop Anywhere but there. Yes, I do believe we have quite enough of them.

Wishing You Laughter

By their very nature, corporations that grow can become monsters. But why just pick Walmart out? Any of you drink coffee at Starbucks for example? Their corporate practice was to drive small independents out of business by searching them out and attempting to buy them out. If they said no, they opened one across the street and drove them under. That is one reason that there are so many so close together. Where is the outrage there.....?
Frankly, Walmart has been a target because of union money to give them a bad name and hurt business. Right or wrong, that is what is driving it all. The problem is separating propaganda from fact, and it is hard to know what to believe anymore. Even so-called documentaries today are so slanted one way or the other, they are meaningless. Shop there, don't shop there, do what you think best for your own reasons.

Walmart has been a target because of union money to give them a bad name and hurt business.

That may be true, but you can't blame the union for fighting a corporation that they view (correctly) as a mortal enemy. Unions protect employees from exploitative employers, and in the process sometimes abuse their own power. I wrote a piece that dealt with this and the related issue of illegal immigration...which also threatens the power of unions.

Here is the link.

My husband is in the union and that is why he HATES that I shop at Walmart.

Amy D. FYI I AM NOT WT. Just not STUPID. Why should I pay $4.50 for something at Meijer when I can go ACROSS THE STREET to Walmart and but it for $2.50. You would have to have a screw loose.

A lot of people can't afford to shop somewhere else and that is why they go to Walmart.

Nope, no Starbucks for me either. Rarely do fastfood, maybe once a year. I try to shop at small independantly owned shops whenever possible actually. Gas for the car and groceries are two common exceptions, although I prefer a grocery that is privately owned over one that is part of a chain, it isn't always possible. I simply don't like to contribute to large corporations that I feel are more concerned about making big money, feeding off of and perpetuating Greed than delivering quality, contributing to society, taking care of their employees or keeping productions within our country. It's not always possible, sometimes I have to give them my business, but I resist it at every opportunity. I don't single out one company over another, I simply try to choose small local businesses whenever possible. Sure, you might get it cheaper somewhere like Walmart but it will be just that....cheaper, not better.

Sara E. said it best in these comments...vote with your dollars. It is a Choice each person makes. I don't have cable because I don't agree with their prices or practices as a general rule, for example. If you aren't happy with a company, don't give them your money.

You are absolutely correct - don't shop there if you don't like it.

As far as not working there - (some people don't have many options and a job at Wal-Mart is better than no job at all).

if someone feels they have been mistreated they have the right to leave Wal-Marts all across the nation and never come back. And no one will come after them. People need to realize that Wal-Mart is a business and that the only reason ir is the center of attention is because it is a huge company. Smaller retailers have similar business practices but no one cares because who cares what Sears or Home Depot do? They aren't the nation's largest employers. If they buy products from China who gives a crap. Even though they sell billions of dollars of products, they aren't as big so it doesn't matter. Mmmhmmm. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That's right, and that is why you wont see me in a Walmart. (because everyone has the right to not go there and never go back)
No one said smaller companies dont matter or that other companies dont matter.
My point is, since Walmart is a larger corporation, more damage can come from them. (like bulldozing down trees or unpopulated areas all over to build YET more Walmarts that we dont need)
Thanks so much for your comments everyone

How can a company be a "mortal enemy"?

>
If you are a member of the Retail Clerks Union, then Wal Mart is indeed a mortal enemy, because they are driving union-manned businesses out of business, paying minimum or sub-minimum wages. Go read the article I linked, TJ, if you want to understand the problem. And ask yourself the questions I asked in an earlier comment. Do businesses have a responsibility beyond maximizing profits? If your answer is 'no' then we have nothing further to discuss.

I shop there about once a month but my daughter-in-law works at a Wal-Mart distribution center in Clarksville Tn and speaks highly of their policies there and is treated much better than she was at the EVIL K-MART.

I haven't been inside a Walmart in years. Thank you for publishing this.

Truly such a shame that a Christian Organization has become such a tragedy, I haven't seen the film yet, but I plan to. Watched the trailer and read a bit of the research and truly knew much of it before, but not everything.

It truly is a sad state of affairs when America is no longer the red, white, and blue, but the American dollar truly. This and other things show me that we truly have lost the soul of the red, white, and blue. To which American has become this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIcIPrs7LWA
-as much as I dislike this video, due to the propaganda, it is a very good picture of much of what is done in America is no longer about freedom or anything of the sort. It is all about GREED through wealth of truly anything.

As the movie about the water crisis (Waterborne, independent film,) showed me, people will fight over anything if it is worth a lot, fight to the death over water, well truly if we are ever hit by a terrorist attack that will be the case.

See the movie Blood Diamond, and this will bring a whole new meaning to the American Dollar truly. I do not deny the fact that much of what we do revolves around money and power, and truly it makes me sick. The ultimate controllers of the world are all about the LUST of power and wealth.

NWJ Keep UP the good work and God bless (+=-)

I am sure that the creator of that video would fully support this one, and if not oh well. This dedication to the National Anthem by a friend of mine on youtube, is a very good testament of what America should be about.

Not about the American Dollar, but about freedom and liberty, pursuit of HAPPYNESS; the red, white, and blue. Blood that was spent (red), the purity of our nation that we used to be (white), and the blue sky of freedom that used to reign over our great nation, What has happened to this nation truly?

Where has the Love and Care gone? Do we still uphold In God We Trust? If not that is where the problem lies, truly from the events that have come to pass do we still care about others?

Has our nation become supportative to only the haves and deserted the have nots? Truly history and the news show a very different picture than what most Americans like to believe. I am not saying our nation doesn't do any good, but I am saying that when we see horrible acts of violence and LUST across the world, we do little to nothing to stop it. Seen in Rwanda, the continuing conflict in Africa over Blood Diamonds, and the atrocities across the world, truly we could do something if we cared.

Are we a nation about "All men are created equal"? The American dollar has become the symbol of the nation truly; greed has covered this nation in so many wrongs and continues to fuel our conquest.

LUST has enraptured what was once the soul of our nation; it has taken captive our Love and Care, replacing it with its Hate and Fear, pursuit of Happiness! It's all about the I, no longer is it about the Why (Y). See the movie Pursuit of Happyness, and you will see just what I mean.


National Anthem

Walmart in the American Dream, That has become the Chinese dream. Most of that $220 billion was shipped over to China, and now they are lending it back to good ole GWB. I think the right entrepaneur has a chance is they open a similar business that sells only American made goods, and treat their employees like humans. I'd gladly pay a few cents or even dollars more for a product if I knew it supported other Americans. The problem is that the average joe (like the farmer guy above) has no idea how companies like Walmart, and our government have slowly eroded our country's ability to produce and sell products we make. Walmart is not the only company doing this, they all are in order to make Wall Street Happy (and my retirement plan happy also!). Walmart may have the distinction of being the largest US company sending the most money overseas every year, but they are not the only one. As out trade deficit grows every year, there will eventually end up being only two classes in this country, the wealthy, and the poor. US companies can not compete with foreign companies using slave labor, and government subsidies, and that have no workmans comp, no environmental laws..etc...Since the wealthy, and the elite already control 100% of our government, there is little hope for USA manufacturing workers in the future. The bottom line is, Walmart does not produce anything!! The more production jobs we lose, the poorer our country will continue to be. If the average joe can't understand that, then we are doomed as major player in this world.

Wal-Mart I hate it .....I hate everything about it. I do not shop there.

The Walmart closest to me is a pain. My husband goes there to
get various school project supplies for my kids. I do not. For one thing, to get in there to get the one thing I need is not worth the effort. (Even IF the supplies are a dollar or two cheaper)
It's ugly, its junky and not worth my time.
I don't want to see anymore newly built stores in my big city either.
They have so many already its crazy. (Maybe one store every 5-10 miles)
The city council just voted no to a "Super Walmart" in the downtown area.
That may be the one thing they did right last year...lol

http://www.priceviewer.com/walmart_locations/CA.html#walmart_locations_S

Here's a link to additional information on Walmart.

I posted it because they have I HATE WALMART T shirts.



Let's talk about why

I
HATE
WAL-MART

I don't like whips, I don't like chains
I don't go choppin' up my neighbors' brains


UP AGAINST THE WAL-MART

Wal-Mart is the nation's (and the world's) biggest retailer. But the problem is not just Wal-Mart - Toys R Us, McDonalds, Microsoft, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, the Gap, Kinko's, Circuit City, Home Depot, Nations Bank...all wipe out the smaller, more local competition. Why? Because they can. McDonalds in the Eiffel Tower, K-Mart in Greenwich Village - is this our destiny? Read on....

Only a company of their size can buy direct from manufacturers, cutting out the distributor. They buy so cheaply they can resell to other stores at cheaper than wholesale. Thus they can ruin the competition through PREDATORY PRICING.

http://www.davelippman.com/walmart/whyihatewalmart.html

As a matter of principle I only buy from local merchants. Yes, even if it cost me more...they have to live, too...why make the filthy rich any filthier.

Wal-Mart is one of many stores I shop in, some things are cheaper there but a lot of things aren't. I shop at Rainbow foods, Fred Meyers, Bargin Giant, And other stores, Rosuers is another. I don't put my eggs all in one basket.

I dislike big business in general, but I also lived through the joy and promises of the unions and what they did to the people in the steel mill industry regions. A good many men committed suicide when the dream died.

Face it folks, the American dream has been dead a long time. Like it or not it's a whole new ball game.

Thanks for reading everyone.
I search out local merchants as much as I can.
I would rather enjoy a "Mom & Pop" local owned coffee shop or
local farmers market anyday.
I was hoping many others did as well.

Joy, I saw it, it was a very good film. It got a lot of us talking. I have a membership to Cosco because I just couldn't stand Sam's anymore, although Costco is a lot, lot further from my home.

I have not seen the film. Would like to. I am an avid Anti-WalMart person. I do not shop there and I share occasional information with others who do. Unfortunately, my husband does shop there on occasion and it is frustrating for me, but I do understand that thre are exclusive collectibles that he can only get there. I don't condone it, but I also know that I can't make others do what they don't want to do. I choose to not spend money there and I do what I can o educate others. I know that there are many people out there who love the store, even those who have and/or still do work there. The thing is if you employe millions of people, it is quite likely that many of those people don't go through some of what many others do. However, we do know that there are many many things that Walmart DOES do that is unethical and not just to it's employees but to their suppliers and ultimately to the consumers. It is not worth saving a dollar here and there to support a company that I believe is unethical, so I don't. Maybe those of us who oppose unethical treatment of human beings and stand up and say so will actually be heard. Maybe not, but I have to have hope.

This is an excellent film, and really pounds home the message that wal-Mart is the super evil that it is!

For many average working Americans Wal Mart is a company hard to ignore. Low wages forces many folks to their doors. Moving our manufacturing enteprises overseas will one day come back to bite us all.

Changing our current tax system to favor American businesses who stay home will put the ax to the likes of Wal Mart. The FairTax is the way to go.