BIG SCREEN: Wal-Mart: The High Price of Low Cost

Like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

There are those who would say that - along with Coca-Cola, General Motors and Levi-Strauss - Wal-Mart helps define the topography of American commerce. Millions of Americans rely on Wal-Mart as the one-stop shop where anything can be bought, whether it be a box of condoms, a Tickle-Me-Elmo, or a shotgun. To these people, Wal-Mart is the saving grace of retail.

But there are also those who, with furrowed brows and roiling ire, say Wal-Mart is the anathema of core American values. These crusaders against steamrolling big businesses have been known to cast aspersion, referring to Wal-Mart as “a plantation capitalist,” “a monopoly,” and “Godzilla.”

The latter group, the categorically anti-Wal-Martians, are the concerned voice of Robert (Outfoxed) Greenwald’s newest tell-all documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

Since it’s conception in 1962, Wal-Mart has become the largest corporation in the world, and in Wal-Mart Greenwald tackles the retail giant in an attempt to expose the company’s seedy underbelly. In documenting the questionable ethics of founder Sam Walton’s brain child, Greenwald has produced a film with the impact of a trip to a slaughterhouse. Just as seeing the macabre goings-on of the meat yard can turn an omnivore into a strict vegetarian, Greenwald’s Wal-Mart has the power to convert a cent-saving sleuth into an adamant Wal-Mart abstainer.

In the film, current and former Wal-Mart employee testimonials paint a horrific picture of Wal-Mart as a tyrannizing, mercantile megalomaniac. Many of the Greenwald’s subjects gave years of their lives to Wal-Mart on to be mistreated and cast aside as human detritus. At various times throughout the employee confessionals, which run the gamut from revealing overt acts of racism, sexism, mental abuse and swaggering threats, I had to remind myself the subject of the film was not the Bush Administration but the very place I had bought toothpaste two weeks prior.

It would have been easy for Greenwald to make a smear campaign against Wal-Mart by gathering commentary from embittered employees. Instead, he elects to tell the story through reasonable “Wal-Martyrs” - employees who were once devoted to their jobs but later realized that by working for Wal-mart they were feeding a diabolical beast of circular poverty and supporting the government-subsidized bankrupting of small business.

Whether the interviewee is a lube express technician, an international textile factory auditor, a loss prevention specialist, an inventory analyst or a store manager, their stories echo one another, certifying that “guaranteed low prices” are not the byproduct of an entrepreneurial drive, but rather the result of thousands of compounded unethical decisions and shameful misconduct.

Some of the harshest criticisms come from former employees who worked for Wal-Mart for nearly two decades and held positions of leisure. According to these individuals, Wal-Mart’s senior managers are so manipulative and morally bankrupt they make the Illuminati look like children trading baseball cards.

In order to not rely solely on emotive rhetoric, Greenwald appeals to the audience’s mind’s as well as their heart with an overwhelming body of terrifying statistics. For example, the average full-time Wal-Mart employee earns $4,000 below the poverty line for a family of four and spends most of their paycheck at Wal-Mart buying cheap goods and groceries. And in Florida alone, some 12,000 Wal-Mart employees are on some sort of government assistance because Wal-Mart will not pay them a living wage. One employee worked at Wal-Mart for three years, only to receive a raise of $1.07.

Unfortunately for the millions of marginalized Americans simply looking for a place to work a solid 40 hours, Wal-Mart’s indecencies do not stop at the economical level. Wal-Mart has been sued by 1.6 million women who claim sexual discrimination. One interviewee, a former Wal-Mart store manager, tells of how even after her promotion she was forced to clean restrooms on a daily basis. Another says her superior expressly denied her a promotion because of her gender and race.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Greenwald and his crew bounce around the globe, releasing the skeletons from Wal-Mart’s closets with such brutal honesty that Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO and spin-doctor extraordinaire, must feel as though someone is stabbing a voodoo doll made in his likeness.

Whether Wal-Mart is addressing the disappearance of mom-and-pop hardware stores, the numerous murders and rapes of women in unattended Wal-Mart parking lots, or the ills of Asian factory workers who earn less than three dollars a day and are routinely beaten, the gritty realism of America’s favorite retail chain is enough to make anyone question whether they can abide saving a dime at the expense of someone else being treated less than human.

A slightly altered form of the above originally appeared in Crosswinds Weekly (www.crosswindsweekly.com), Nov. 19-23 issue.