Everyone likes to shop at the discount behemoth Wal-Mart. We go in, search the bays for what we need, have a look around, ask the executive for assistance who does it with a smile, we pay up and we move out. We go home happy thinking on the amount we saved which we would have had to shell out in a different store however we are unaware of the pains of those employees working there and the tyranny of the company itself. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price brings us the story that hides behind those big discounts and doors.
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald in his latest installment brings us the real face of the monster behind this giant company. In the annual meeting, Lee Scott, the CEO says that he is proud that the company has the highest number of employees. However, he fails to mention the state of those employees and how they are manipulated. The managers of the store are even given sessions on how the edit the time settings of the employees so that they can reduce their overtime.
Greenwald sidesteps criticism from media as he does not use the regular banter from traditional economists, analysts and field specialists but talks directly to the employees and small town traditional store owners and businesses which went out of business due to Wal-Mart. As the documentary progresses, we see that Wal-Mart has sent them packing in such a way that it is heart rendering not only to the common man but even to most capitalists.
The condition of the employees is even worse; they are not only underpaid but the illegal ones are locked up in the store at night. Even the illegal immigrant workers are captured in the dead of night but no action is taken against the managers who hire them to work at the stores. The biggest corporation in the world asks its employees to go on government assistance whereas whenever it establishes a store in any town, it receives heavy subsidies from the local government. The heavy subsidies in turn affect the growth and other development areas of the town. Also, if the workers even talk about union or a raise, they are monitored by hidden cams and spies as if they are war criminals. One of the most rapacious behaviors the stores engage in is racial discrimination and racial abuse. They work in such a manner that women and minorities are prevented from progressing in the store’s hierarchical structure. More barbaric is the treatment of sweatshop workers in foreign factories. Greenwald presents this picture in an unadulterated and straight forward fashion.
It seems that the documentary did manage to knock on Wal-Mart’s door. Albeit, rather than changing the way it does business in towns and treating its workers more responsibly with good welfare, the corporation instead launched a public relations ‘war room’ to tackle criticism.