Something to Either Depress, or Light Your Fire

A friend of mine lent me a movie called "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price." It’s a documentary about Walmart’s business practices in the US, Europe, China, Bangladesh, Canada, and Honduras. You can find out about it here:
http://www.walmartmovie.com/

I know that the producers are extremely anti-Walmart, so you have to keep that in mind when you watch it. But here are just a few of the things Walmart does, according to the documentary:

• The 5 main Walton family members are worth a combined $106 billion.
• While Bill Gates gives 58% of his worth to charities, the Waltons give 1%.
• In the 2000s, 31 states have filed wage & hourly abuses lawsuits against Walmart.
• CEO Lee Scott says that Walmart has 71% of its staff working full-time. The Daily Show claims that Walmart considers 28 hours a week ‘full-time.’
• Walmart has health benefits, but are disproportionally high for their paychecks. Employees have been instructed to go on Medicaid instead.
• A Quebec Walmart became the first to win union certification in North America. It was shut down a month later because it was deemed "unprofitable."
• What the anti-union Walmart never tells Americans is that all its stores in Germany (and some in other European nations) are unionized. In the film, a German Walmart worker wondered what Walmart was scared of by refusing to unionize American stores.
• In China, workers at Walmart’s factories make 13-17 cents/hour and have dormitory rent deducted from their paychecks, regardless if they live in the dorms or not.
• A former Walmart human resources inspector, appalled at the conditions in the Chinese factories, was further shocked by the top brass’ lack of concern when he brought it to their attention.
• Walmart receives subsidies from cities to build new stores. If they don’t receive subsidies, they have been known to buy land just outside the city limits and build there, thus bringing the city all their negatives without any of the positives.
• Walmart also has a history of moving stores once their tax breaks have ended. There are plenty of empty Walmart stores around, too big for other stores to move into (I’m reminded of here in Saskatoon, where Walmart recently moved from Circle Mall to Preston Crossing. I have no idea, but I wonder what politics were involved in that move).

The following is a blog about various things concerning Walmart. A lot of it has to do with the documentary and is very supportive of its message. Some other things on this website worth checking out involve the blogging world: apparently Walmart has people who blog on their behalf, plus Walmart CEO Lee Scott has his own blog.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WalmartMovie

And finally a brief story about Walmart healthcare, which I’m posting because of the gigantic amount of comments that follow it. Here you’ll find a large range of opinions about Walmart, some angry, some sour, some supportive, a lot of the ‘if you don’t like it, work somewhere else’ argument.

http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/the_wal_mart_mythology_is_shattered1/

To me, this shows that you can’t just say ‘Walmart is the devil’ and expect everyone to go with you. But having said that, Walmart is the devil.