Walmart: High Cost for Low Prices

[prostock19]

http://www.walmartmovie.com/

Walmart, an institution that is destroying the American Economy by buying by purchasing the items they sell in their store from cheap foreign sweatshop labor and putting Americans out of work. They also pay their employees poverty wages with no health care, putting more burden on the state wellfare system.

I recently inquired to see if this movie is Close Captioned or Subtitled in English. I suggest you email them (info@walmartmovie.com) and ask if it is CC. If it is, purchase the DVD Screening Kit and have a screening at your local Deaf Club to spread the word on how bad Walmart treats its employees and destroying America.

Another cartoon by JibJab gets to the point of what Walmart is all about. It is not CC, but watch it and you should understand.

http://www.jibjab.com/Movies/BoxMart.aspx

 

[Tousi]

Now ya know why I have always boycotted Wal-Mart by not shopping there.

 

[deafclimber]

Now ya know why I have always boycotted Wal-Mart by not shopping there.

i second that... plus walmart does damage enviroments such as bulldozing trees too much for bigger buildings since walmart always abandon their little new buildings. i have seen a lot of walmart's empty little new buildings around here. that makes me sick.

 

[bree]

The more I hear about Wal-mart, the more I continue to boycott it.
If you want to learn more about why people object to Wal-mart, wikipedia as usual has a pretty through and neutral overview of the Criticisms, as well as links to links to sites and documentaries critical of them.

The two major opponent sites are http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/,and http://walmartwatch.com/. For documentaries, there's the PBS Frontline documentary on wal-mart called 'Is walmart good for america?', a Pulitzer prize winning documentary on CNBC called 'The Age of Wal-mart'. (no link I can find). As well as the Wal-mart documentary movie mentioned before called WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price.

A brief overview of the hi-jinks Wal-mart is accused of includes dumping, (illegally underpricing products to kill competition), extremely aggressive anti union practices (closing down a store when it unionized, a high ranking manager embezzling money for bribing union members, accusations of monitoring employee calls, arresting union organizers and bullying by 'union busters'..) oppressive employee practices which include child labor violations, (a case of 1,436 violations in 20 stores in maine, as well as having children use chain saws, bale cutters and forklifts) workforce discrimination (firing pregnant workers, purposefully assigning women with children to work untenable hours so they would quit, a record number of EEEC lawsuits for disability discrimination) violation of wage and payment laws ( forcing workers to do unpaid overtime, and limiting their hours so they could not gain benefits as a full time worker, using illegal immigrant workers) Abuse of health care benefits (taking out life insurance on low paid workers that allowed Wal-mart to profit from their deaths; cutting assess to health care, illegally using loopholes to deny benefits) as well as an abusive relationship with its suppliers and insistence on outsourcing (which is a separate issue, but reflects on U.S. quality of life, fair trade, sweatshops, labor laws, etc. Wal-mart being a major cheerleader for this has had a corrosive effect. )

As you can see, even trying to give a brief but through outline of the criticisms of Wal-mart becomes a ridiculous thing. I haven't even mentioned concerns about sprawl, censorship, taxpayer costs, and community impact. As mentioned, wal-mart's realty branch actually seems to refuse to sell its empty stores, in favor of blocking other stores from using prime real estate space.
I have nothing against a big company by itself, but a company that has grown on the backs of the american people is deplorable to me.

 

[sequoias]

I rarely shop at Wal-mart, so no big deal. They're sprawl-ohlic big box stores which means they tend to put new stores out in the suburbs. It's sad that lots of companies in the US outsource manufacturing and tech jobs overseas to make MORE profit out of it. That's capitalism and all the greed we see today.

 

[VamPyroX]

There will always be something bad about EVERY company and business. We boycott Walmart because of this and that. Later, someone will say something about Target. So, we boycott Target because of this and that. Later, someone will say something about K-Mart. The list goes on and on.

I have no problem with Walmart. If I could, I would have no problem working at Walmart. I have a lot of friends who work at Walmart and they say it's one of the best jobs that they've ever worked at.

It's like I said in the past about Walmart, Target, Blockbuster Video, etc... it's the specific locations that have problems. It's like a deaf person saying, "Since Target wouldn't hire me, I'm going to boycott ALL Targets!" Come on, it's THAT specific Target store that wouldn't hire that deaf person. Just because ONE Target does it doesn't mean that ALL Targets do it too. The same goes for Walmart. There are thousands of Walmart locations in the United States. If you walked in Walmart and asked around about whether Walmart had problems, you're very likely to get a "no comment" or "no problems at all" from those employees. If you're lucky, you might come across an employee who has an agenda or personal issue with that particular Walmart... then say something to you.

If you understand the concept of data analysis, you'll understand why collecting negative information is difficult to prove. If you send out a survey to everyone asking them what their opinion on a particular issue was, those who have a negative opinion against that particular issue... are the ones most likely to respond to that survey. Those who have a positive opinion or neutral opinion... are the ones who are least likely to respond to that survey. As a result, you have 50 responses... 45 say negative things and 5 say positive/neutral things. So, what do you tell the public? You tell them the twisted truth... "Out of the responses we've collected, 90% were against it."

That's how it is with Walmart. Out of a million people who work for Walmart, how many people do you really think are going to come across this website with positive thoughts and say something? Almost no one.

That's why I don't trust those websites or so-called rumors.

 

[bree]

There will always be something bad about EVERY company and business. We boycott Walmart because of this and that. Later, someone will say something about Target. So, we boycott Target because of this and that. Later, someone will say something about K-Mart. The list goes on and on.

I have no problem with Walmart. If I could, I would have no problem working at Walmart. I have a lot of friends who work at Walmart and they say it's one of the best jobs that they've ever worked at.

It's like I said in the past about Walmart, Target, Blockbuster Video, etc... it's the specific locations that have problems. It's like a deaf person saying, "Since Target wouldn't hire me, I'm going to boycott ALL Targets!" Come on, it's THAT specific Target store that wouldn't hire that deaf person. Just because ONE Target does it doesn't mean that ALL Targets do it too. The same goes for Walmart. There are thousands of Walmart locations in the United States. If you walked in Walmart and asked around about whether Walmart had problems, you're very likely to get a "no comment" or "no problems at all" from those employees. If you're lucky, you might come across an employee who has an agenda or personal issue with that particular Walmart... then say something to you.

If you understand the concept of data analysis, you'll understand why collecting negative information is difficult to prove. If you send out a survey to everyone asking them what their opinion on a particular issue was, those who have a negative opinion against that particular issue... are the ones most likely to respond to that survey. Those who have a positive opinion or neutral opinion... are the ones who are least likely to respond to that survey. As a result, you have 50 responses... 45 say negative things and 5 say positive/neutral things. So, what do you tell the public? You tell them the twisted truth... "Out of the responses we've collected, 90% were against it."

That's how it is with Walmart. Out of a million people who work for Walmart, how many people do you really think are going to come across this website with positive thoughts and say something? Almost no one.

That's why I don't trust those websites or so-called rumors.

I just gave you a MASSIVE list of complaints about Wal-mart. Dismissing it as the rantings of disgruntled people seriously ignores the pervasiveness of these complaints. It was several months ago that a congresswoman (Delauro of ct) stood up and announced she would participate in a boycott of wal-mart for mothers day because of their treatment of women. She didn't stand alone, but had several other congresswomen join her boycott. You are telling me that members of congress were reacting to a minor matter of a few disgruntled employees?

It was another member of congress who wrote a report called 'Everyday low wages: the hidden price we all pay for wal-mart". (it is available here in PDF Form.) In it he claims that due to the low pay and benefits, Wal-mart costs the federal government $2,103 per employee. Wakeupwalmart.com has used that number and added it up. It comes to $2,733,900,000 per year out of federal taxes to support Wal-mart employees. 2.7 billion. Of my money. Does this number make you stop and think? Its certainly making me pause.

The fact that Wal-mart had not a few dozen, but 1,436 violations in over 20 stores in one state over child labor violations gives me pause. Those were the ones penalized. The New York Times used Wal-mart's OWN time records to document 1,371 cases of violations... in one week. Want to stop and do some math of violations over years?

The fact that Wal-mart is party to an 11 BILLION lawsuit over its pervasive discrimination against women might be blamed on hungry lawyers, but the fact that this lawsuit has actually called an "isolated complaints coming from more than 3,000 stores.".. and involves 1.5 million female employees? That gives me pause.

The fact that wal-mart has been sued multiple times by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) might just be an 'accident'. But when a lawyer for the EEOC whose entire job is to deal with violation of labor laws says "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law,", then you have to stop and think.

What I am saying is that the number and pervasiveness of such situations goes far beyond anything that could be attributed to 'standard business practices' or disgruntled employees. It goes far beyond just being big. It has accumulated into a pattern of evidence. Evidence which does not reflect well on Wal-mart.