Public Employee Press

Wal-Mart
WakeUpWalMart.com

Robert Greenwald’s new film, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” exposes a corporate culture of low wages, poor benefits or none at all, and massive violations of child labor and sex discrimination laws.

The movie reveals the multiple layers of misery that the largest corporation in the world heaps on its workers, the communities where it builds its big box warehouses, U.S. taxpayers and the foreign production workers who labor up to seven days a week at subminimum wages to make the goods that Wal-Mart sells.

Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott personifies the Wal-Mart culture of greed and deception. The filmmaker follows Scott’s blatant lies about the joys of working there with statistics and interviews with former employees to show the truth about Wal-Mart.

The firm’s everyday low pay ratchets down wages for tens of millions of workers nationwide, while its health care package is priced beyond the reach of most of its low-paid employees. In effect, Wal-Mart forces workers and other taxpayers to subsidize its labor force through food stamps, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This corporate subsidy for the profitable retailer costs taxpayers over $21 billion a year.

But the movie also shows the growing fightback campaign, which unites the labor movement with grassroots citizens’ drives aimed at keeping Wal-Mart out of their communities. The effort to hold Wal-Mart accountable for its business practices and protect workers from its greed uses Web sites such as www.unionvoice.org, WakeUpWalMart.com and WalMartWatch.com and to coordinate activities and keep people informed.

The soundtrack carries the voice of Bruce Springsteen singing Woody Guthrie’s anthem, “This Land is Your Land,” but this is one song that will never blare over loudspeakers as Wal-Mart tries to stir shopping frenzy among its customers. The message of the 97-minute movie is clear: “Wake up Wal-Mart shoppers! This company offers its low prices by crushing wages and working conditions for average Americans.”

You can see the movie free: At 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627 and New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 will show “The High Cost of Low Price” at the union for DC 37 members and guests who want to see the truth about Wal-Mart and consider joining the fightback.

— Jane LaTour