Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price Review

Working in the retail business often involves hard physical work, irregular hours, and generally low wages. This type of business often experiences high turnover and individuals generally work here only to get some temporary employment and some quick cash. But for others, the retail world is a fact of life; a daily routine that could very well continue until retirement- if retirement ever comes at all. The largest retailer employer of all and the way it treats its employees and communities is the subject of this documentary. The film is called The High Cost of Low Price, a documentary about the Wal- Mart retail chain.

Contents of This Documentary:

Wal- Mart is a business known for causing upheaval in the communities in which it operates and this documentary cuts right to the chase by focusing on the small town of Middlefield, Ohio where the Hunter family is struggling to keep the family hardware store open when Wal- Mart comes to town. Wal- Mart, with its gigantic capital reserves and ability to implement very competitive pricing strategies, took away enough business from H&H Hardware to send the small business to an early grave. The same is true in Hamilton, Missouri, where the Esry family sees its small grocery store going out of business because it cannot compete with a behemoth like Wal- Mart.

Besides the focus on the small businesses and their fight against the Wal- Mart goliath, this documentary also spends time talking to Wal- Mart employees who are "victimized" by Wal- Mart's employment policies. Edith Arana and Diane DeVoy talk about the difficulty in making a living on such a low wage. Former Wal- Mart manager Weldon Nicholson talks about the company's employment practices. There are even some overseas footage showing Wal- Mart employees in other countries working in undesirable conditions for less than one dollar per hour to assemble clothing and other goods for later sale in a Wal- Mart store.

Documentary Commentary:

"The High Cost of Low Price" is a very negative documentary produced and directed by Robert Greenwald- a man who has produced many documentaries based on controversial subjects. In this documentary, Greenwald decides its time to take on a controversial corporation. His choice: Wal- Mart, the largest retailer and now largest corporation in the world. Greenwald highlights some of the known complaints that consumers, community activists, and both present and former employees have had with the Wal- Mart Company. He talks to members of families who have lost their businesses because they could not compete with Wal- Mart's low prices. He talks to employee about the lack of pay and benefits. He talks about the Wal- Mart Company as a whole and how it refuses to permit unions; shaves hours from employee pay to save overtime expenses; pays slave wages to foreign workers; and gladly accepts corporate welfare payouts from local governments as a condition to open up another store.

If all this sounds like an extreme case of over sensationalism that is because it is precisely that: An overblown, overstated, extremely negative and extremely biased rant against Wal- Mart and everything it stands for. Watching Greenwald attack Wal- Mart from so many angles, you get the feeling that he not only hates this company, he would like to see all Wal- Mart buildings decimated to rubbish and all Wal- Mart executives sentenced to a public hanging. Just when you think Greenwald has found enough bad things to say about Wal- Mart, he comes back with another accusation. Wal- Mart, in the view of Greenwald, is the Adolph Hitler of retailers: a business so evil, so wicked, and so devoid of any worth to anyone or anything that it deserves to be forcibly shut down, liquidated, and prevented from ever returning in the future under another name.

Some of what this documentary says is true and it has been stated a thousand times before. It is known, for example, that local small businesses in small towns are often forced to shut down when a new Wal- Mart opens because they cannot compete with Wal- Mart's low prices. It is also known that Wal- Mart is anti- union and has done whatever necessary to prevent unions from taking hold at its local places of business. These accusations are accurate, but the way they are presented in this documentary makes it seem like all Wal- Marts are conducting themselves in illegal ways at all times and all employees are mistreated, overworked, and underpaid. Further, you get the impression that no other company is like Wal- Mart; that it is the consummate evil among businesses and we, as a nation, should do everything we can to eliminate it from the face of the Earth and send all living members of the Walton family into permanent exile on another planet.

Some of the material presented here, while it may be based on some truth, is so overstated that it makes you wonder if Greenwald has a personal interest in slandering the Wal- Mart name in every way possible by finding anything and everything negative about the retail giant. This is illustrated many times in this documentary, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in subtle ways. One of the obvious ways is with the supposed misery of all Wal- Mart employees. Here are these individuals talking about how terrible it is to work at Wal- Mart and how they feel this company has robbed them of the best years of their lives. But the first question I must ask some of these people is the obvious one: If Wal- Mart is so incredibly evil and mistreats its employees the way you claim it does, then why do you continue to work there? Why not switch to another retailer? Or better yet, why not get out of the retail business completely? To hear these people talk, you get the impression that they cannot work any place else and therefore must tolerate whatever abuse or neglect Wal- Mart dishes out.

In other parts of the documentary, the accusations are just as overblown but in a more subtle way. Probably the most outrageous is the segment that talks about crimes taking place in Wal- Mart parking lots. Yes, it is true that crimes do take place in these areas but this is nothing unique to Wal- Mart. When the sun goes down and fewer people are watching the parking areas, it is common to have merchandise stolen from cars, fights between people, and even assaults from total strangers. This isn't anything unique to Wal- Mart but the way it is presented in the documentary, you get the impression that Wal- Mart is so incredibly wicked that its very presence somehow causes crimes like these to take place.

Plenty of statistics are included in this documentary to help drive home the point that Wal- Mart is, indeed, the source of all evil in the world. While they are probably factual on their face, they are often deliberately misleading. For example, one statistic shows the amount of square footage of space occupied by Wal- Marts that have shut down. One would think a closed up Wal- Mart would bring great glee to Greenwald and the others who made this documentary, but instead they show a statistic that clearly exposes all of the millions of square footage taken up by these abandoned buildings. Rather than state the number of empty stores, Greenwald deliberately states the millions of square feet. Just like a seasoned politician, he states the numbers like this to over dramatize the situation. Stating the number of stores wouldn't sound very impressive. But stating the millions of square feet makes the situation sound more extreme- like there are literally zillions of ugly, empty Wal- Marts across the USA, creating a miserable eyesore for passersby.

Bottom Line:

Overall, "The High Cost of Low Price" is Greenwald's weakest effort to date; a 95 minute negative advertisement on the "Great Satan" among retailers that offers nothing but pessimism from start to finish. Greenwald offers a few important points in this documentary (like the unethical practice of doling out corporate welfare to Wal- Marts and the practice of producing its products in overseas sweat shops) but his over- sensationalism is sickening after a while and it makes you wonder if he had some other motive for making this documentary. I don't agree with everything Wal- Mart does and I don't like some of its business practices. But an overblown documentary like this one doesn't do anything to turn me against Wal- Mart. It is attention getting but for the wrong reasons; offering no intelligent discussion on some of the more serious issues and so over- the- top it gets nauseating after a while, with one negative statement or gross exaggeration after another.