Wal-Mart

I watched a movie the other night called "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price". It was interesting, it just talked about the many ways that walmart saves money. I have heard about most of it before, but it was depressing to watch. I have never been a big walmart shopper, and now i'm glad not to be.

Some of the highlights:
-walmart states that most of their workers are full time, however, 28 hours is considered full time
-walmart spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight organization among their workers, and ostracizes anyone who associates with a person who starts talking about organizing
-they seem to discourage managers from promoting women
-stores are intentionally understaffed
-workers are routinely asked to work overtime without being paid at all for this time (former managers talked about logging onto the payroll computer and adjusting hours so employees were at 40)
This one was news to me:
-some walmarts have security cameras in their parking lots, although they aren't monitored or only rarely. There have been hundreds of crimes that have taken place in walmart parking lots, even during store hours. They found through research that having one guy driving a golf cart around the parking lot reduced crime a LOT (i believe by over 90% but can't remember for sure) but they didn't implement that at their stores. In one instance they did have camera footage of a girl that was kidnapped, later she was killed, and the reason they had that footage was because cameras had been installed in the parking lot as part of the anti-union monitoring campaign at that store.

-wages are very low, often minimum wage, and they do have health insurance available but the employees pay a large portion of it. Many of those on the movie ended up just cancelling it for their children because it was too expensive.

That last one - i don't think it is necessarily unique to walmart, among discount stores. It was really sad to watch the movie, though, and i am definitely much less likely to shop at walmart now. The thing is, i wonder which stores are better? Is Target better? Kmart? Macys? I like shopping at target because it is clean and they have things i like at reasonable prices, but maybe they are just as bad as walmart. I didn't even talk about the poor conditions at the factories that produce items for walmart, and the institutional suppression of the reports of these conditions. Not to mention the environmentally destructive activities. There are other parts that i've forgotten about too. It was just one disgusting tidbit after another. All this was compared to family stores, which are closing all over the country when a walmart opens. I just feel awful about the small businesses that are destroyed by walmart and the other big boxes too. The nice part at the end was about successful campaigns to prevent walmart from opening. I'm sure they have done something like that around here because there is no walmart anywhere near us in manhattan, and i bet they would love to get access to this market. So anyway, to continue my ramblings, i want to make responsible choices about shopping but it is difficult. I prefer shopping at smaller, locally owned businesses, but they seem to be getting harder and harder to find. And i wish i knew which chains had better records with respect to treatment of their employees, responsible membership in their communities, and environmental stewardship. Yes, walmart has good prices, but to me (and i think to many other people) there are a lot of things that are more important than saving a few dollars here and there.