Walmart Low Cost

Walmart, the High Cost of Low Prices Summary

The 2005 documentary, Walmart, the High Cost of Low Prices by the independent filmmaker Robert Greenwald takes the view through a one hour and 40 minute point by point case explaining why Walmart’s very low prices may seem like a great deal to the average shopper but it is equally important to understand the consequences of how those low prices are derived. There are always winners and losers in the business world. Robert had a small budget of 1.5 million dollars for the creation of this documentary and frequently used Walmart’s own media throughout the film. The documentary opens with the stories of what occurs in many small towns when a Walmart retail store descends on the community. Robert’s

Typical Walmart wages are below living wages, many are just part-time positions, and the cost of employee benefit plans are quite prohibitive given these circumstances. In fact, many employees rely heavily on government subsidized assistance programs which Walmart informs employees during orientation that these federal, state and local programs, such as welfare, section 8, and others, exist for them so they should take advantage of them. The documentary claims that when the consumption of these programs by Walmart employees is tallied up, the costs to the taxpayer is approximately $1,557,000,000. Walmart employees are unable to unionize to fight for better benefits and wages because Walmart is relentless with the resistance or elimination of union representation in a location. Furthermore, management are trained to intimidate their workers to force employees to work off of the clock or be replaced by another employee, as well as, training managers how to alter work records to keep payroll hours under budgets. The discriminatory treatment of women and minorities is also recounted by former employees and managers throughout the documentary. These former employees and managers insist that the systematic discrimination prejudices based on gender and race comes from the top levels down at

Secondly, cost to the United States with regards to the ever increasing trade imbalance, which is certainly exacerbated by the Walmart Corporation. The exploitation of the workforce at the many underdeveloped nations such as China, Honduras, and Bangladesh highlighted in the film to create cheap goods that the “Made in America” business could never compete with has hurt everyone in the United States over the long term.
Thirdly, the overwhelming wealth of the surviving Walmart family members who were worth in excess of $102 billion dollars, as well as, the $27,207,799 salary of Lee Scott, Walmart’s CEO in 2005 while the average employee for that same year was just $13,861. Please bear in mind that the federal poverty rate in 2005 for a family of three was $16,090. This means that many employees are forced to accept public assistance to