Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price
Portraying Wal-Mart as the Darth Vader of retail, this film does all it can to champion the voices of those determined to rein in the giant. The company’s systematic and highly cynical manipulation of tax breaks and social welfare benefits is vividly exposed. For instance, the company appears to have a carefully crafted policy of not paying a living wage. Instead, it provides employees with detailed information about social welfare benefits available in their area that can be used to top up their Wal-Mart pay packets.
The film also describes instances when Wal-Mart has taken advantage of enticements from local authorities to locate in a particular town in exchange for short-term reductions or suspensions in business tax. When the tax-break period has come to an end, Wal-Mart has left behind perfectly serviceable, aircraft hangar-sized shops only to build new ones just outside the towns’ tax boundaries.
The family that owns Wal-Mart is appropriately named the Waltons, a surname associated with wholesome American values and fair play, thanks to a long-running US television series. The film shows how these new Wal-Mart Waltons are, in fact, destroying their homeland: their insatiable appetite for profit threatens everything from national labour rights through water quality to race relations.
- Product information
- directed by Robert Greenwald
- Star rating
- Product link
- www.walmartmovie.com
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Voices from the margins:
Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.
- Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
- The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
- Iranian women speak out
- 3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
- Raised Voices audio:
- Benny from West Papua on Corporate Power
- Vinayan from India on agriculture
