Monday, January 09, 2006
The Wal-Mart Movie
If there is any truth in this movie (and it is hard to believe that there could fail to be), then Wal-Mart is an ethical nightmare. I for one will never darken their door again.
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4 comments:
Why would you just assume this movie is accurate? It's ridiculously easy for a "documentary" to produce the illusion of guilt where none exists. I haven't seen this movie and I don't know anything about its reliability. But just because you *have* seen it doesn't mean you know any more about its reliability than I do. Hadn't you better perform some kind of independent verification before you make a decision like boycotting the store? With the internet it's remarkably easy to poke around for yourself on just about any question.
I've seen quite a bit of evidence for these types of claims before, so I am not going solely off the video. Does any want to deny, for example, that Wal-Mart has a union-busting policy, that its employees are encouraged to use public government health care as opposed to providing adequate health insurance, that it spends money spying on employees to see if they are trying to form a union while neglecting the safety of customers in their parking lots, that Wal-Mart destroys small business in smaller communities, that it abuses foreign labor, etc?
I was already losing my stomach for the company before I saw the movie, but hadn't decided to avoid it completely. My daughter was way ahead of me on this. The movie just puts together all the moral problems with Wal-Mart into one place.
Yes, Walmart should definitely be ashamed for providing jobs that workers obviously want and products that consumers obviously want. And then they try and protect their competitive edge. HOW DARE THEY!!!
The "jobs" are often all that people can find especially after Wal-Mart has put other employers out of business. If you think that spying on workers to see if there is any possibility that they might unionize is normal behavior for a company, if forcing workers to work off the clock out of fear of getting fired is normal, if the use of sweatshop labor in foreign countries is normal, if racial and discrimination in hiring managers is normal, please by all means continue to shop there. If you think that these allegations against Wal-Mart are not true, then please continue to shop there. But I want to see some concrete evidence that these charges are false before I darken their door again.
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