Turning Up the Heat on Wal-Mart

With its stock gone flat and bad publicity in virtually every news cycle Wal-Mart is feeling pretty defensive these days. Among recent company missteps are fines and monetary settlements for hiring illegal immigrants and allowing underage employees to operate heavy machinery.

According to a recent article by AlterNet reporter Kelly Hearn, a more complete list of Wal-Mart's myriad transgressions includes "union busting, labor law violations, shipping jobs overseas, artificially suppressing wages, financial improprieties by a top corporate officer and links to a powerful Chinese businessman allegedly involved in the weapons-trading arm of the People's Liberation Army."

In the face of a steady drumbeat of bad publicity, the company has recently started spinning its PR wheels to cover its tracks. First, Wal-Mart broke a long-held tradition and invited the media to its Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters. The company has set up a new Web site that emphasizes its "positive impact on business." It has also shown sudden support for journalism schools, minority scholarships, and even -- gasp -- funding for NPR programming.

But Wal-Mart should prepare to dig much deeper into its PR budget, because its image is about to get much more tarnished.

Brave New Film

Robert Greenwald, the Hollywood producer/director-turned documentary filmmaker (2004's Outfoxed; Uncovered, 2003), is now aiming his investigative lens at Wal-Mart's gargantuan global empire.

Greenwald's company, Brave New Films, is scheduled to release Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price in November -- and there is a well-oiled engine of grassroots media organizing behind it. Greenwald says his team is reaching out to "allies from all political persuasions," including religious groups, students, family businesses and teachers, to make sure the coalition in support of the film reflects the widest points of view on Wal-Mart. Among the film's supporters are the United Church of Christ, the National Education Association and the Petroleum Marketers Association of America. Members of these groups plan to host house parties and public screenings of the documentary.

Greenwald has been investigating Wal-Mart for months, keeping the project under the radar until now. Despite the myth that Wal-Mart is the patriotic embodiment of small-town values in its efforts to provide low prices to consumers, Greenwald asserts the opposite.

"This is the largest corporation in the world, and it is running roughshod over family business and workers throughout the country," he says. "This is an issue that cuts across the traditional partisan divide. My film will reflect the diversity of people who are being subjected to the Wal-Mart steamroller, and the ways they are fighting back and winning."

The company generated $19 billion in surplus last year -- $9 billion in profit, and $10 billion to build new stores. Yet Wal-Mart's business model is totally dependent on low-wage workers and virtually all of its product manufacturing is globally outsourced.

Perhaps more insidious is that by building new stores as quickly as possible in as many communities as possible, and engaging in its trademark predatory pricing, Wal-Mart is rapidly destroying the small businesses that make up the fabric of rural and exurban life. And many of those businesses -- small newspapers, grocery stores, gas stations and more -- are hopping mad.

Big Box Headaches

Wal-Mart's success is, in large part, a product of public policy, writes Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the New Rules Project. "Local and state governments have provided billions of dollars in tax breaks to fund big box development. Tax policies in many states allow national retailers to avoid paying much of their income tax, while local businesses must shoulder their full share. Wal-Mart and other chains have also benefited enomously ... from a host of policies that subsidize sprawl at the expense of older business districts."