Occupy Forum: Film: “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices.”

 
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!

Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue

on all sides of these critically important issues

Walmart is the cheapest place in the USA to shop. In some areas, it is the only place to get some things. So, the temptation to shop there is very high.

But Walmart does not create a level playing field. In areas where Walmart opens, other businesses close down, and downtowns are replaced by big box strip malls. Workers are forced to work there. And the conditions are not good.

Half the Walmart employees are paid so poorly that they qualify for Welfare, food stamps and Medi-Cal. Walmart also receives tax breaks, so the taxpayers are subsidizing it twice. Some Walmarts have provided workforce housing — by letting the workers live in their cars in the parking lot. Walmart workers have to work on Thanksgiving, which has now become BlackFriday. They run holiday food drives, in which the slightly higher-paid workers are asked to contribute money so that lower-paid employees can have food, probably canned, on the one day they don’t have to work, Christmas. Even minimum wage is too high for some Walmarts, which have gotten in trouble for hiring undocumented workers at sub-minimum wages. Meanwhile, the Walton family, which owns the franchise, are billionaires, and are only getting richer.

Understandably, the workers have been talking of striking for years. But Walmart has said that they will illegally fire all striking workers. Despite this, a strike is finally on. The demand is for a mere fifteen dollars per hour, which is becoming the standard minimum wage in many parts of the USA.

See Walmart, The High Price of Low Costs and then go out and support the striking workers.

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