People of Walmart

Here's a documentary that I've just watched. It's called "Walmart: the high cost of low price", and was pretty much as I expected, an expose of the HUGE corporation that is Walmart. I've read about Walmart's woeful labour relations (no unions) before but there were some new things that I hadn't heard before. They call their employees "associates" which gives a sort of warm collegial feel, so that employees think that they are part of the business and will donate time to  Walmart's profit drive. There is no overtime pay; you stay until the job is done or you lose the job. Walmart's pay rates are so poor that a lot of their workers are on state-subsidised income top-ups; in fact Walmart encourages workers to enrol with state assistance so that it doesn't have to pay for medical insurance or child-support. Walmart's wages bill is therefore being propped up by the taxpayers in each state. Walmart is racist and sexist. When a woman asked (on not being promoted yet again) whether she was being discriminated against because she was black or because she was a woman, her supervisor told her that "Two out of two ain't bad". And the other end of the operation, in China, is even more exploitative.
    The worst statistic was one that undermined Walmart's claim that it supported charities. The Walton family (no, not those Waltons, or boy, have they forgotten their roots) are collectively worth about $80 billion dollars, yet the maximum yearly amount they have ever personally donated to charity is $6,000 dollars. Between them. (Bill Gates, on the other hand, has given away 58% of his money, and still has plenty to provide him with an excellent standard of living).
     We have a very similar set-up here. It's called The Warehouse, and they have just won the dubious distinction of being the company that heads the field in false advertising.
      What I would have liked to see in the Walmart documentary was some investigation about the shareholders of Walmart, the people of Walmart who are screwing the people of Walmart. How do they sleep at night? Pretty well, I guess, in expensive bedding in luxury apartments.
     Makes you wish for a revolution.