Wal-Mart Movie

[Ouchyfish]

From email:

--------------------------------------------

Dear activists, colleagues, and friends,

It has been a wild couple of weeks as the release of our Wal-Mart film gets closer, and Wal-Mart gets angrier.

We really touched a nerve in Bentonville when we released an extended video of former Wal-Mart manager Weldon Nicholson, just one of the stories we tell in the film. A manager for 17 years, he confesses deeply personal stories about his crisis of conscience, how it was to see workers who couldn't afford to eat, marking family businesses for destruction, and bribing local officals. Watch extended scenes from our interview with Weldon here:

http://www.walmartmovie.com/confessions/

The response -- as you might expect from a multi-billion dollar company -- has been swift, ruthless, mean and vitriolic. Six weeks after we announced the film in June, Wal-Mart hired Ronald Reagan's image guru, and one of Bill Clinton's media consultants to set up the best campaign-style war room money can buy, who last week, released to the press both a video and 12 pages of attacks on me and the trailer (not the film, the trailer). The most incredible part was the three pages of bad reviews from my older films -- dating back to 1980!

Big mistake. Now that Wal-Mart has made this a war, it's brought the campaign to the Today Show, and landed us on the front page of the New York Times, hours before the sold-out premiere tonight in Union Square benefiting Wal-Mart Free NYC.

This is it. With the movie and the incendiary secret memo leaked to Wal-Mart Watch, we can really go on the offensive, and we need your help.

They can out spend us, they can make fancier flyers and brochures and hire more consultants and press agents, but it will all be a vain attempt to smokescreen what Wal-Mart can no longer hide.

See you at a screening!

Robert Greenwald
producer/director, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price


P.S. We decided to have some fun with the attack video (actually, it's more like a power point presentation) and well, adjust it to tell our story. Have a look, and a laugh:

http://www.walmartmovie.com/fear_and_smear.php

[Lueyen]

I actually talked to my sister about this, her and her husband both worked for Walmart while he was going to school, she still does. I was very specific in asking her about breaks and payroll shaving simply because I've seen it happening in quite a few businesses around the country. Generally the employees are unaware of their rights or just don't seem to care. Anyway here was her response...

"As for the Walmart thing, I watch my time very carefully. Perhaps not as closely now, that I am making $11.00 an hour, and the checks seem huge to me, but I still watch it close. I have never heard of them here doing anything with payroll. In fact, the times that I have chosen to work off of the clock, they have demanded that I fill out a time adjustment, so I do get paid for it. I also make sure that the people I am supervising get all of their breaks, and even let them take an extra one here and there, if they need it. I also feel that if I am having a particularly tough day, they have no problem with me sneaking away for an extra cigarette here and there. I know that there are places where the management team is less concerned with the morality of making sure that their associates are paid accurately for the time that they put in, but it doesn't happen in this store. In my mind, it is kind of like the Bush administration being blamed for the "slaughter and torture of innocent civilians in Iraq". The government can't be blamed for the bad choices of one or two unscrupulous people. I don't feel that the corporation is in any way responsible for the jerkoffs who don't want to pay their people for the time that they put in. I have worked for Walmart for 7 years, 5 different stores, and have been told repeatedly at every store that if I worked off of the clock, and they found out about it, I could be fired. I may have just had the good fortune of never running into the worst of them, but I truly feel that that kind of behavior is fairly rare, and a conscious decision on the part of the person or persons perpetrating it."

[Captain Insano]

I actually talked to my sister about this, her and her husband both worked for Walmart while he was going to school, she still does. I was very specific in asking her about breaks and payroll shaving simply because I've seen it happening in quite a few businesses around the country. Generally the employees are unaware of their rights or just don't seem to care. Anyway here was her response...

"As for the Walmart thing, I watch my time very carefully. Perhaps not as closely now, that I am making $11.00 an hour, and the checks seem huge to me, but I still watch it close. I have never heard of them here doing anything with payroll. In fact, the times that I have chosen to work off of the clock, they have demanded that I fill out a time adjustment, so I do get paid for it. I also make sure that the people I am supervising get all of their breaks, and even let them take an extra one here and there, if they need it. I also feel that if I am having a particularly tough day, they have no problem with me sneaking away for an extra cigarette here and there. I know that there are places where the management team is less concerned with the morality of making sure that their associates are paid accurately for the time that they put in, but it doesn't happen in this store. In my mind, it is kind of like the Bush administration being blamed for the "slaughter and torture of innocent civilians in Iraq". The government can't be blamed for the bad choices of one or two unscrupulous people. I don't feel that the corporation is in any way responsible for the jerkoffs who don't want to pay their people for the time that they put in. I have worked for Walmart for 7 years, 5 different stores, and have been told repeatedly at every store that if I worked off of the clock, and they found out about it, I could be fired. I may have just had the good fortune of never running into the worst of them, but I truly feel that that kind of behavior is fairly rare, and a conscious decision on the part of the person or persons perpetrating it."

You're a paid communist spy employed by Walmart... That was the most canned fucking response I have ever heard... gggzzzsshshh... I better stop they are probably watching me right... this... moment.

[Lueyen]

You're a paid communist spy employed by Walmart... That was the most canned fucking response I have ever heard... gggzzzsshshh... I better stop they are probably watching me right... this... moment.

Lol my sister spoke of 11.00 an hour and huge checks in the same sentence, I hardly think that's a canned response 8). Also get it right, Walmart is not a communits company, it's an evil, greedy, capitalist company~, so if your going to make charges of me being a spy at least call me a capitalist.

<goes off to see if his checks from Walmart, Exxon and Microsoft are in the mailbox yet>

[Tossica]

11$ after 7 years? Man... I'm working in the wrong field!