The film “The High Cost of Price” by Robert Greenwald is devoted to the business practices of the most successful retail chains Wal-Mart. The documentary film represents a look inside the Wal-Mart empire and the way how low prices are obtained. The film is organized as a chain of interviews of Wal-Mart employees and top management of the company providing the overall picture of the issue. The aim of the current paper is to reveal and apply social theories pertaining the situation, and make appropriate conclusions with regard to the ways of resolving social conflicts.
The main point of the film is the issues of social inequality and conflict. The Wal-Mart owners take advantage of social inequality inherent in American society and duplicate those practices in other countries for their employees. Striving for monopolistic dominance they consider employees as mute homogenous populace offering unsatisfactory working conditions and economizing on wages.
Structural functionalism theory consists of five basic elements which are actors, ends, means, conditions and norms. In accordance with the social theory of structural functionalism, there is a conflict between ends, means and norms in this situation. The actors (activity initiators, in this case - Wal-Mart owners – the Waltons) generate profits disregard of the wellbeing of the employees whose cheap labor (conditions) is the mean of meeting ends (goals pursued by the Waltons, i.e. wealth of their family) (Kendall 23).
There are also several basic conflicts in the conflict theory, such as class, race and gender conflicts. The film addresses the most important issue of the class conflict when paying attention to the differences in opportunities for people of different classes (Kendall 275). Formally, there are no classes in the US society. However, the creators of the film revealed outrageous inequality between average citizens and the wealthy. Despite of the declared development of democracy, American society is still undermined by inequality where rich become richer and poor become poorer. The Wal-Mart has factories in the Third World countries (China, Bangladesh) where people work to earn very little money for living while the Waltons buy expensive dwellings, cars and own private planes (“Wal-Mart -The High Cost of Low Prices” n.pag.).
Race and ethnicity conflicts are also the large issues in sociology. The conflict is based on the artificial ranking by prestige and power. It means that certain race or ethnicity has privileges over other people in receiving education, power and prestige thus creating social conflict (Kendall 93). Gender conflict lies in differentiation between men and women cultures creating conflict as well (Kendall 370).
The Wal-Mart strategy is build up over social imperfections, such as ethnic and cultural conflicts. It is record on ethnic and gender discrimination addressed. Herewith, one of the black interviewees recalled lynching jokes and racial epithets he experienced when he worked in the shop. Black female training coordinator had to regularly clean the bathroom since she worked between men only in the department (“Wal-Mart -The High Cost of Low Prices” n.pag.).
One of the main concepts of the symbolic interactionism theory is that people may construct their own reality in their minds which could be different from objective reality. Particular attention in the theory is paid to the language and negotiation process by which meaning is constructed (Kendall 216).
In the final part of the film the effect of language can be traced. People protested against building new Wal-Mart stores and they finally won. The theory claims the existence of different realities. In this case employees saw the reality that was different from the reality represented by the CEO of the company (“Wal-Mart -The High Cost of Low Prices” n.pag.).
There are several moments that interested me most of all. I was negatively impressed by the working and living conditions of Wal-Mart workers in China and Bangladesh. People were forced to work without air conditioning while it was very hot. This reminded me of the conditions for animals in the cowshed, but people are not animals. I did not ever think that people can work in such poor conditions.
Another moment is the issue of salaries and wages. In accordance with the documents, the salary of Bangladesh workers was 13-17 cents per hour. It seems that Wal-Mart owners attempt to work their employees to death forcing them to work 12 hours, seven days a week. I do not think that there is a need to economize on salaries. People do not need much money to provide a decent standard of living. I do not understand why Walton family cannot share their wealth with people who really need financial help or just provide good salary for the employees who immensely contribute into Walton family wealth?
Another amazing fact was that the wholesale price of Wal-Mart item was 0.18 cents while the retail price was about 14 dollars. Having such a huge earnings, Wal-Mart owners were not able to donate more than 6,000 dollars while poor employees collected approximately five million dollars to help those who need medical help. I was shocked by the greed and heartlessness of the company owners.
One more thing that strikes me most of all: the inability to provide an appropriate level of security on the territory attached to the Wal-Mart that was a reason of multiple crimes. The owners are more concerned about retention of their property rather than people safety.
Sociology studies society, social behavior and laws to analyze social constructs in relation to society as a whole. The film greatly contributes to the science of sociology because it reveals social tendencies and laws helping people to understand what to do to achieve necessary balance in a society. The purpose of sociology is to deal with moral, political, economic, physical and social facts above the material world (Kendall 15).
Another implication in the film is that people must struggle for their freedoms and better life. Persistence of American people created better society for living. Creation of labor unions, feminist and antiracist movements were the results of struggle for the rights of certain social stratums. The film showed that racial, gender and class inequality is a typical element of any society. It can be eliminated or reduced by social activity of those people who struggle for their rights and freedoms. Philosophizing about ideal society is not helpful when it comes to significant social changes. At the end of the film a lot of people living in different communities succeeded to stop building Wal-Mart supermarkets because of unethical policy it led (Wal-Mart -The High Cost of Low Prices n.pag.).
Business must be ethical and fair because this is requirement of contemporary social environment. Wal-Mart owners and top management should take this issue into consideration because material values cannot replace morality and ethical decision making. Wealth cannot be generated by all means because society tends to balance and equality.
References
Kendall, Diana. Sociology in Our Times. 8th ed. New York: Wadsworth Publishing, 2004. Print.
Wal-Mart -The High Cost of Low Prices. Dir. Robert Greenwald. Disinformation Company, 2004. Film.
