"Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" had its world premiere in New York Nov. 1 and L.A. opening two days later at the swanky Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills.

Since then, the 98-minute documentary, which was made on a shoestring budget of $1.8 million, has been shown at thousands of churches, synagogues, schools and other alternative outlets, including house parties. In fact, producer and director Robert Greenwald claims that with more than 3,000 screenings in 50 states, his film used the largest grassroots distribution in movie history.

Greenwald makes no pretense that his "Wal-Mart" is some kind of objective, balanced look at the world's biggest company.

"This is a movie about American families and American ideals, a movie about one corporation crushing the American dream for millions of ordinary people --- right or left, republican or democrat, red or blue," he has declared. "Wal-Mart is systematically destroying the fabric of our nation, pretending to be the great American workplace while at the same time showing thinly veiled contempt for working families, small business owners and the very people it employs."

In the film, lofty platitudes by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott and lavish company TV commercials of bubbly employees aren't just undercut but demolished by interviews with former workers, managers and executives who divulge alleged seedy business practices.

These include low base pay; coerced unpaid overtime; aggressive anti-union tactics; health-insurance packages that are so costly thousands of employees must turn to Medicaid; goods produced by foreign sweatshop labor; and the harm to local businesses and mom-and-pop stores when the company moves in.

Most of these corporate abuses have, of course, been dredged up before by both print and media journalists. But the detailed mixing of cold statistics with emotional ex-employee testimony --- although at times pretty disjointedly --- leaves a marked impression on many viewers.

But what makes the documentary most intriguing for Christians is the moral questions it raises. The Tidings recently addressed these issues with two Christian clergy: a minister/community leader who was instrumental in keeping a Wal-Mart supercenter out of Inglewood, and a local Jesuit theological ethicist.

The bottom line

The Rev. Altagracia Perez, senior pastor of Holy Faith Episcopal Church, is one of those interviewed in the "High Cost of Low Price" film --- interviewed, in fact, in her kitchen about organizing her congregation and working with the Coalition for a Better Inglewood.

"It was so grassroots," she told The Tidings, smiling. "We did it because we wanted to take a moral stand. We believed that our families should be able to survive in our country, being as wealthy and well off as we are. So for us, it was really a stand with poor families and with folks who need good jobs.

"There's no reason why Wal-Mart can't continue to offer a good price to customers and also pay their employees well. I mean, they make enough money where they can do that. And it might mean a little less profit. But it will mean that the people who make them great --- who are the workers on the ground --- are being compensated fairly for the riches that the company gets.

"The bottom line is not the dollar," she stressed. "The bottom line is the quality of life of the people who live in this community."

The battle lasted almost two years, Rev. Perez recalls, with the Arkansas-based company circumventing zoning ordinances, environmental impact reports, street closings --- "everything," including the city council. But in the end, an initiative passed to keep Wal-Mart from building one of its new supercenters, which includes a grocery warehouse, along with a Sam's Club.

(Just last week, Wal-Mart announced plans to build 50 of the supercenters throughout California.)

The thing that brought people out to vote against Wal-Mart was the company's reputation for being anti-union, she says, pointing out that supermarket union jobs are one of the last places in Inglewood where high school graduates can get a good job.

Rev. Perez is proud of her stand against Wal-Mart, although more recently she was part of a city delegation that presented the company with a community contract that, if agreed to, would bring a smaller version of the supercenter to her community. She stresses that jobs and benefits are life issues that more religious leaders need to pay careful attention to.

"I do think that right now the moral discussion in our society is way too narrow," she said. "We do want to respect life and the quality of life, but we have to do it on the meat-and-potatoes issues as well as the hot button issues. Families are not able to survive without more than one job because of the way the economy is going.

"So advocating for good jobs is an important moral stance to take as well. 'Cause we can want to support life, but what if people can't live because they can't afford to live. That's a contradiction."

'Social responsibilities'

When he was interviewed, Jesuit Father John Coleman had not seen "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price." But as the Casassa Professor of Social Justice at Loyola Marymount University, who holds the endowed chair in ethics for the school of liberal arts, he has some strong opinions on the business giant.

Like Rev. Perez, Father Coleman believes any company that claims the only bottom line that counts is profit is not a morally sound company. In addition to fiscal responsibilities to their owners to make money and customers to sell quality goods at competitive prices, he says all retail firms also have social responsibilities to the communities they operate in and the people who work for them.

From a Catholic point of view, according to Father Coleman, paying a living wage and allowing workers to engage in collective bargaining are core issues.

"Catholics hold for something equivalent to a living wage, so that people who work should have enough money to live a minimally decent life," he said. "You can't really do that working at Wal-Mart, especially when most of the employees can't afford the health plans they offer, either. So, basically, you have this anomaly that people have jobs that keep them in poverty."

Moreover, the church has strongly supported workers' right to organize for more than a century in papal encyclicals (e.g., Laborem Exercens by Pope John Paul II, 1981) to bishops' pastoral letters. As a result, Father Coleman points out that the company's often reported aggressive anti-union tactics run completely counter to Catholic social teachings.

Father Coleman is further troubled by Wal-Mart's practice of putting pressure on suppliers, especially in the textile industry, to decrease their own margin of profit to keep prices of socks, underwear and others items at rock-bottom prices.

"That means suppliers, too, have to pay lower wages," he noted. "So it's a race to the bottom on wages. And the company is so massive that you're at a competitive disadvantage if you can't sell to them.

"But if you do sell to them, you have to cost-cut an awful lot because they keep putting enormous pressure on you, which is how you get these Third World sweatshop conditions. So the whole process actually drives down labor standards around the world."

The social justice professor is also concerned with how the company drives smaller businesses and mom-an-pop stores out of business when it moves into a new area.

On the one hand, this can be chalked up to Wal-Mart's massive buying competitive advantages. But on the other hand, he observes, for the market place to work well classically in Adam Smith's terms, there must be true competition.

Finally, Father Coleman says there is a major hypocrisy about the company encouraging its low-paid employees to apply for Food Stamps and Medicaid, which "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" documents. He points out that the government is subsidizing a business that's actually undermining the standard of living of members of the community.

When asked what Catholics trying to live a moral, ethical life should do about the super company, the priest didn't hesitate. "They can boycott it," he declared, "just as people have said they're going to try to buy coffee that supports fair labor practices. Why would you support it? Just because you can save a few dollars, a few cents?"

After a moment, he added, "Would I say from the pulpit, 'You can't go to Wal-Mart'? No. But I would say, 'Now, look. Given Catholic principles of a living wage and support of unions, and given Wal-Mart's history and size --- and how the company is unapologetic about what it does --- target them!"