Time for Wal-Mart to import some equity: What’s good for Shanghai is good for St-Hyacinthe

Message from
Wayne Hanley, National Director UFCW Canada

As Canada’s largest single importer of goods from China, Wal-Mart’s next inbound shipment should also include the same pro-union attitude the company has shown toward its Chinese "associates" at all of the 66 Wal-Mart China locations recently unionized with the blessings of the company.

Another recent union accord, this time with workers at the Wal-Mart owned ASDA chain in England also confirms that when it chooses to do so Wal-Mart is capable of not only co-existing with unions but also co-operating with organized workers to create a more equitable workplace.

As Wal-Mart will discover, union shops generally have a much lower turnover rate than its own non-union workplaces and, as a result are more productive. Wal-Mart should also profit from a decrease in workplace injuries as a strong health and safety committee is part and parcel of a unionized environment.

So instead of diverting profits to oppose union organizing drives, Wal-Mart’s operations in China and Britain can now start banking on the stability and increased productivity that come with industrial peace.

Recently, our UFCW Canada union had the pleasure of hosting a group of unionists from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). During our deliberations, we discussed several matters pertaining to international labour issues, including Wal-Mart and its evolving position regarding unionization. The meeting ended enthusiastically, and some participants suggested that Wal-Mart’s concurrence with collective bargaining marked the beginning of a new era for the corporation.

If so, Wal-Mart’s attitude towards its Chinese retail employees has yet to arrive on our shores.

UFCW Canada has been trying to help Canadian Wal-Mart workers organize for the past several years. In fact, scores of them have signed union cards and eight different Wal-Mart units have been certified in Canada over the last nine years.

But unlike in China or Britain, here in Canada the company has twisted the legal system to stall and stymie in every way it can to reverse those certificates or drag out first-contract negotiations till the original employees who joined the union have moved on to other employers. For example a Wal-Mart store in St-Hyacinthe, Quebec is currently in the process of binding arbitration for a first contract, almost two years after the store was certified!

Why is Wal-Mart so willing to accept the edicts of Chinese and British lawmakers yet at the same time so unwilling to abide by the framework established by Canadian legislators? Why are the laws of one country acknowledged while those of another are used to delay and deny a worker’s right to unionize? Why the double standard?

Apparently in some locations Wal-Mart has accepted it must tailor its labour relations policy to complement the customs and values of the countries in which it operates but not here in Canada.

From its inception, Wal-Mart Canada has opposed the unionization of its Canadian stores. In fact, with the acquisition of Woolco in 1994 Wal-Mart made a point of excluding dozens of unionized workers from the purchasing agreement. In Windsor, Ontario, Quesnel, B.C. and in Jonquiere and Sainte-Foy, Quebec when Wal-Mart workers tried to form a union at their stores Wal-Mart was found guilty of interfering with their right to do so.

Look what happened in Jonquiere, where Wal-Mart shut its store last year shortly after its workers unionized. Perhaps Wal-Mart’s executives were unaware that the Québécois – like the Chinese and the British –
view organized labour and the right to join a union as key elements of their culture.

In fact, the Québécois’ historic commitment to unionism is one of the reasons their society is distinct from many other jurisdictions in North America.

If it’s O.K. by Wal-Mart to be union in Shanghai, so it should be for Chicoutimi and every other Wal-Mart in Canada.

Based on the precedents set in China and Britain, Canadians should hope that from now on Wal-Mart defers to the constitutional rights of its Canadian workers and to the traditions and mores of the Canadian people.

- Wayne Hanley, National Director, UFCW Canada