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UNI supports Tesco's decision to take on Wal-Mart in the United
States: Respect for workers and social partnership to challenge walmartization Wal-Mart will soon face a substantial challenge at its home market as highly successful British retailer Tesco sets up shop in the United States. To workers and their trade unions, today's announcement from London brings good news. Together with UNI Commerce affiliate Usdaw, Tesco has been leading the way in the United Kingdom when it comes to showing respect for working people and developing constructive and positive relations with their trade unions, both on the national and the global levels. - We'll open quite a few stores in 2007 and hope for pretty rapid expansion,' Tesco's CEO Sir Terry Leahy said today. - We hope we will be giving U.S. consumers something new and different, he said. The US West Coast will be the entry point for Tesco, which quite apparently sees this only as a first bridgehead and is expected to seek a fast expansion. Whereas Wal-Mart has seen its shareholder value fade by more than ten per cent last year, Tesco has added over three per cent to its share prices. It is widely considered that the company's positive approach to human resource management and preparedness to recognise and work with trade unions has been an important factor behind its commercial success. UNI welcomes Tesco's decision Philip Jennings, general secretary of Union Network International UNI, welcomes today's news from London: - Tesco's success shows that treating workers fairly and working with their unions is better for business than the bullying and union-busting favoured by Wal-Mart. He said that UNI is convinced that Tesco will bring this positive labour relations culture with it to the United States market as well. At home, in the United Kingdom, Tesco and UNI Commerce affiliate Usdaw have a longstanding social partnership arrangement and a large majority of Tesco workers are indeed organised in this trade union. Wal-Mart is clearly nervous Wal-Mart's CEO Lee H. Scott must have felt that this would be coming, as he has been nervously attacking Tesco for what he considers to be a dominant position on the British retail scene. His own subsidiary ASDA, which was bought by the Bentonville giant some years ago, has failed to make inroads into Tesco's turf. Instead of taking on the successful British retailer, Wal-Mart's CEO has chosen to beg for help from government authorities, to curb Tesco's expansion and to make place for its less successful US-owned competitor. Until now, his pleas for help from UK competition authorities have not made any impact, and Tesco continues to add to its lead and even Sainsbury's seems to do much better than the Bentonville giant. The Wal-Mart boss may indeed do his company a serious disservice - calls for a global curb on Wal-Mart's dominant market position are getting more frequent as suppliers, investors, competitors, consumers and governments are ringing the alarm bells about the dangers for both free competition and social stability which Wal-Mart and walmartization bring with them. UNI Commerce works with Tesco to promote good labour relations UNI Commerce has been working successfully with Tesco to promote constructive labour relations and social dialogue in many of the new markets around the world, which the company has entered. Partnership agreements have been negotiated in Poland and Hungary with the participation on the global union. Most recently, UNI Commerce came out in support of the takeover by Tesco of Carrefour's subsidiaries in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, after consultations with the central managements of both companies, and in agreement with the national unions in the two countries. The starting point for Tesco on the US retail market will surely be its successful neighbourhood convenience store concept, which will, as Mr Leahy said, be a new experience for most US consumers who have got used to equate convenience stores with a traditional drugstore model, or a 7-Eleven. The new Tesco's, whatever the company will choose to call them in the US, will probably be more upmarket, but still price-competitive, if the UK example gives any indication about what the stores will look like. Respect for workers a cornerstone for Tesco's business success Most of all, Tesco will surely be competitive through its approach to staff. Respecting its workers and entering into a social partnership agreement in the United Kingdom before any other leading British employer has been a solid cornerstone for Tesco's success. This is the winning model which the British retail multinational is now expected to take with it to the United States, at this may be the reason for Wal-Mart and its CEO being so nervous. Today's message from London will surely be positively received by the US workers and their families, and by the millions and millions of Americans who are growing ever more unhappy with the destructive brutality of Wal-Mart, with the attack on their health insurance and their living conditions, and with the whole process of walmartization of working life. Far from presenting Tesco as a White Knight in shiny armour, the entry of the successful and socially responsible British retail giant may just be the force which finally wakes up Wal-Mart.
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