Commerce
Home Page

Commerce
work in multinational
companies

Wal-Mart pages

UFCW

Wal-Mart and Walmartization were in focus when UNI Commerce gathered affiliates from all parts of the world to a one-day conference in Berlin, Germany last week. Most of these unions are indeed organising in Wal-Mart, and some have even succeeded in negotiating collective agreements. Rather than a company policy, this reflects the strength of the unions themselves, as well as national legislation and practices in the countries where the retail multinational is present.

Participants came from UNI Commerce affiliates around the world. Left to right: Jörgen Hoppe and Christine Asmussen, Denmark, Joanne McGuinness, United Kingdom, and Ricardo Patah, John Fernandez and Nilton Souza da Silva, Brazil.

There was no question about it: Walmartization is a dangerous threat against decent living and employment conditions for men and women worldwide, in whatever field of activity they work. The sheer size of the world's largest employer, in combination with its brutality when cutting costs at any price, makes Wal-Mart into a frontrunner increasingly followed by others.

Philip Jennings, general secretary of UNI, pointed at the inherent risks with a business model such as Wal-Mart's.

- The Wal-Mart business model is widely admired in the business community. The Wal-Mart business approach is "Always Low Prices". This steers all its decisions with respect to consumers, employees, suppliers and the larger community.

- We say that you cannot trust a business that abuses the rights of its own staff. It has been referred to as the Wal-Mart squeeze. The results for staff and suppliers has been calamitous, Jennings said.

Yvon Bellemare of UFCW, Canada tells participants about Wal-Mart's abusive behaviour against its workers in his home country, while Paul Meinema and Louis Bolduc from the same UNI Commerce affiliate are listening. The unionists assembled in Berlin could hardly believe what they heard, and were indeed strengthened in their resolve to change things to the benefit of working families.

Nowhere else is this as apparent as in North America, the company's home market. Here, Wal-Mart does not even try to hide its anti-union approach. On the company website, this is made as clear as can:

Left in the picture is Olga Vinogradova, UNI Moscow, the Jay Choi, UNI Seoul, Kim Hyung-Keun, Korea, John Haataja, Sweden, Miguel Angel Rodriguez Gomez, Spain and Ruben Cortina, Argentina.

Apparently, the same approach applies to neighbouring Canada. Here, UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW is slowly penetrating the company, with Wal-Mart workers making it clear that they want to be represented by the union. At times, this has come at high cost, such as some time ago in De Jonquiere in Quebec. Here, the Bentonville multinational closed the store and sent hundreds of breadwinners into unemployment rather than concluding a collective agreement.

And yes, there is a strong union presence in Wal-Mart. In Argentina and Brazil, the UNI Commerce affiliates FAECYS and SEPROSCOS are well represented among the company's workforce, they are organising actively, and they have negotiated collective agreements on behalf of their members. Although the Japanese UNI affiliate JSD was unable to participate because of their own Congress, they are also very much present in Seiyu Wal-Mart. In the United Kingdom, there are two unions with a considerable membership in Asda Wal-Mart, UNI affiliates GMB and Usdaw. These examples show that it is indeed possible to get Wal-Mart into a social dialogue.

In Germany, the host country, labour relations in Wal-Mart have always been strained. Not that the company would have been able to go union-busting, for this ver.di and the shop steward structures (Betriebsrat) in Wal-Mart are too strong. But a formal company-level collective agreement - here it has been no thanks from Wal-Mart. Instead, the company has been forced by its workers and their union to declare that they will respect the provisions of the general commerce agreements.

The host union's Ulrich Dalibor and UNI-Europa Commerce president Jörgen Hoppe exchanged views about combating Walmartization during informal discussions along the riversides and canals of the German capital.

Also unions who do not yet have Wal-Mart in their countries were present in Berlin. They made it clear that if the company wants to come, it has to adapt to the local ways of doing things. Ten years ago, another multinational - Toys"R"Us - tried to enter Scandinavia with something of a Wal-Mart concept.

This did not work. A few months after they challenged their young workers' right to join their UNI Commerce affiliated trade unions, the game was over for them. What was left after a decisive union action was only to sign a collective agreement, say goodbye to these new markets and hand over the operations to local franchisees, operating under another name, not destroyed by the company.

So there will be reception committees, wherever the company goes. Not even in China have they been able to keep union structures out, and the UNI network and the new Alliance will definitely stretch also there.

There will be a decisive trade union answer to the Walmartization challenge. Actually, the UNI Commerce Global Union Alliance Against Walmartization came to being already in Chicago, at last year's UNI World Congress and UNI Commerce Summit. This Alliance was now formalised at the Berlin meeting, and the network between UNI affiliates and others who are interested in defending decent work in commerce was tightened.

It is not really a problem that different countries encounter different management attitudes and realities when it comes to organising and social dialogue in Wal-Mart. The unions in the Global Alliance will stand united and all of them will contribute in their own ways to make the largest retailer and the largest employer in the world respect its own workers, their human and trade union rights, and the principles of decent work and labour relations.