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Wal-Mart will now enter
into discussions with China's trade union confederation ACFTU - how
about social dialogue at home in America? The score ACFTU Three, Wal-Mart Zero, the US retail giant is caving in and has agreed to talks with the Chinese trade union confederation. With three stores already organised and many more clearly in the pipeline, Wal-Mart has clearly understood that there is no future for it in China without a union presence. One would hope that the Bentonville managers soon understand that these Chinese developments are not isolated from the outside world. China's labour legislation may give the ACFTU a particularly strong position, and ease its way to the workplaces, but the real issue is that workers have a universal right to organise and to protect their interests. - Wal-Mart aims to find a "win-win" solution with the ACFTU through this kind of "face-to-face" meeting and "active communication", says Li Chengjie, deputy president of Wal-Mart China, to the Xinhua news agency. - Considering the welfare of its employees, Wal-Mart China is willing to cooperate with the ACFTU and local trade unions in a more effective and harmonious way, the Wal-Mart manager says as quoted by China Daily today. How long would it take before the top managers at home in Bentonville, Arkansas pick up this message? With all the troubles at home that rise from the company's bad treatment of its US workforce and its rabidly anti-union approach, one could believe that also they would soon see the benefits of social dialogue. - In the months that followed UNI's World Congress in Chicago a year ago, UNI Commerce was indeed engaged in informal talks with Wal-Mart management. We did not agree on most things, but there was a discussion and an exchange of views, says Jan Furstenborg of UNI Commerce. - Then rather abruptly, the company just closed these contacts. Perhaps, in the first place, they were taken up only because Wal-Mart was forced to do so with all the media attention around the Chicago congress? UNI Commerce is of course prepared to talk with the company at any time, would Wal-Mart wish to do so. So now everyone waits for Wal-Mart to wake up, also in the United States. The bus tour that is on its way should be a loud enough wake-up call, even for the most stubborn union-busting proponents.
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