Commerce
Home Page

Commerce
work in multinational
companies

Wal-Mart pages

UFCW

The Canadian legal system does not play Wal-Mart's game, if the company now thought they would. In two recent court decisions, the retail giant has been mercilessly exposed for its repressive and anti-social behaviour. Workers that were fired in Jonquière, Quebec, for their union activities, have to be compensated. In a Saskatchewan court, Wal-Mart's efforts to disqualify the Labour Relations Board from dealing with unionisation issues in Wal-Mart ran on ground.

Do you remember Jonquière, the small town in Quebec, Canada, some 500 kilometres from Montreal? Here, the Wal-Mart workers wanted their union UFCW to represent them and to negotiate a collective agreement. The Bentonville-based company was of another opinion, so they just closed the store and sent their workers out on the street. Rather than accepting a collective agreement, they took away the jobs from their workers and the means of living from their families.

Norwegian sideline

No wonder that the Norwegian government - and a growing number of other socially conscious investors - choose to get rid of their Wal-Mart stock. As the Norwegians say, they don't want to be accomplices in Wal-Mart's human rights violations.

In a sideline which many in Norway, and outside as well, saw as rather ridiculous, the US Ambassador intervened and threatened that there would be a reaction against the Norwegian government. So the close ties between the Bush administration and Wal-Mart seem to stretch also far beyond the Washington-Bentonville axis.

Jonquiere workers get compensated

Back to Jonquière, which perhaps more than any single union-busting action has come to illustrate Walmartization. Three brave and principled Wal-Mart workers, Johanne Desbiens, Ingrid Ratte and Claudine Beaumont will now get their salaries paid by Wal-Mart also for a period after the store was closed down. They were dismissed because they were exercising their union-activity rights, Quebec Superior Court Justice Marie-France Courville ruled when she confirmed the earlier decision by the Quebec Labour Relations Board. She also refused Wal-Mart's request for judicial review, which is surely an indication that the case was quite clear.

After this decision, others will follow. Altogether 74 former Wal-Mart workers in de Jonquière will now have their cases tried by the Board. But the legal proceedings will not stop there. As Louis Bolduc of UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW told the Montreal newspaper Gazette, there are 'easily more than a dozen' outstanding cases with Wal-Mart in Quebec only.

Saskatchewan Labour Board continues to deal with Wal-Mart organising

In Saskatchewan, another province where workers at many Wal-Mart stores have wanted to unionise, Wal-Mart has been attacking the Labour Relations Board, trying to argue that it is biased in favour of the union. The company contended that members had been required to read documents that were critical about Wal-Mart. Throwing out Wal-Mart's complaint, Queen's Bench Justice Frank Gerein said according to the national newspaper Globe and Mail that there was “absolutely no evidence” of attempts to interfere with the operations of the labour board or to require members of the board to read certain union documents that were highly critical of Wal-Mart.

.