Canadian Wal-Mart workers allowed to form union
Ruling could open retailer to unionisation
Employees at a Wal-Mart store in Quebec, Canadia, have been given the go-ahead to form a union.
If successful, the Quebec workers would mark the first unionised store in North America for the world’s biggest retailer.
Wal-Mart has resisted moves by unions to represent it employees saying its employment packages and support make it unnecessary. However, the company has increasingly found itself having to defend its employment practices.
In the Canadian decision, the Quebec labor relations board has given the United Food and Commercial Workers Union permission to represent employees at the Wal-Mart store in Jonquiere, which has around 170 workers.
Wal-Mart has the right to appeal the decision, while the employees have to establish a bargaining unit before the union can negotiate on their behalf.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is affiliated to the Quebec Federation of Labor, which has been campaigning for unionisation of Wal-Mart stores. Union accreditation requests have also been filed on behalf of Wal-Mart store in three other provinces.
Meanwhile, a report in California has calculated that the US state paid around $86m in various benefits to Wal-Mart employees in 2001.
The report by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center said: “Wal-Mart workers’ reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company.
Many Wal-Mart employees in California relied on food stamps, Medicare health benefits and subsidised housing, said the report.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark told news agency Reuters: “It’s disappointing that UC Berkeley would release a study whose findings are questionable. Their researchers are going to get faulty conclusions when they are working with faulty assumptions.”
Two-thirds of Wal-Mart workers are either senior citizens, college students or second income providers, meaning they are likely to have health care coverage and other benefits, she said.
With 1.3m employees, Wal-mart is the biggest private sector employee in the US.
