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Wal-Mart Union-Busting Case Goes To Canadian Supreme Court

When Wal-Mart employees in Jonquiere, Quebec secured the right to unionize in 2005, labor activists saw it as a touchstone victory for low wage workers everywhere....that is, until Wal-Mart shut down its entire operation in Jonquiere, disbanding any hopes of a unionized work force there. Wal-Mart’s controversial move has been the subject of lawsuits ever since, and the case is now moving to Canada’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether Wal-Mart violated Canadian labor law.

The case comes as another group of Wal-Mart employees, also in Quebec, are on the verge of unionizing a Wal-Mart Tire and Lube Shop. Labor advocates expect Wal-Mart to react the same way it did in 2005: by shutting down operation rather than see employees unionize. This practice exposes how afraid Wal-Mart is of unions, and its international union-busting practices are part of a deeply-rooted company practice of keeping wages low and employees’ rights lower.

While the Canadian Supreme Court debates the 2005 Jonquiere case, how will Wal-Mart deal with employees unionizing efforts today and in the future?

Workers say store closed because they unionized [Camwest News via National Post (Canada)]

The Supreme Court of Canada will weigh in on a high-stakes dispute between retail giant Wal-Mart and former employees at a store in Jonquiere, Que., which shut down in 2005 after workers secured the right to unionize.

The closure drew attention continent-wide because Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer and the Jonquiere outlet, located about three hours north of Quebec City, was one of the first in North America to be organized.

Former clerks Gaetan Plourde, Johanne Desbiens, Ingrid Ratte and Claudine Beaumont will have their day in court to argue that Wal-Mart violated labour laws in union-strong Quebec by shutting down during negotiations for an inaugural collective agreement.

The former employees contend that they were sacked because of their union activities, which they say also violates freedom of association guarantees in the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights.

“This could have an impact on other employers who want to close their stores when employees are trying to unionize,” said Nicolas Charron, one of the Montreal lawyers representing Mr. Plourde and Mr. Desbiens.

“It’s a question of national importance that we think has not been clearly answered by the Supreme Court.”

The employees are bringing their case to the Supreme Court after losing in the Quebec Court of Appeal, which concluded that the permanent closure of the Jonquiere store met the provincial labour code test of having “good and sufficient reasons” for terminating employment.

Wal-Mart, with more than two million employees worldwide, has been fighting unionization

in various Canadian courts in recent years, but this marks the first time the Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to tackle the issue.

By convention, the court gave no reasons for granting two separate applications from the workers, one from Mr. Plourde and one from the other three. The appeals will likely be heard in 2009.

Wal-Mart has maintained that it closed the store, located in Quebec’s union heartland, because it was struggling financially.

At a time when the Jonquiere store was on its deathbed, the union demanded that the company hire another 30 employees as part of the first collective agreement, said Andrew Pelletier, spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. Almost 200 “associates” worked at the store when it closed in May, 2005.

About six of 300 or so Canadian Wal-Marts are union-certified, but none have collective agreements in place, Mr. Pelletier said. In the United States, where the union movement is weaker, no Wal-Mart stores are unionized, he said.

Mr. Pelletier charged that the United Food and Commercial Workers union has taken advantage of “loopholes” in labour laws in some provinces, particularly Quebec, that permit unionization without a secret-ballot vote, provided enough workers have signed union cards.

A spokesman for the union could not be reached.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, August 08, 2008

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COMMENTS

Here’s some background on a TLE that attempted to unionize here in U.S. a few years ago:~~~~~~~"Few discount retailers make it easy for workers to unionize. But it’s hard to find one that has been more aggressive, brutal, and openly hostile to unions than Wal-Mart. Sam Walton faced his first major union challenge in the 1960s. Two Wal-Marts in Missouri were on the verge of organizing, and Walton called in a lawyer named John Tate to stop them. In 2000, when workers in a Jacksonville, Texas, meat-cutting department successfully voted to unionize, Wal-Mart announced two weeks later that it would be closing its meat-cutting departments nationwide and switching to pre-cut meat. Four of the employees who voted in favor of the union were fired. (The company claims that the timing was coincidental and that the dismissals were unrelated, but a National Labor Relations Board judge disagreed. Wal-Mart is appealing the case.) A year ago, employees at a Wal-Mart tire and lube shop thought they had enough votes to unionize, but the company fired one of the likely yes-voters and transferred in six likely no-voters. Again, an administrative judge ruled that Wal-Mart’s conduct had been illegal, but the goal of blocking the union had been achieved. And in February 2005, the company announced that it would be closing a Wal-Mart in Quebec, one of only two unionized Wal-Marts in North America (the other is also in Quebec). Wal-Mart claimed the store was losing money, but it refused to release numbers. . The National Labor Relations Board can order an employer to rehire a terminated employee and to pay back wages, but it can’t impose criminal penalties or punitive damages. This is rather like telling a bank robber that the penalty for a failed heist is being required to return the money to the bank. And Wal-Mart takes full advantage of such laxity. Store managers are equipped with 56-page pamphlets titled “The Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free,” and representatives from the “People Division” in Bentonville are flown out at a moment’s notice if there are any signs of union activity.

Over the past 10 years, the NLRB or its administrative law judges have determined in at least 11 cases that Wal-Mart or individual Wal-Mart stores were engaging in unfair labor practices to prevent unionization, according to the agency’s website. An excerpt from one of the decisions against Wal-Mart gives a sense of the extent of the violations:

The Respondent, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., its officers, agents, successors, and assigns, SHALL

1. CEASE AND DESIST FROM:
(a) Promising to remedy employee concerns in an effort to undermine support for the Union.
(b) Removing supervisors from their position in an effort to undermine support for the Union.
(c) Engaging in surveillance of the union activities of employees.
(d) Coercively interrogating employees concerning the union sympathies and support of other employees.
(e) Installing new equipment to remedy employee complaints in order to undermine support for the Union.
(f) Transferring employees into the TLE [Tire Lube and Express division] to dilute the support for the Union.
(g) Transferring employees into the TLE to remedy employee complaints about inadequate staffing in order to undermine support for the Union.
(h) Transferring employees out of the TLE in order to dilute the support for the Union.

Sam Walton’s instincts, in short, helped to keep the company’s foibles in check. Absent Walton, the redeeming features of Wal-Mart began to disappear. What remained were the relentlessness, the chauvinism, and, above all, the cheapness.
It won’t be easy for Wal-Mart to change its ways. But Wal-Mart is led by people whose lives are devoted to coming up with ways to shave a penny--or a half penny, or a quarter penny--off of a dollar. Wal-Mart’s chief spokesman summed up the difficulty in an interview with The New York Times. Change might be necessary, he admitted, but, “at the same time, we can’t change who we are--we can’t change what makes Wal-Mart Wal-Mart.”

.~~~~~~~~"Everyday Low Vices”,T.A. Franks,Washington Monthly,2004

ddrb in
Friday, August 08 at 09:04 PM

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Friday, August 08 at 09:32 PM

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