BloggingStock’s Brian White doesn’t always share our viewpoint on Wal-Mart, but this week’s “Wal-Mart Weekly” column is particularly interesting. It focuses entirely on the closing of the Tire & Lube Express in Gatineau, Quebec.

It’s a good column, and not just because it gets in a few zings at Wal-Mart. It’s one of the first pieces we’ve seen that begins to take a real look at Wal-Mart’s repeated decisions to close stores rather than deal with unions and union contracts, and asks important questions from a business perspective. Is this a good policy for Wal-Mart as a company? Is the repeated antagonism of workers who unionize going to hurt Wal-Mart’s growth potential in countries like Canada and China - where unions are more powerful and prevalent? And more fundamentally - is Wal-Mart’s bare-bones-wage model really a sustainable and profitable business plan in an economy where living costs are skyrocketing?

If you’ve got time, read the whole thing: 

The Wal-Mart Weekly: Is closing up a unionized shop the best strategy? [BloggingStocks]

This week, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) closed the first shop in North America that had been completely unionized. Does this signal anything to other Wal-Mart locations that form a collective bargaining organization? Sure: form one and the retailer would rather see the operation shut down entirely instead of having employees with any kind of power.

That may sound harsh, but it has to be the feeling around a Wal-Mart tire and lube shop in Gatineau, Quebec, which was literally closed due to its unionization last week. What better a way to leave consumers in the lurch than to close up shop on something that brings in revenue even if its employees decide to stray from Wal-Mart’s “non-union” stance in its retail locations.
Was the closing really the best answer?

With the Gatineau location in Canada the first official Wal-Mart location with an actual union contract in place, Wal-Mart’s response could be seen as severe. Was the global retailer trying to get a message out to any other Wal-Mart location in North America—“unionize and we will shut your doors?” If so, that’s no way to run a business, right? Is Wal-Mart so afraid of unions in its stores that it would rather shut them down (or pieces of them) instead of continuing to operate?

Lisette Wallingford, a frustrated customer of the Gatineau shop, expressed her disappointment: “They told me to come back today because my tires were coming in ... I think I’ll go to Canadian Tire because I can count on them.” There’s all we need to know: a frustrated customer. Wal-Mart was at least kind enough to direct customers late last week to other Gatineau-area Wal-Mart locations, with no mentioning that the closed location was due to unionization. Nice.

Read the rest of this story ...

Well, my faithful blog readers, after two years of working on Wal-Mart issues and more than a year as the main editor of this blog, our Friday Blog Round-Up today will be my last post. I hope you all continue reading, commenting and working to challenge Wal-Mart’s business practices. Enjoy the writing of my Wal-Mart Watch colleagues and try to keep the infighting to a minimum. As for now - on to the week’s blogs!

BLOGGERS WEIGH IN ON “EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT”

Real Voices, Some More Wild Stuff [Working Life]

Wal-Mart Watch has set up a website where you can actually hear and read about the actual workers who have to put up with the oppressive behavior of The Beast. This is part of the picture: the Great Robbery that we have all endured for a number of decades--wages not going up (even though productivity goes up), no health care, no pensions--plays out, day-to-day, in those aisles at Wal-Mart.

The voice of the workers (Part 1) [Writing on the Wal]

What you get there is a look behind Walmart’s PR curtain to see what employees are really thinking, but too afraid to tell their supervisors since they don’t have a union to protect them. Indeed, let’s start this series there, in the category that Wal-Mart Watch calls corporate culture.

After the jump, union-busting in Canada, bottle water, Nike’s suit against the Bentonville behemoth and Sarah Palin.

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Wal-Mart earned $31 billion in profit last year, but repeatedly refuses to raise wages for its lowest-paid employees. When workers at a Tire and Lube Express in Canada voted to unionize in hopes of raising their wages and securing better benefits, Wal-Mart responded in the same way it has before: it shut the shop down. Such actions have been challenged before; hopefully these workers will be able to find justice.

Wal-Mart Closes Quebec Tire Center After Labor Accord (Update1) [Bloomberg News]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, said it closed a unionized Quebec tire and lubrication shop because of costs tied to the first labor agreement imposed at any of its North American locations.

The closing is effective immediately because it would have raised operating costs by at least 30 percent and triggered “dramatic’’ price increases on products, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said today in a statement. The Quebec Labour Relations Board imposed the three-year labor contract in August after the union and company failed to reach an agreement.

“The union contract that was imposed is simply unworkable,’’ Wal-Mart Canada spokesman Andrew Pelletier said in a telephone interview.

Wal-Mart rose $1.89, or 3.8 percent, to $51.94 at 1:05 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Under the contract, wages would have increased by a third, or more than 10 times the average hourly rate of Quebec companies this year, the company said in the statement. Wal-Mart Tire and Lube Express’s six employees in Gatineau won’t be fired and will be offered jobs at other regional shops.

Read the rest of this story ...

Wal-Mart Canada shuts another location after workers unionize [Marketwire]

The closure of a unionized Wal-Mart Tire and Lube Express in Gatineau, Quebec “is another attack on its workers, on the community, and one more example of its blatant disregard for Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” says Wayne Hanley, the National President of UFCW Canada.

“Wal-Mart thinks a cheap oil change is more important than the Canadian constitution.”

Wal-Mart Canada announced Thursday that it was shutting the Gatineau outlet because a union contract, which came into force in August, didn’t fit with its business model. It is the second time Wal-Mart has shut a Quebec outlet after its workers decided to form a union.

In April 2005 Wal-Mart shut its store in Jonquiere, Quebec and terminated more than 200 workers just as binding arbitration for a first-contract was set to begin. Later this year the Supreme Court will hear arguments that the shutting of the Jonquiere store was a violation of those workers’ rights.

In June 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that under the Charter’s Freedom of Association protections, workers in Canada are guaranteed the right to organize for the purposes of collective bargaining, “but once again Wal-Mart has proven the only rules it respects are its own, “ said Hanley.

“For Wal-Mart to say its employees are free to unionize, but then declare that a contract produced through mediation just doesn’t work for their business model, means as far as Wal-Mart is concerned, the rights of its American shareholders are more important than the human rights of its workers in Canada.”

“Now it is up to the Supreme Court to tell Wal-Mart that it is not above the law and that it must respect the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.”