Union seeks first Wal-Mart pact
By Adam Geller
Associated Press
JONQUIERE, Quebec — The signs topping sales racks wear the same yellow smiley face, but promise "Chute de Prix," instead of price rollbacks. The boxes of Tide lining the shelves in housewares come packed with a bonus CD, just for Canadian stores, inviting shoppers to experience "la passion du Hockey."
Jacques Boissinot • Associated Press
But except for a few tweaks, the gray-and-blue Wal-Mart store off Highway 70 could be almost any one of the retail Goliath's nearly 5,000 discount emporiums in the United States and eight other countries. And that's what worries executives at the Arkansas headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Pierre Martineau, left, and Patrice Bergeron, were among the employees who initiated unionization of their workplace, a Wal-Mart department store in Jonquiere, Quebec. Wal-Mart says its average pay is just below the $10 an hour of its U.S. competitors.
While still not a certainty, the 165 retirees, single moms, students and other hourly workers at this store 2 1/2 hours north of Quebec City could soon become the first anywhere to extract what the world's largest private employer insists its 1.5 million "associates" around the world neither want nor need — a union contract. A government agency has certified the workers as a union and told the two sides to negotiate.
"One person against Wal-Mart cannot change anything," said Gaetan Plourde, a fiery 49-year-old salesclerk in the store's home electronics department, explaining simmering frustration over the store's pay, scheduling and other practices. "Wal-Mart wants to be rich, but it won't share."
Wal-Mart responds that it does share its cost savings with consumers through lower prices and that it treats its workers fairly. The company has redefined retailing by squeezing its suppliers and keeping a tight lid on other costs, including labor, allowing it to undercut competing stores. That translated last fiscal year into profits of more than $9 billion on sales of $256.3 billion.
It would be easy to overlook events in northern Quebec — a region separated from the nearest big city by more than 100 miles of thickly wooded mountains in a province known for its idiosyncratic labor laws — as purely local.
But it's not. There has been angry name-calling by workers riven into pro-union and anti-union factions.
And last week, Wal-Mart, referring to the strife, said the store was losing money and might have to close.
"If we are not able to reach a collective agreement that is reasonable and that allows the store to function efficiently and ultimately profitable, it is possible that the store will close," Andrew Pelletier, of Wal-Mart Canada, said in an interview.
The public jockeying over Jonquiere is also geared to capture the attention of workers in the United States.
Hourly wages are Wal-Mart's biggest single operating cost, about 35 percent to 40 percent of the bill to run its stores. Benefits are second. Those costs have been rising, pushed higher by factors including healthcare bills and the retailer's entry into more expensive cities.
Wal-Mart says the average hourly wage of its workers is $9.96 an hour — just below the $10 an hour average pay for U.S. discount department store workers and short of the $10.87 an hour earned by the average supermarket employee.
But pay and benefits are substantially better at some unionized food stores. A strike by Southern California supermarket workers — most making $12 to $15 an hour — occurred early this year after grocers sought to cut pay for entry-level workers and shift healthcare costs. The concessions were essential, grocers said, if they were to compete with Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart says its chief concern with unions is that they would get in the way of doing business.
Even if a union gains entry, it will come slowly and make only an incremental difference in Wal-Mart's costs and profits, said Emme Kozloff, an analyst who tracks the retailer for Bernstein Research in New York.
But it's the perception among employees and shareholders, as much as the bottom-line impact, that concerns Wal-Mart, she said.
"It's a little bit like watching a hurricane form," says Robert Hebdon, a professor of labor relations at McGill University in Montreal.
"You don't know whether it's going to be just be a little bit of wind ... or whether it's going to be a storm, a full-blown storm."
