Wal-Mart closure takes toll on Quebec
By Doug Struck
Washington Post
JONQUIERE, Quebec — The baby buggies are all gone. In electronics, only "Le Gros Albert" and a few other leftover DVDs remain. A few pairs of pink boots are left in the shoe department. Over in household goods, red and yellow liquidation tags dangle beside thin skillets as Wal-Mart prepares to close.
Doug Struck • Washington Post
The retailing behemoth, whose $10 billion annual profits are based on low prices, low expenses and its relentless pace of store openings, announced it will shut the doors here May 6 after workers voted to make this the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America.
Rejan Lavoie is among those who blame union efforts for Wal-Mart's closing in Jonquiere, Quebec. The single father says he worries he won't find a job with suitable hours. The closure will leave 190 bitter employees out of work, the town uneasy over the future of unions and the mayor angry at the company.
The closure will leave 190 bitter employees out of work, the town uneasy over the future of unions, and the mayor angry at the company. Supporters of organized labor also say it serves as a warning for workers at other Wal-Mart stores who might contemplate defying founder Sam Walton's sharp distaste for unions.
"It's like we are digging our own grave," said store employee Nathalie Dubois, 38, a single mother with no other job to go to, as she helped pack up the store.
The world's largest retail chain has fiercely and successfully resisted unionization attempts at its 3,600 stores in the United States.
Its closest call ended in Texas in 2000 when the store eliminated its meat department after 11 meat cutters voted to join a union. United Food and Commercial Workers is mounting a fresh campaign to organize Wal-Mart workers in the United States, a push it says has been given impetus by recent legal action and a former company vice president's contention that he surreptitiously organized anti-union activities.
In Canada, the battle has been pitched, pitting the country's still-healthy union movement against what is now its largest retailer. While union membership in the United States dropped to 12.5 percent of workers in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, it was 28.6 percent in Canada. Since entering the country 11 years ago by buying the failing Woolco chain, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. now takes 52 percent of the retail market share in Canada, and is opening about 30 stores a year. It earns three times as much revenue per square foot of store space as Zellers Inc., its nearest competitor.
Quebec, where nearly 40 percent of the work force carries a union card, has been a focal point. Jonquiere was the first store to be unionized. One other, in Saint Hyacinthe, east of Montreal, has followed. The company says it is bargaining "in good faith" toward a contract at that store but expects the negotiations to "go on for some time."
Andrew Pelletier, head of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart Canada Corp., said that while the union may have succeeded in organizing a store in Jonquiere, Wal-Mart workers have on five other occasions voted against unionization.
"I think that says we are a good employer," Pelletier said.
Jonquiere, 120 miles north of Quebec City, is a French-speaking mill town of 60,000. Its bland neighborhoods of square clapboard homes attest to its origins a century ago as a center for the pulp and paper industry.
The Wal-Mart here is one of three in the area, and it was welcomed when it opened more than three years ago. The town's manufacturing legs are getting old: Both Alcan and Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. paper mills closed lines in their plants last year, costing 1,200 jobs.
"Economically, it's not a good time for us," said the mayor of the Saguenay area, Jean Tremblay. The new Wal-Mart was swamped with applications, and those who were hired thought themselves lucky.
"I never had a job as good as this before," said Lynn Morissette, 44, who tracks inventory in the store. "I worked in the daytime. I thought I had a good wage, and I was a shareholder, too, so I could save up some money. I was going to retire here."
But others were not so thrilled about Wal-Mart's pay — starting at about $6.20 (United States) an hour — its floating shifts for part-timers, or the rules that limited some full-time employees to 28 hours of work a week.
Those involved in the organizing effort claim they were harassed by the company. "We were targeted fairly quickly by Wal-Mart," said Pierre Martineau, a 60-year-old maintenance man who helped organize the union.
Those who did not want a union say organizers harassed them to join. "People signed the cards just to get some peace" from the union organizers, said Noella Langlois, 53, who works in the clothing department.
In fact, there was a vote last April that rejected the union. But under Quebec labor laws, the organizers could try again. When they collected signed union cards from 51 percent of the employees, the law declared the Jonquiere Wal-Mart a union shop.
"They closed it to be a threat to other unions," said Tremblay, the mayor. "We know that for Wal-Mart, Jonquiere is nothing. They wanted to close it to make a lesson to other Wal-Marts."
