Posted on: Saturday, February 12, 2005
Wal-Mart Canada faces union charges
Advertiser News Services
TORONTO — The Canadian arm of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union said yesterday it will file charges against Wal-Mart Canada for exhibiting "bad faith" during its first-ever contract talks by secretly planning to close the affected store.
Earlier this week, the Canadian unit of retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will close the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in May.
In October, a few months after the store received automatic union certification by the Quebec Labour Relations Board, the company revealed the store wasn't making money.
The company said union demands wouldn't allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably, compounding its already "fragile" economic state.
At a press conference yesterday, Michael Fraser, the Canadian director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, questioned whether Wal-Mart ever had any intention of reaching a collective agreement with the union.
"Wal-Mart made its decision to close the store months before we sat down at the table with them. They made a decision the day the labour board certified the union. Everything since then has been a charade," he said.
The union, which is also skeptical about the company's characterization of the store's economic condition, will be filing unfair labor practice charges. The union plans to ask the province's labor board to force Wal-Mart to prove the store wasn't profitable.
Fraser said it's "quite a coincidence" that the first Wal-Mart store to be unionized in Quebec is also losing money. He said the store's closure is really meant to send a message to Wal-Mart employees in Quebec and across Canada.
Wal-Mart Canada spokesman Andrew Pelletier said the company would provide the store's financial data if requested by the labor board. He noted the union could have seen the income statement for itself, as company negotiators brought it to bargaining meetings.
Pelletier also dismissed allegations that the company bargained in bad faith. In fact, he said the conciliator acknowledged that Wal-Mart Canada bargained in good faith, and he expects the conciliator's report to say so when it's released in the coming weeks.
"We're not the ones that walked away from the bargaining table," Pelletier said, adding that the company initiated the bargaining process and asked for a conciliator. However, in applying for binding arbitration, he said the union was effectively telling the company it wasn't prepared to budge from its monetary demands, which on top of a struggling store made the situation "untenable."
The discounter, which doesn't provide Canadian sales figures, runs 256 Wal-Marts and six Sam's Clubs in Canada. In the United States, Wal-Mart has more than 3,000 discount stores and 550 Sam's Clubs.
