WalMart, Enemy of the People, has had their Ft. Sumter moment. They've formerly seceded from the world of modern labor relations by fulfilling good ol' boy Sam Walton's infamous promise to close a WalMart location before allowing it to organize. Fortunately, they've made their stand in Canada where some lawmakers still wake up in the morning thinking about workers' rights:
Also in the House of Commons on Friday, New Democrat MP David Christopherson demanded to know what the government would do to help the Wal-Mart workers.
Christopherson had fiery words about the retail giant.
"They've sent a message to their 70,000 Canadian workers: You don't have the right to organize, you don't have the right to collective bargaining, and you don't have the right to decent wages or hours of work," Christopherson said.
"What is the government going to do protect Canadian workers from corporate bullies."
Federal Labour Minister Joe Fontana says it's out of his hands, because retail business issues fall within provincial jurisdiction.
But he says he will lobby Quebec's labour minister to ensure employee rights are being protected.
Two unions, the National Aluminum Workers Union of Arvida and the union at the Fjordcell pulp plant owned by Cascades Inc are encouraging a boycott. The Quebec Federation of Labor, the largest union in Canada, is saying no boycott and that they will concentrate on unionizing the remaining WalMart stores. I have no idea why.
They seem frightened that the 70,000 WalMart workers across Canada will lose their jobs. Wildly biased stories in the local press help that fear along. And maybe they're feeling the same pressure from the power elite that everyone feels when they suggest a boycott of WalMart. But a Canadian labor expert makes a crucial point:
"Wal-Mart has decided to go very hard against the union," said Christian Lévesque, a professor of labor relations at HEC Montreal, a business school. "The union must now show the workers that it will support them whatever Wal-Mart does. If it takes just a legalistic approach, it's dead."
He's absolutely right about that. The Canadian WalMart workers have put a lot on the line to do the right thing. If all they get is a bunch of law talk and "better luck next time" ... I'm a strong union gal, but if that happened to me, it'd be a long time before I listened to anything a labor organizer had to say. It's time for some very creative thinking from Labor. And the squeamishness about a boycott doesn't sound like they've got the guts to do what it will take to throw a scare into WalMart, Enemy of the People.
I'll admit that what I don't know about labor law would fill every big box retail outlet in Canada so somebody help me out - what's stopping our unions from working with Canada's unions on this? The phrase "international brotherhood" is ringing hollow in my ears. Are there laws stoppping us?
There's certainly a possibility of synergy going on right now as WalMart, EoP, is facing a union battle in Loveland, Colorado:
The National Labor Relations Board's regional director ruled last month that the Loveland workers could hold an election on whether the United Food and Commercial Workers Union should represent them. Wal-Mart objected and is asking the board in Washington to review the regional office's decision.
And it is setting its treasonous eyes on opening a store in New York City:
The fight seems likely to become the biggest battle against a single store in the city's history, because the labor movement sees Wal-Mart as Public Enemy No. 1 since it is so anti-union, and because many small businesses fear that tens of thousands of Wal-Mart-loving consumers will flock to the store, taking millions of dollars in business with them.
"There will never be a more diverse and comprehensive coalition than this effort against Wal-Mart," said Richard Lipsky, spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, an anti-Wal-Mart coalition in New York. "It will include small-business people, labor people, environmental groups, women's groups, immigrant groups and community groups."
One factor that will make the fight unusually intense is that labor has decided that frustrating Wal-Mart's New York ambitions is pivotal to its new, nationwide campaign to pressure the company to improve the way it pays and treats its workers.
"Wal-Mart has come to represent the lowest common denominator in the treatment of working people," said Brian M. McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the umbrella group of more than one million union members. "Wal-Mart didn't build its empire on bargains. They built it on the backs of working people here and abroad."
WalMart, EoP, is resorting to the same tactics that corporate thugs have used forever: suggesting that the workers will turn to violence and claiming that what's happening is unfair to them.
[The director of corporate relations for WalMart-Canada] said the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has run "vicious" public relations campaigns against Wal-Mart in the past.
"If anything, they're probably only going to intensify that. I can only hope that these people conduct themselves peaceably and responsibly in the process."
Now we watch what happens as the last bastion of workers' rights in North America fights our battles for us. You can help by signing an AFL-CIO online petition that calls on WalMart, EoP, to throw their business model of perpetual worker poverty in the trashcan and do the right thing here.
If you think that will make even the smallest difference and if you don't spend your every waking minute frantically wondering when American Labor will find some courage and creativity, when they will sense a moment and grab it, when they will start making history instead of being swept aside by it, then you're a better person than I.
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