The Only Rules That Count

    

NEW YORK -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it will close one of its Canadian stores, just as some 200 workers at the location are near winning the first-ever union contract from the world's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators that would make it impossible for the store to sustain itself.
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Union leaders dismissed Wal-Mart's reasons for closing the store and promised to fight the move.

"Wal-Mart has fired these workers not because the store was losing money but because the workers exercised their right to join a union," Michael J. Fraser, national director of UFCW Canada, said in a written statement. "Once again, Wal-Mart has decided it is above the law and that the only rules that count are their rules."

The union efforts at both stores are part of a larger chess game labor organizers are waging with Wal-Mart at stores across Canada. The campaign, financed by UFCW money from both Canada and the United States, is also geared toward capturing workers' attention in Wal-Mart's home country.

The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Bentonville, Ark.-based company occurred in 2000 at a store in Jacksonville, Texas, where 11 workers in the store's meatpacking department voted to join and be represented by the UFCW.

That effort failed when Wal-Mart eliminated the job of meatcutter companywide, and shifted from in-store meatcutting to stocking only pre-wrapped meat.

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