Wal-Mart workers seek union contract

The company insists a union isn't necessary.
JONQUIERE, Quebec (AP) -- The signs topping sales racks wear the same yellow smiley face, but promise "Chute de Prix," instead of price rollbacks. The boxes of Tide shelved in housewares come packed with a bonus CD inviting shoppers to experience "la passion du Hockey."
Otherwise, the 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.
The 165 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 49-year-old sales clerk, explaining frustration over 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.
Issues
It would be easy to overlook events in northern Quebec as purely local. But they are not.
There has been angry name-calling by workers riven into pro-union and anti-union factions. There have been accusations of intimidation by managers and threats of a lawsuit by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
The public jockeying is capturing the attention of workers in the United States.
Hourly wages are Wal-Mart's biggest operating cost, about 35 percent to 40 percent of the bill to run its stores. Benefits are second. Those costs have been rising because of higher health-care bills and the retailer's entry into more expensive cities.
Wal-Mart says the average hourly wage of its U.S. 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.
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