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Service Sector Struggles Organizing Wal-Mart in Quebec
Service Sector Struggles Organizing Wal-Mart in Quebec
INTRODUCTION
On February 9, 2005, Wal-Mart stunned its employees in Jonquiere, Quebec by
announcing that they would be terminate the contracts of all of the approximately 200
employees and close the store on May 6, 2005 for business reasons. This business
reason may have been that the loss of money from its profit that exceeded $ 10 billion
US in 2004. The time of this announcement conveniently coincided just hours after the
Minister of Labour granted the unions request for a first contract arbitrator; since they
were having no success for months at negotiating the first collective agreement.
Wal-Mart has always had an anti-union motive. They do various things, whether
ethical or not, to avoid or resist unionization. These actions can scale from giving
managers guidebook to antiunion to closing down unionized locations due to business
reason. This works not only as an immediate fix to current unionization, but it also
deters employees in other locations from voting to become unionized.
CONCLUSION
Wal-Mart is determined to stay union-free and this could be possible without any
aggressive tactics, such as taking the high road of superior pay, actual benefits and give
full-time hours. For their excuse of not having the fund can be solved through shifting
the finance they use to created management anti union training videos and printing
Manager's Toolbox To Remaining Union Free to their employees demands.
Also the amount of legal fees they spend may seem to solve their problem but
they dont realize that a long term investment in their workers may prove to be more
beneficial for them because when employees feel valued and heard, they dont look to
unions to protect them from their employers. Unions dont get called into to workplaces
with strong management-employee relations; they go where the work relationship is
strained and unbalanced. In a final note, a union cannot take a vote of no confidence in
employment policy; its given to it by those who dont have lost confidence in the
fairness of their employers policy.