SASKATOON, Saskatchewan - After years of concerted but futile attempts to organize workers at Wal-Mart Stores, union leaders are joining forces to stop the world's largest employer from exporting its low-wage jobs across the globe.
In Canada, Germany and Japan, unions are using protests, the courts and political pressure to thwart the giant retailer's expansion.
The effort, one of the most extensive union campaigns in modern labor history, is gathering speed. International labor leaders, meeting in Chicago this week to craft an anti-Wal-Mart campaign, say slowing the retailer is crucial to protecting the wages and living conditions of millions of workers.
INTERNATIONAL EVIL? Wal-Mart, union officials say, represents all that is wrong with the global economy, including sweatshop abuses and the extinction of mom-and-pop businesses.
''Our emphasis is to get Wal-Mart to abide by the rules,'' said Jan Furstenborg, head of the commercial division of Union Network International, a Swiss-based umbrella organization that represents more than 900 skills and services unions around the world. ``We want the company to realize they have to change if they want to be part of the global business community.''
Wal-Mart and its supporters argue that the retailer has raised living standards from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Detroit, by delivering jobs and low prices to some of the world's poorest neighborhoods. The retailer, which draws 138 million shoppers a week to its 5,379 stores and restaurants worldwide, says it pays its workers equal or better wages than its competitors. Last year, Wal-Mart revenue was $285 billion.
CORPORATE DENIAL
Denying that the company was anti-union, Bryan Miller, a Wal-Mart senior vice president, said the retailer preferred to have ''a direct relationship with our associates'' without the involvement of a third party. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people around the world, the majority of whom are nonunion workers in North America.
Labor experts say union leaders face an uphill task, given Wal-Mart's deep pockets, its broad support and a disagreement within the labor movement over how to confront the challenges of free trade.
They cite Canada, where unions remain a powerful presence, as an example. In 2003, 32.4 percent of the Canadian workers were unionized, compared with 14.3 percent in the United States, according to Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank.
But labor's defiance hasn't slowed Wal-Mart's march across Canada, where it now controls 52 percent of the retail market and has been named in a national survey as the country's best retail employer for two consecutive years. More than 100 communities across the nation have lobbied the retailer to open stores in their neighborhoods, the company said.
`PLAYING CATCH-UP'
''They've really totally shaken up the whole of Canadian retailing,'' said Richard Talbot, a Toronto retail consultant. ``Everybody else is playing catch-up.''
At a time of stagnant wages and rising costs, it isn't easy to persuade people, even union members, to give up Wal-Mart's low prices. Fighting that battle is particularly hard in sparsely populated Canada, where people drive hundreds of miles across the prairie to buy groceries.
At this year's Saskatchewan Labor Federation School, workers' voices started quietly gaining strength with each chorus of Union Maid, Woody Guthrie's ode to the working class.
''Let's make sure all the women and men of Wal-Mart can hear us,'' yelled an employee of a retail cooperative.
The 140 students at the training school had one target in mind: the Bentonville, Ark.-based retail giant. In two nearby towns, the local United Food and Commercial Worker's Union was engaged in a contentious organizing drive. Union leaders knew they were taking on a formidable foe: In Quebec, Wal-Mart closed a store after its nearly 200 employees voted to unionize. The retailer said the store was unprofitable.
THE REAL COSTS
But in opening remarks, Paul Meinema, the UFCW's chief organizer in Saskatchewan, urged the audience to assess the real costs of succumbing to Wal-Mart's ``everyday low prices.''
''Is the price of whatever you're buying at Wal-Mart worth the price of a person starving to death or worth the price of an associate being abused?'' he asked, imploring them to talk to their family and friends.
Wal-Mart has gone to great lengths to keep its North American facilities free of unions. After butchers at a store in Texas voted to unionize in 2000, the company switched to prepackaged meat. Unions have filed dozens of worker's rights complaints against Wal-Mart, a number of which have been upheld by regional or federal labor authorities.
With growth slowing in the United States, Wal-Mart needs to squeeze more from the rest of the world. The company hopes to increase international sales from 20 percent to one-third of its revenue within five years.
Wal-Mart's foreign division includes more than 1,500 facilities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Britain.
Wal-Mart also owns a 42 percent interest in Seiyu Ltd., a Japanese retailer.
This year, Wal-Mart plans to open as many as 165 stores in foreign countries.
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