Wal-Mart works with unions abroad, but not at home

washingto n post

Retailing giant Wal-Mart faced an unusual request when it sought government approval recently to buy a chain of stores in South Africa.
Labor groups there first asked for traditional protections, such as job security and a commitment from the new managers to buy merchandise from local suppliers. Then they called on Wal-Mart to end its long-running battle with unions thousands of miles away in the United States.

for South Africa.

That is how you stand up to a corporation. While the US doesn't support non union entities, Wal Mart hasn't exactly made it easy for workers to unionize. As the article gives an example of a store closing in Canada when the workers unionized; or the infamous stories of employees getting fired if they utter the word union while working, to workers having to unionize in the middle of the night.

Is Wal Mart so desparate to get into South Africa that they are willing to meet any request? Why is Wal Mart willing to work with unions in other countries, unless dictated by law, but not in the US and Canada?

I know that people have mixed opinions on unions. But not all unions operate the same, and create the same havok. Some are good, some are awful. Why people are willing to support such a conglomerate nightmare such as wal mart is beyond me.

If South Africa is lucky, they will prevent the buyout.

reply to post by nixie_nox


You can get fired here in USA wal marts for even mentioning the word Unions. And they are the worse company they give you breaks though which is more than I can say for 99.9% of the corporations in Florida. Since we are a right to work state their is no law making it mandatory to give breaks even if you work outside all day in the sun. They don't even require you to be given water. But, back to wal mart so far as I know anyone thinks of striking, mentioning unions, or asks for equal rights, you'd get fired. I knew someone who got fired for taking maternity leave, her circumstances were she was havign pre-eclampsia and needed 2 months extra, yep they fired her for doing what her doctor advised her to do (as well as filling out their paperwork for the leave with the reason given.) Do you think wal mart cared, nope these #s are very evil. They talk about how they are family oriented; HA! family oriented my BIG FAT WHITE A$$!!!! More like ANTI FAMILY!! And they treat you like a number, literally your time card has a number on it, not your name!!!!

I fear this posting of yours OP, might transform into the typical union banter - let's hope not.

Amazing that a country - a union in a country - thousands of miles away had the interest and consciousness of their American counterparts in mind when addressing Wal-Mart. You would never see that here in North American. Nonetheless, we will all be making sweat pants for $0.80 an hour - it's on the horizon.

I wonder if this has anything to do with China's moves into Africa in general, looking for a secondary market to push the Chino-trinkets - makes sense to me.

Nice find, OP.

reply to post by nixie_nox

a commitment from the new managers to buy merchandise from local suppliers

Right on. I wouldn't have such major issues with Wal-Mart if it actually required Made in America goods. Now it's nothing more than China Mart and hurts local businesses and producers.

I actually remember back when Wal-Mart's 'thing' was that it only sold products made in America. There was even a news story in the early 90's I remember seeing as a child with people being outraged that they started to sell foreign made merchandise. Now you would be hard pressed to find something that wasn't made in a foreign country.

Damage might not be able to be undone with existing American stores but it sure would be nice if a stipulation for future stores would be to sell American goods.

I won't hold my breath, though. Good on them, though, for requiring that.

for a long time, there are wealthy individuals that think that americans have far too much money and education...why would that be?....when too many ordinary citizens have both, they become politically active, due to the fact that they are not as worried about putting food on the table and paying for a roof over their head. when ordinary citizens start having the time to think about different concerns other than just their own survival, they learn how the wealthy and powerful maintain and enhance their lives, through discreet, and often legal forms of corruption.
example:
when the housing boom was taking place, loans were being made for 105% of the value of the house, with no money down...even i knew this was not a sustainable and prudent form of finance, but apparently no professionals that do this for a living tried to get laws passed that stopped this, or even tried to stop it in their own corporations. we all know what happened, but here is the kicker, now that property is dirt cheap, massive amounts of that property is being tranferred to the wealthy through short sales, and auctions.
so...with what has happened with the "roof over your head" part, coupled with higher gas and food costs, and real unemployment running up into the high teens, ordinary citizens are now back to concentrating on survival, rather than any forms of corruption from the wealthy.

reply to post by alyoshablue


You bring up a good point about China moving into Africa and exploiting it. Though China is one of the countries that has a law that mandates unions. Oddly.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by alyoshablue

 

You bring up a good point about China moving into Africa and exploiting it. Though China is one of the countries that has a law that mandates unions. Oddly.

Of course China has a law mandating unions. It's Communist China, for Christ's sake.

reply to post by Carseller4


Unions are a gathering of workers trying to improve their working conditions. Since when is China concerned about workin conditions?

Unions will return to the United States. When working conditions have declined to a level that causes more outrage than the socialism/communism tag that people attach to them there will be renewed interest.

At the moment most people don't care about the poor working conditions of Walmart, but such things tend to spread. If one company gets away with it, others may adopt the same practices for cost saving. Eventually it will affect enough people to change public opinions.

It's probably because unions don't seem to operate correctly in America. Take for instance teaching unions or auto worker unions. Other countries have unions, but they seem to operate just fine.