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Walmart violates labor laws to stop unions { May 1 2007 }

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   http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/01/business/01walmart.php

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/01/business/01walmart.php

Report assails Wal-Mart over unions in U.S.
By Steven Greenhouse
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

In its first study of how an American company treats its workers, Human Rights Watch asserted Monday that Wal-Mart's aggressive efforts to keep out labor unions often violated U.S. law and infringed on its workers' rights.

Human Rights Watch, which typically focuses on rights violations in Burundi, North Korea or other foreign countries, said that when Wal-Mart stores faced unionization drives, the company often broke the law by, for example, eavesdropping on workers, training surveillance cameras on them and firing those who favored unions.

"While many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus," the human rights group wrote.

Wal-Mart Stores has more than 1.3 million workers at its nearly 4,000 stores in the United States, and none of its workers belong to a union.

Wal-Mart, in response, vigorously defended its labor practices. David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said that Wal-Mart provided an environment for open communications and gave its employees "every opportunity to express their ideas, comments and concerns."

"It is because of our efforts to foster such an environment that our associates have repeatedly rejected unionization attempts," he said.

Tovar said the report used unsubstantiated accusations from as long as seven years ago.

Two of the five organizing drives that the 219-page report examined took place in 2005, while the other three campaigns took place more than five years ago.

"Contrary to the allegations in this report, Wal-Mart respects our associates' right to a free and fair unionization vote," Tovar said. "We remain committed to compliance with U.S. laws regarding workers' right to unionize."

Carol Pier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the Wal-Mart report, said her organization decided to look specifically at Wal-Mart because of concerns about violations of labor laws.

"When the largest private employer in the United States seems to be able to violate U.S. labor law with virtual impunity, that's a very serious cause for concern, both with respect to its impact on its employees, but also on the conduct by other employers in the United States," Pier said in a telephone interview.

Wal-Mart called the study "pro-union." Pier said that only $50 of her organization's $33 million budget came from labor unions.

Over the last few years, the main union for retail workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, has suspended efforts to organize any Wal-Mart stores in the United States, largely because Wal-Mart's counteroffensive makes that so difficult, union officials said. Moreover, union officials said they could put more pressure on Wal-Mart by mounting a sophisticated publicity campaign to embarrass it over its wages, benefits and overall treatment of its employees.

For the most part, the unionization drives described in the report, at Wal-Marts in Kingman, Arizona; Aiken, South Carolina; New Castle, Pennsylvania; and Loveland and Greeley, Colorado, grew out of discontent over wages and health benefits.

Wal-Mart says it has increased wages, to an average of $10.51 an hour for full-time workers, and has improved its health insurance, creating a plan with premiums of $23 a month anywhere in the country.

"People want to work at Wal-Mart because we offer competitive wages, affordable health benefits and real career opportunities," Tovar said.

But critics say that even with the increase in wages, many Wal-Mart workers still live below the poverty line and its low-premium health plan remains unaffordable to many workers because the deductibles often run to $3,000 a family.

Human Right Watch issued a report in 2000 saying that America's labor laws and labor law enforcement were so weak that they made it difficult for workers to unionize and violate international labor standards.

The report issued Monday asserted that Wal-Mart took advantage of those weak laws to push its workers into opposing unions, by, for example, ordering them to attend meetings with anti-union speakers and videos.

"Wal-Mart assets that respect for the individual is one of the core values that have made us into the company we are today," the report said. "Wal-Mart's systematic interference with individual workers' right to freedom of association flies in the face of this professed core value."

The report found that unions and workers had brought 292 cases against Wal-Mart, with the National Labor Relations Board finding that 101 cases had merit. Those cases were consolidated into 39 complaints, with 17 administrative law judges ruling that Wal-Mart had violated labor laws. The labor board reversed two of those decisions.



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