Wal-Mart Protesters Picket Mexico City Store to Demand Union

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Bloomberg

By Adriana Arai

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Protesters picketed a Wal-Mart store in Mexico City to show support for employees who are trying to form a union at the company, the nation's largest employer.

The protesters, who included labor activists and union members from other industries, urged shoppers to boycott Wal- Mart for the day. Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB, two-thirds owned by Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has about 160,000 workers in the country.

``Wal-Mart in Mexico is no different from Wal-Mart in the U.S.,'' said Maria Pantoja, a Mexico City representative of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based group that is helping local workers organize. She said the company pays low wages and drives small shops out of business with its low prices.


``They're missing the point,'' said Antonio Ocaranza, communications director for Wal-Mart de Mexico, as he looked at the protesters handing out pamphlets at Plaza Universidad, in southern Mexico City. ``We create jobs, we pay taxes, we compensate our workers better than average.''

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=akv0z8DYhG_o&refer=latin_america

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2 photos with full story at link.

[Zueda]

1. UhOh...Better send down Mark Penn! nt

[skipos]

3. I figured this

was worth a kick, and also a good time to ask you...

When are you going to tell me who my candidate is?

[Zueda]

4. LOL...

You ever seen that movie "Paperboy"? The one where that boy followed that guy through out the movie screaming "I want my two dollars!"...

Alright here we go...

I was wrong... I just feel that this sudden mad rush to change the usual election process is an attempt by a certain candidate, and their supporters in high places, to sway the way things are so that candidate will benefit.

I should be more aware that there are some who honestly feel the way you do and do not have partisan motives.

Sorry.

[skipos]

5. Thank you. nt

[provis99]

2. how long until Blackwater shows up to enforce Wal-Marts corporate rule?

[Selatius]

6. In Mexico, you can still be beaten or murdered for daring to attempt unionization.

Many of the pre-existing trade unions have corrupt leadership who are in bed with the business cartels in Mexico, so when abuses occur, the rank-and-file appeal to union bosses for help, help that often doesn't arrive.

[gorbal]

7. It's kinda scary that people aren't talking about Mexico much lately

I hate the ennerving silence.

[KamaAina]

8. They'll just close that store if they have to

Always the lowest union-busting. Always. :P

It happened in Quebec:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971115.htm

After the required three-month cooling-off period expired, Lavoie and her allies started over and collected a surfeit of signatures so quickly that this second campaign succeeded before management even realized that it was afoot. The Jonquière store was automatically certified as a UFCW shop in August, 2004, giving a big boost to the union's organizing campaigns in two dozen other Wal-Mart stores across Canada.

Two months later, just as the UFCW and Wal-Mart representatives were preparing to begin mandatory contract negotiations, Wal-Mart Canada issued an ominous press release from its headquarters near Toronto. "The Jonquière store is not meeting its business plan," it declared, "and the company is concerned about the economic viability of the store." Nine days of negotiation between the UFCW and Wal-Mart produced nothing but acrimony. "When we got to working hours and schedule, it was never, never, and never," recalls André Dumas, now the acting president of UFCW Local 503 in Quebec City. Honoring union demands would have meant adding 30 workers to the payroll, counters Wal-Mart's Pelletier. "We felt the union wanted to fundamentally change the store's business model."

Lavoie and Desbiens were playing bingo on Feb. 9 when a TV reporter called seeking comment on Wal-Mart's announcement that it was closing in Jonquière. They were stunned. It had never occurred to them that Wal-Mart would go so far as to shut down a store that seemed to be busy all the time. Lavoie began frantically calling friends currently on duty but learned nothing useful. "They were all crying," she says.

Wal-Mart's draconian response to the Jonquière unionists scandalized Quebec. Three of the company's other 46 stores in the province were temporarily closed by bomb threats. A TV broadcaster likened Wal-Mart to Nazi Germany and then apologized. Jean Tremblay, the feisty, populist mayor of Saguenay, gave media interviews by the dozen denouncing the company as a freebooting scofflaw. "Because you are big and rich and strong, you can close a store to make your workers in other stores afraid? No!" Tremblay said. "If you want to do business in Quebec -- or in Russia or in China -- you have to follow the law. And you have to respect the culture."