UK: Union in Deal With Wal-Mart's Asda Unit
The concessions at the British retail chain are seen as a rare victory for organized labor
Asda Group Ltd., the British division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has reached a deal with one of Britain's largest unions that marks the most significant concessions the global retailer has made to organized labor.
Asda is Britain's No. 2 retailer behind Tesco, another superstore that sells a wide variety of products, including groceries and clothing. Asda has 24 distribution warehouses, 305 stores and 163,000 employees in Britain.
The agreement between Asda and the GMB union averted a planned five-day strike over collective bargaining rights by truck drivers and warehouse workers that was due to begin at midnight last Thursday.
Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB, said the agreement "heralds a new fresh approach to representation and bargaining between the company and GMB."
The deal includes setting up a joint national council with the union that will meet at least twice a year, and an agreement on a process that could lead to a single model bargaining agreement between the union and Asda.
The agreement also allows the union access to Asda depots beyond the nine where it currently holds collective bargaining rights. The union will be allowed "facilities for appropriate levels of union workplace representatives," including "facilities to distribute union literature, recruit into the union, present the union case during company induction procedures, run union election procedures for workplace representatives."
Wal-Mart has always bitterly opposed union efforts to organize its stores in the United States. In Britain, it has previously been accused by the GMB of seeking to undermine the union since it acquired Asda Group in 1999.
It is also fighting a drive by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to organize some of its stores in Canada. In Germany, Japan, Brazil and Argentina, the company has dealt with unions previously established at retailers it has acquired.
But it had never before granted concessions on expanding a union's bargaining role in response to pressure.
"This is a very significant victory for the GMB, and for the unions in general," said Jan Furstenborg, who monitors Wal-Mart's global labor relations for Union Network International, a global union federation.
The new agreement in Britain brings Wal-Mart's approach closer to that of Tesco, which has a broad partnership with the USDAW shop workers union.
The deal comes as Wal-Mart is preparing to test the use of radio-frequency tagging technology at its British stores and warehouses, after the expansion of its tagging program in the U.S.
- 184 Labor