Mama Don’t Allow No Organizers Here

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) has said it will close a Canadian store where about 200 workers are near winning the first-ever union contract from the world’s largest retailer.

The world’s largest retailer, with a history of battling its employees’ attempts to organize, said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Que., in response to demands from union negotiators so unreasonable that would make it impossible for the store to sustain its business.

The United Food & Commercial Workers Canada last week asked Quebec province labor officials to appoint a mediator, saying that negotiations had reached an impasse.

“We were hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” said Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. “Despite nine days of meetings over three months, we’ve been unable to reach an agreement with the union that in our view will allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably.”

The union’s demands would have forced the retailer to add 30 people to the existing payroll of 190, and guarantee many workers additional hours, he said.

Pelletier said the store will close in May. The retailer had first discussed closing the Jonquiere store last October, saying that the store was losing money.

The store, about 240 miles northeast of Montreal, became the first unionized Wal-Mart store in North America last September, after the bargaining unit was certified by provincial labor officials. Since then, workers at a second Quebec store have also been granted union status. Neither had reached a contract.

UFCW Canada said it intends to file unfair labor practice charges with Quebec’s provincial labor board over the store’s closing.

The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in Jacksonville, Texas. In that store, 11 workers — all members of the store’s meatpacking department — voted to join and be represented by the UFCW. But the effort failed when Wal-Mart eliminated the job of meat-cutter companywide, and moved away from in-store meat-cutting to stocking only pre-wrapped meat.

Recently, some workers in the tire department of a Wal-Mart store in Colorado have sought union representation, and the National Labor Relations Board has said it intends to schedule a vote.