Wal-Mart Agrees to Unionization in China

[ckramer]

After years of fighting unionization efforts at its stores, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said today that it would work closely with Chinese officials to establish labor unions at all of its outlets here.

Wal-Mart said it would form an alliance with the government-backed All China Federation of Trade Unions because it wanted to create “an effective and harmonious way of facilitating the establishment of grassroots unions” at its stores.

The announcement came less than two weeks after Wal-Mart employees established their first union in China, the first time that a union had ever been formed at a Wal-Mart store. Since then, four other Wal-Mart stores in China have also formed unions, according to the government union officials.

Wal-Mart’s decision surprised observers because while the company had signaled earlier that it would not do anything to stop unions from forming at its Chinese stores, it had never suggested that it would actively participate in backing unionization efforts.

link

[Virginia Dare]

1. Unions are only okay under totalitarian regimes apparently...

um, wait a minute, then why aren't they okay for us? :wtf:

[Cassandra]

2. Thom Hartmann said last week that...

he wouldn't put it past Wal-Mart to put stickers on the merchadise that says Made by Union Labor.

[Fridays Child]

3. So now labor rights have been outsourced, too. Great.

Add one more reason that I won't darken a Walmart door.

[NewJeffCT]

4. Unions in China are WAY different than unions in the US

or Europe.

Unions in China are basically rubber stamps for management. An easy comparison would be if they re-organized the baseball player's union and put George Steinbrenner in charge.

[Javaman]

8. Aptly put. This is more smoke and mirrors by china-mart. nt

[MannyGoldstein]

5. What Does Hillary Think?

Why don't the major news outlets interview Ms. Clinton to see what she thinks of this? After all, she was a Director of Wal-Mart for six years... her opinion would be interesting...

[Hoping4Change]

6. IMO Walmart agreed because union would simply be a facade

with no power whatsoever. The Chinese have no right to form any sort of group opposing the govt so this is pure propaganda.

[Heidi]

7. Kick.

:kick:

[cascadiance]

9. Chinese workers already had a strike against Wal-Mart a while ago...

I think it was back in 2004.

http://www.cafepress.com/chinamart