The UFCW is now denying it, but admits there were "irregularities" and the national office will oversee a coming vote for union officers. Note, that this does not affect the status of the union's representation rights at the Walmart store, which were conferred by the Quebec labour board after counting signed union authorization cards. Still, this is not encouraging news.

link: Walmart union election eyed (Globeinvestor.com)

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MONTREAL -- An election of executives at the union local that organized a Wal-Mart Canada Corp. store in Quebec will be overseen by its national body after unspecified complaints were received, a union official says.

Meanwhile, the unionization drive at Wal-Mart stores elsewhere in Canada continued yesterday with the filing of applications from the United Food and Commercial Workers to represent employees of seven of the chain's auto-service departments in British Columbia.

Louis Bolduc, the Quebec head of the UFCW, said in an interview yesterday that the national organization will supervise the election of officers of Local 503, slated for some time before the end of the year.

"Certain things happened internally, but they have been settled," he said, denying a report that Local 503 has been placed under trusteeship after a series of irregularities at the local surfaced.

"We have not taken action" to put the local under trusteeship, he said, pointing out that executives of Local 503 attended a meeting with Wal-Mart officials last Tuesday to discuss collective agreement demands for staff at the Wal-Mart store in Jonquière.
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Marie-Josée Lemieux, president of Local 503, could not be reached for comment yesterday. Wal-Mart officials also could not be reached.

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Wal-Mart Canada said two weeks ago that the Jonquière store is unprofitable and may have to close unless a "reasonable" contract can be reached with employees.

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