quote:

---

How Loblaw funds the unionization of Wal-Mart
By Hugh Finnamore
Financial Post, 09/02/04

There's seldom anything as riveting as a battle between good and evil. The supposedly good retailer Loblaw Cos. and its President's Choice union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), are fighting mythically evil and resolutely non-union retailers like Wal-Mart and Costco.

In reality, Loblaw is hell bent on keeping Wal-Mart out of Loblaw's $25-billion share of the Canadian grocery business. Meanwhile, it is fiercely determined to horn in on Wal-Mart's multi-million-dollar turf by getting into the general merchandise game in a grand way.

For the past two decades, the UFCW has taken beating after beating at the hands of just about every employer it has come up against. The union is bleeding members, its bank accounts and pension plans are hurting, and its labour contracts are in full retreat from the halcyon years. The once-formidable food union is reduced to begging the big retailers and meatpackers for more members and less onerous contract concessions.

Meanwhile, Loblaw officials know the best way to fight Wal-Mart is to slash its own operating expense, the bulk of which are made up of labour costs. That benefit would be optimized if Wal-Mart's operating costs were forced upward with union contracts more costly than the ones Loblaw operates under.

However, for that Loblaw dream to come true, the UFCW would have to accept some pretty sweeping collective agreement changes, and a union would have to successfully organize a whole whack of Wal-Mart employees. Astrologers would say that there would have to be a mighty alignment of the stars and planets to make Loblaw's fantasy a reality. Voila! The stars did align in late 2002.

Loblaw got the UFCW to accept much lower wage rates and working conditions that rivalled non-union Wal-Mart's. In return, Loblaws has quietly pumped nearly $1-million into UFCW coffers and it has promised to add close to one-half million dollars more within the next 11 months. The money is a gift to three separate local unions to help the UFCW with "Education and Communication initiatives."

The $1.35-million gift could go a long way toward educating Wal-Mart employees to the misguided perception that they would actually benefit from joining the UFCW. It could go a long way toward communicating that Loblaw is good and Wal-Mart is bad.

---

[ 02 September 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

I'm finally beginning to understand more about something that has been bugging me for two years now.

I live in Ottawa and I remember well the first time I walked into an Independent Grocers and saw the automated checkout machines. As I watched the employee they had assigned to encourage customers and to assist them with the infernal devices I had to wonder...did she realize that her employers had forced her into collaborating in introducing her own replacement?

I sent a letter to the store manager, and to Loblaws Co. I never shopped at that Independent again. I figured that at least, with their union, that could never happen at Loblaws. About a thousand years ago (well, 17) I had worked briefly at a Loblaws and my girlfriend at the time worked there for years.

Back then at least the full-timers seemed pretty militant about keeping the union strong.

So imagine my surprise when the Loblaws superstores introduced auto-checkouts! "WTF?" I thought, and have since...how would the union allow the introduction of a machine whose very existence breaks, in advance, any strike they might wish to make?!

I'd wanted to talk to their union rep and ask...but I was too much of a chicken...

I do still shop at Loblaws, not exclusively but I do. I go to a smaller one where, blessedly, they don't have the damn things...

On the service industry economy, automation, and the jobless economy give this a read:

Robotic Nation

- I should add one thought: fortunately it would seem that thus far anyways there seems to be an subconscious Luddism at work with many people. I *have* been in Loblaws superstores since and those automated check-out (checkout?) lines were pretty darn empty

...and its made me think about ATM's too (though I'm not sure that going to the tellers actually helps them much).

[ 02 September 2004: Message edited by: britchestoobig ]

[ 02 September 2004: Message edited by: britchestoobig ]

quote:

---

Loblaw got the UFCW to accept much lower wage rates and working conditions that rivalled non-union Wal-Mart's. In return, Loblaws has quietly pumped nearly $1-million into UFCW coffers and it has promised to add close to one-half million dollars more within the next 11 months. The money is a gift to three separate local unions to help the UFCW with "Education and Communication initiatives."

The $1.35-million gift could go a long way toward educating Wal-Mart employees to the misguided perception that they would actually benefit from joining the UFCW. It could go a long way toward communicating that Loblaw is good and Wal-Mart is bad.

---

Its not uncommon for employers to be required under collective agreements to pay into union education funds. Its quite common in CAW contracts for employers to be required to pay into "Paid Educational Leave" (PEL) funds. That's been going on for decades.

The CAW has built a fantastic union education centre in Port Elgin, Ontario out of those funds and send members there for union education.

I understand the UFCW has a major training centre too (think its in the Kitchener area??). Some of the programmes are workplace related to help workers with promotional opportunities and some programmes are union related.

Nothing sinister here going on. In the tough world of retail union organizing this is a victory for UFCW members. If UFCW can get a large employer to pay into their education fund then more power to them!

I can well understand why a newspaper like the Financial Post would think that union education programmes are a bad thing

[ 06 September 2004: Message edited by: radiorahim ]

Result: Good jobs for autoworkers, but in an oligopolistic environment that went sour after Japan showed 'em how to really make cars in the 1970s and 1980s.

quote:

---

Nothing sinister here going on. In the tough world of retail union organizing this is a victory for UFCW members. If UFCW can get a large employer to pay into their education fund then more power to them!

---

I'm not opposed to union education funds, either. I think the question is - if the employer has the money to contribute to these funds, why the need for such huge wage cuts in the superstores, negotiated at the same time?

The argument that both Finnamore and Pasz make is that Loblaws doesn't want to defeat Walmart, they want to become Walmart. They want to make the same big profits, and pay the same low wages. They want to embrace the same community destroying and environmentally degrading big-box model that Walmart has made dominant, damn the consequences for anyone else. And they feel that the UFCW is okay with that, as long as that union gets to keep collecting dues.

I think that's a deeply troubling accusation.

[ 06 September 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

quote:

---

I think the question is - if the employer has the money to contribute to these funds, why the need for such huge wage cuts in the superstores, negotiated at the same time?

---

Not sure how many members UFCW has at Loblaws but its certainly in the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands and so $1.35 million is not alot of money in workers pockets in the grand scheme of things.

As well union education programmes have a tendency to help motivate rank and file members to toss out entrenched union bureaucracies.

As for Loblaws using a different strategy for taking on competition from Walmart...of course they are! They're capitalists. Loblaws wants to be just as big as Walmart.

But Walmart is the world's largest retailer and is right now the most destructive force in driving down the wages and working conditions of retail workers on a world scale. Their employment (and other) practices create the conditions for other retail employers to try to whipsaw union members into accepting concessionary contracts.

In turn Walmart can point to the concessionary contracts and say to workers "see...having a union isn't going to do you any good".

This whole downward spiral isn't going to stop until the unions succeed in getting a good chunk of Walmart organized.

As for the issues Pasz raises around grievance representation, in Ontario anyway members can lay charges against their union for "unfair representation" if they happen to drop the ball.

quote:

---

Not sure how many members UFCW has at Loblaws but its certainly in the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands and so $1.35 million is not alot of money in workers pockets in the grand scheme of things.

As well union education programmes have a tendency to help motivate rank and file members to toss out entrenched union bureaucracies.

---

I suspect any union education program that taught members how to effectively challenge the union bureaucracy and toss out entrenched incumbents would be a program that got cancelled pretty quick.

My experience is that a lot of these programs deal more with computer skills and that kind of thing. That stuff is important, too, but I tend to think its more aimed at helping workers get out of their increasingly part-time, low-wage retail jobs, rather than on how to make those jobs better through organizing and collective action.

I don't know if you can ever call $1.35 million "not a lot of money," but I think even Finnamore would agree that it is a lot less than the workers are giving up. But I also think that's the point - the union got some cash for "education programs" and some more to shore up the pension fund, but they had to give up far more than they received. They gave it up midway through a six-year contract, too. A lot of people used to criticize the UFCW for signing such long contracts. But one of the benefits to such a long-term deal should have been that you could at least hold the employer to its end for the duration.

quote:

---

Walmart is the world's largest retailer and is right now the most destructive force in driving down the wages and working conditions of retail workers on a world scale. Their employment (and other) practices create the conditions for other retail employers to try to whipsaw union members into accepting concessionary contracts.

In turn Walmart can point to the concessionary contracts and say to workers "see...having a union isn't going to do you any good".

This whole downward spiral isn't going to stop until the unions succeed in getting a good chunk of Walmart organized.

---

I agree completely. And I also think that there are some serious questions about whether the UFCW is up to the task. Despite the appearance of major concessions, the UFCW locals in Canada have been operating in a fairly collaborative manner with grocery employers in Canada. Their US compatriots, on the other hand, have been taking a real ass-kicking over the last year.

Bill Pearson, retired president of UFCW Local 789 in St. Paul Minnesota, and someone who I consider quite insightful, recently wrote a piece on the faults of the UFCW bargaining strategy that I thought I would add to this thread:

UFCW, Fight or Flight, by Bill Pearson (posted on ufcw.net)

[ 07 September 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

quote:

---

And I also think that there are some serious questions about whether the UFCW is up to the task.

---

I have some questions as to whether they are up to the task or not too, but at the moment UFCW is leading the charge in trying to organize Walmart. No other union in Canada or the U.S. that I'm aware of is trying to do this.

quote:

---

No other union in Canada or the U.S. that I'm aware of is trying to do this.

---

Why not?

quote:

---

even though UFCW has its problems, I think the efforts to organize Walmart deserve our support.

---

I'll support any group of workers that seeks to organize and improve their conditions. I'll also support any union organization that appears willing and able to offer genuine help. I'll even go so far as to say I think the UFCW could be such an organization (others may disagree).

So in that regard I'll support the UFCW in whatever way I can. I won't support them uncritically, though. I don't think that would really help anyone.

The points that these authors raise are important ones and worth discussing, IMO. Organizing Walmart is a difficult task for sure. It will be an even more difficult, if not impossible task to bring these workers in, if the union can't or won't get its own house in order first. And if the UFCW union can't or won't address its internal problems, then I ask again, why aren't any other unions stepping up to the task?

[ 07 September 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]