By Heather Timmons The New York Times
LONDON, - Wal-Mart may be anti-union at home, but overseas the company sometimes sings a different tune.
Asda, the British chain that accounts for a tenth of Wal-Mart's total sales, has averted a strike. The chain's British arm, Asda, which accounts for a tenth of total sales for Wal-Mart Stores, narrowly averted a costly strike on Thursday, after reaching an agreement with a union.
Employees at Asda's distribution centers were threatening a five-day strike starting Friday, during what is expected to be one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. England plays Portugal in the World Cup on Saturday, and Asda estimates it will sell 10 million bottles of beer on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning in preparation for the game.
The agreement establishes nationwide collective bargaining for distribution center employees. In the past the union representing these employees generally negotiated agreements with Asda covering each workplace.
Unions will have a say on issues from health and safety to the technology used at work, and they will be able to recruit new members on the job. Next, the union plans to turn to employees in Asda's retail stores, and hopes to establish a national collective bargaining agreement there.
"This is a very different ethos and approach" than Wal-Mart has in the United States, said Paul Kenny, the acting general secretary of the G.M.B., the union involved. Wal-Mart bought Asda in 1999.
The agreement represents a shift in Asda's approach to unions, he said. "There had been a philosophy of excluding employees from meaningful discussions about the basics," Mr. Kenny said. "The company has realized that the system needs to change."
Asda was fined £850,000 ($1.48 million) in February after a British employment tribunal found that it was offering employees at one distribution depot raises to give up their rights to collective bargaining; such offers are illegal in Britain.
On Thursday, Asda focused on the strike's being called off. "We're pleased to have signed an agreement acceptable to both sides to end the current dispute - good news for our customers and colleagues alike," Asda's chief operating officer, David Cheesewright, said in a statement.
He said Asda expected to serve 24 customers every second on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. "A crack team of footy-filling shelf stackers is on hand throughout the weekend to restock our stores as quickly as customers try to empty the shelves," he said. "Footy" is slang for football, known as soccer in the United States.
Asda been stockpiling basic necessities like diapers and toilet paper on its shelves in anticipation of the strikes. In some stores, the company took big-ticket items like televisions off the shelves to make more room for necessities.
The agreement is "exactly what the union demanded," said Jan Furstenborg, the commercial director of Union Network International, a global group with 900 union members that has been pushing Wal-Mart to negotiate with unions. "This means the company must begin to realize that they can't ignore the will of their employees to join and be represented by trade unions," Mr. Furstenborg said.
Unlike its United States parent, Asda has a decades-long relationship with unions, and about a third of its distribution center employees are union members.
Wal-Mart has long been known for vigorously fighting unions, and no workers in North America are represented by unions. The company says that unions would hurt its profitability and that it treats its employees fairly without them.
When Wal-Mart employees at an outlet in Canada voted last year to unionize, the retailer shut the store, contending that it was unprofitable. In 2000, shortly after 11 Wal-Mart meat cutters in Texas voted to form a union, the company eliminated meat-cutter jobs companywide and announced that it would use packaged meat instead.
British retail unions have a relatively benign reputation. "At the end of the day, the unions are very cooperative, provided you give them the chance to have their say," said Richard Ratner, a retail analyst with Seymour Pierce. "To try to ignore them entirely is a mistake."
Asda and unions have not had problems in the past, he said.
Asda is Britain's No. 2 retailer behind Tesco, another superstore that sells everything from groceries to clothing. Competition is fierce in British retailing, and Asda is struggling against rivals who aim at customers who are interested in more than just low prices, analysts say. Tesco has 31.4 percent of Britain's grocery market, while Asda has 16.5 percent, according to the research firm TNS.
Wal-Mart's ownership of Asda has not always gone smoothly, and there has been a great deal of turnover at top management positions. Analysts say that stems from innate differences between the companies.
"When you juxtapose the Wal-Mart, small-town America, Southern states culture with the British slightly self-deprecating, slightly cynical, slightly skeptical culture, they're uncomfortable bedfellows," said Richard Hyman, an analyst at Verdict Research, which focuses on retailing.
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