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Wal-Mart's Great Fight North Even in labor-friendly Canada, unions have a tough time with U.S. companies. By Liza Featherstone Posted Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - 12:27pm
For years, Wal-Mart's North American stores have been entirely free of unions. That's changed very quickly over the past weeks. On Dec. 17, more than 150 Wal-Mart workers in Hull, Quebec, became members of the United Food and Commercial Workers when a provincial labor board awarded them the right to do so. On Dec. 8, in a similar decision, a labor board certified a union in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, after a four- year battle between the union and the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.
These are certainly dramatic developments, but unions—even in relatively pro-union Canada—have a very tough time when up against giants like Wal-Mart. Compared with U.S. labor law, Canadian labor law is far friendlier to workers seeking to join unions. While the United States requires a Byzantine and contentious election process, Canada requires an employer to recognize a union after enough workers sign cards or take a quick vote. Canada also places far more restrictions on employers' anti-union campaigning.
Yet in recent years, when Canadian labor has tried to take on famously anti-union U.S.-based multinationals like Wal-Mart and McDonald's, the unions have nearly always lost in the end. Why is that? And what does the record bode for U.S. labor, which has staked nearly all its hard- earned political capital on a piece of legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would legally put the U.S. on a footing similar to Canada's?
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