With stores in 14 countries and U.S. sales flat, Walmart is depending more and more on overseas operations for growth. And the company has successfully negotiated labor agreements for decades in cultures where unions are still widely supported and relevant. But even the world’s largest retailer wasn’t prepared when South African labor leaders demanded Walmart stop opposing unionism back in the U.S. as a prerequisite to the purchase of a major South African retail chain. (The government did approve the purchase but only after protracted debate and without the full-throated endorsement of the nation’s powerful union leaders.) “You can’t say you violate the right to freedom of association because the culture in that country supports it,” said Mduduzi Mbongwe, who represents the South Africa Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union. “We don’t accept such an argument.” What Walmart is experiencing are the first fruits of years of patient planning and global coalition building by American labor bosses who still have the cash, savvy and star power to dominate the global labor stage. And American unions are now poised to hit any corporation hard in markets where unions remain credible and still wield genuine social clout. To coincide with the South African rebuff, UNI Europa Commerce, a division of a global labor consortium of over 900 member unions, sent a letter to Walmart demanding a “common framework” for Walmart labor relations around the world. Included in that frame would be “the right to organise without opposition and full collective bargaining rights for all Walmart workers” presumably including Walmart employees in the U.S. These demands were delivered with the threat to “engage with governments and civil society around the world” to make regulatory and consumer decisions in light of the company’s global “track record”. Walmart has also long been the target of the International Labor Rights Forum, a union front organization whose investigations of hot button global issues like child labor and sweatshops most frequently lead back to American companies targeted for unionization or embroiled in labor disputes. The Board of the ILRF is almost entirely made up of American labor officials and their toadies in academia.
