"We were duped by the union. There was absolutely no need to unionize," said Rejan Lavoie, 40, a single father who took a job as a department manager at Wal-Mart to be home in the evenings with his 8-year-old son. He fears he will not find another job with a workable schedule.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...005Apr13_4.html
To be fair, the part right after the above quote says:
At its headquarters on the outskirts on Jonquiere, the union is organizing a drive to find jobs for the Wal-Mart union supporters and to provide them with financial assistance.
"We weren't asking for the moon," said Bergeron, who spent two years quietly contacting fellow employees at their homes to enlist them in the union. "It's the largest and richest company in the world. They could afford to improve conditions. We only wanted to be treated like human beings."
It is also why I added the part about Southern auto-plants. Considering the capital already outlayed by, say, Toyota the fear of a plant shutdown isn't as near and dear as it may be with Wal-Mart. And, yet, they reject the union.
Perhaps Toyota is a better employer than Wal-Mart (comparatively speaking within its industry)? Perhaps most Wal-Mart employees truly do not want to start a union?
But Quebec also makes their union votes public, i.e. everyone will know how you voted.
Those who did not want a union say organizers harassed them to join. "People signed the cards just to get some peace" from the union organizers, said Noella Langlois, 53, who works in the clothing department. "They thought they would vote against it in a secret vote."
In fact, there was a vote last April that rejected the union. But under Quebec labor laws, the organizers could try again. When they collected signed union cards from 51 percent of the employees, the law declared the Jonquiere Wal-Mart a union shop.
And certainly, as the largest employer in the U.S. I'm sure Wal-Mart has its labor issues. But, net of it all, Wal-Mart is a big plus to the U.S.
I think Meijer is a fine company as well. Though my preferred shopping experience is found at Big Top...
-Ryan