Wal-Mart gets first trade union, official reports say

01 August 2006

Thirty employees at a Wal-Mart store in Fujian voted to form a trade union last Saturday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The report said a 29-year-old employee, Ke Yunlong, was elected chairman of the seven-member committee of the trade union at a Wal-Mart store in Quanzhou, Fujian Province in southeastern China.

However, Wal-Mart, which has long been criticised by the international labour movement as anti-union, still has not made any public response to the news. A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart in China told BBC News on 31 July she was "unaware of the Fujian union".

The official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) has been lobbying Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for two years to form official trade union branches in its 60 stores in China. It has previously accused the company of hindering its efforts to unionise its stores.

Wal-Mart opened its first outlet in China in 1996 and says it has 28,000 employees in 60 stores in China. It plans to open another 18 to 20 stores in China this year.

The world's largest retailer has previously said that its employees are free to set up unions if they wish and has insisted it conforms to Chinese law.

In early July Wang Zhaoguo, president of the ACFTU, which was established by the ruling Communist Party and claims to have some 150 million members, singled out Wal-Mart for failing to establish unions at its stores and proposed an amendment to the Trade Union Law, making it compulsory for foreign-invested companies in China to unionise.

Only about 30 per cent of foreign companies operating in China have let in the ACFTU, according to official statistics. Labour analysts have criticised the ACFTU for its poor record on fighting for workers' rights.

Sources: Xinhua News Agency (29 July 2006), People's Daily (29 July 2006), Associated Press (30 July 2006), BBC News (31 July 2006)

1 August 2006

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