Wal-Mart first China union could mean more to come

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://money.excite.com/ht/nw/bus/20060731/hle_bus-pek167585.html



Wal-Mart first China union could mean more to come

Monday July 31, 5:23 AM EDT

By Lindsay Beck and Jerker Hellstrom

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Employees of retail giant Wal-Mart have set up their first trade union in China, a move analysts said on Monday could lead to more unionization in the sector.

Twenty-five employees of a Wal-Mart store in Quanzhou, in the southeastern province of Fujian, established the union, a branch of the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"One of the major tasks of the ACFTU in 2006 is to push foreign-funded or transnational companies to unionize," Xinhua cited Xu Deming, the union's vice-president, as saying.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which set up shop in China in 1996 and employs more than 30,000 at stores across the country, has long resisted pressure in the United States to unionize its workers there to win better pay and benefits.

But analysts said that in China, where independent trade unions are illegal, the move at the Wal-Mart store in Quanzhou may signal a push toward unionization in the retail sector.

"Foreign companies are often a barometer of where the government is shifting its policies," said John Gruetzner, executive vice-president of Intercedent Ltd, an investment advisory firm.

China has in past threatened foreign firms with blacklists and legal action if they did not set up trade unions at their China units, but Gruetzner said he thought the Wal-Mart case was more about developing the services sector.

"I think it's a shift in sector focus. There's an interest in making sure the service economy moves forward," he said.

Wal-Mart's main competitor, French retailer Carrefour, said it already has unions at its China branches.

[xchrom]

1. i would love to see american unions reach out to these

burgeoning unions and create an international dialogue.

[Virginia Dare]

8. Amen to that...

one of the Labor Movements biggest obstacles in my opinion is that while the economy has gone global and corporations have gone multinational, unions have not.

[cap]

2. state owned union no big threat...

however, it puts Walmart in a funny position where it opposes unions in the US but not in China.

[fasttense]

3. It's ok to have Unions in China according to Wal-Mart

just don't think you can do the same thing here in America. What a bunch of hypocrites. Americans get screwed again while our government applauds.

[madrchsod]

4. company unions

big fucking deal. remember the teamster/mob connection? state run unions are cash cows for the different branches of the communist party in china.

[bleedingheart]

5. I would expect a Communist Country (CHINA) to support UNIONS

Isn't that what communism is supposed to be about in spite of all the "free trade" mumbo jumbo they are supposed to be dabbling in...???


Ah Mao Mart...supporting the Red Army since the 1960's

[rfranklin]

6. They are not communists....

Has true communism ever existed in this world? The concept was great, but the execution was always corrupted by dictators who consolidated power under its banner and capitalist in disguise who used the system to feather their nests. Human nature, unfortunately, cannot be changed by utopian thinking, whether on the left or on the right (as we have seen so wonderfully proven by the Republicans and Neocons.)

[robcon]

7. I disagree

The "communist" countries were not run by "dictators who consolidated power under its banner and capitalist in disguise who used the system to feather their nests."

There was no "capitalism in disguise" in the Soviet Union, China under Mao or Cambodia under Pol Pot. They were run by murderous leaders who tried to set up a socialist state, but it was actually a state-controlled (or party-controlled) economy. Those countries and others were neither capitalist nor communist: they were driven by party politics, not economic ideology.

[merwin]

9. Oh yes they are... Go visit mainland China for a while and then

tell me that...

[On the Road]

12. I Have Been There, and They're Not Communists

at least not any longer. Communists are mocked as old and senile, as in the joke about visiting a village which had six communists with seven teeth (total).

You could argue that China was communist during the cultural revolution -- however poorly it worked, it was an example of shared sacrifice and economic leveling. That period has been repudiated -- the country made a complete U-turn and everyone is a capitalist trying to get rich.

The authoritarianism of China's government is not so much the result of communism, but of many centuries of strong central rule and the absence of recognized human rights.

[merwin]

13. Let's go through the checkmarks...

One party rule.
Mandated registration and supervision of all civic organizations.
Forcible suppression of alternative viewpoints.
Censorship of political speech.
Statewide government censorship of text and media.
Government mandated population control.

Sounds pretty Totalitarian/Communist to me :-)

[reprobate]

14. Half right. Totalitarian, authoritarian. Not communist.

A true communist government would be more representative than ours....rather, than ours is supposed to be.

You make the common mistake of confusing rule by the elite few with communism, which is based on the people having a total command of how the government works. But then our schools have not educated our people in comparative government. Hell, our schools have not even educated our poeple in OUR OWN govenment. It's no wonder the masses here are so easily led around by the crucifix.

[merwin]

17. It's funny that the Communist Party of China is somehow not

communist :-) Just because they have a somewhat free market in the form of market socialism does not mean that they are not communist.

Authoritarian governments are a large part of communist governments keeping rule over the people.

Read up on Mao Zedong, and then tell me that this is not a communist government.

Are you mistaking the "communist state" with a "commune"? I don't know of any communist governments in the past who were based on the people having total command of how the government works. Most of them were focused on a single leader of a movement, and that person ends up with total control of the state.

[Laotra]

19. "Communist governement"

is inherently contradictory term. Communism = "utopia" after socialism = no state, no governement (= anarchism).

There are no, there have never been and there never will be a communist state; there have been and still are some states that call themselves socialist, if honest, are engaged in a process of movement towards socialism. "Commie state" is short for a (more or less pseudo-)socialist country led by avant-guarde communist party.

[On the Road]

15. You Have Described an Authoritarian Country

How some of those relate to communism (population control?) is beyond me.

By your standards, every Chinese emperor in history was a communist.

You could make a better argument that China is fascist -- authoritarian government joined at the hip with large business interests.

[merwin]

18. Facism and Communism are very closely tied together.

Communist states require facism to survive. Without that, the people would eventually overthrow the government.

Tell me this... if China is not communist... why are they under one party rule by the Communist Party of China?

[Laotra]

21. Darn!

I wrote a long explanation, but the system crashed. Here's the shorter version:

"Communist state" is inherently contradictory term.

Fascism is one extreme and peculiar form of totalitarian state capitalism.

People's Republic of China does not call it self communist, but socialist state. IMO it is not even socialist - in fact, it is still mostly feodalian pre-industrialized society, now in a process of relatively fast industrialization.

[On the Road]

22. They are Ruled by the Communist Party of China

because no one changed the name when the economic philosophy was discredited. There is almost nothing Communist about China in any meaningful sense other than a large government presence.

Communist governments do not require fascism to survive. Fascism requires an independent business sector, which China did not until Deng Xiaoping began to institute economic changes.

Again, if China is Communist now, it was just as communist under a monarchy.

[Laotra]

16. Sounds like Dumfukistan aka USA - eom

[xchrom]

10. indeed -- they became cash cows for the elite.

it doesn't take much digging through history to realize that ''marx'' quickly became ''money''.

money and power.

[Javaman]

11. Nothing to see here, folks, move along...

this is more smoke and mirrors. Having a "trade Union" in china or any union for that matter is for purely show purposes. Everyone joins a union over there, they are nothing like what we think of what a union is: theirs are set up by the gov't to maintain that "communist" look. They really don't amount to much. All the sweat shops that china-mart employee to manufacture all their crappy stuff are all "unionized".

Since when does china-mart support unions?

They had one store in Canada go union. It was promptly closed down.

All their stores in Germany were unionized, they just sold them all.

Pul-eeeeze, they day china-mart gives it's blessing to a unionized store is the day moron* will actually have an original thought.

[Fire Walk With Me]

20. Watch America become unimportant in terms of world markets...

[Wednesdays]

23. Wal-Mart has fizzled in Germany...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13129-2290398,00.html

Interesting part of the article:

There were also troubles on the culture front for the chain’s notoriously conservative management, which, back in America, is used to hiring and firing at will and having the company line totally obeyed.

Last year a court ordered Wal-Mart to drop key parts of its employee code of conduct in Germany, including a ban on flirting between supermarket staff. The court in Wuppertal ruled that the provisions were in breach of worker rights.

In 2000, Metro’s chief executive, Hans-Joachim Koerber, predicted that Wal-Mart would not succeed. “The company’s culture does not travel, and Wal-Mart does not understand the German customer,” he said.

What?? Wal-Mart can't fire at will? The company line can't be totally obeyed? Outrageous! And SOMEONE has to keep the workers' morals in check, so no flirting, right?