Wal-Mart, union claim victory after labor rulings

Thursday, June 19, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, and the United Food and Commercial Workers union both claimed victory Wednesday after an administrative law judge ruled in two cases involving union elections and alleged unfair labor practices in Texas.

The National Labor Relations Board rulings were on charges brought by the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union. While the judge in the case ruled in Wal-Mart's favor on most of the charges, the union is exalting in the decision that the retailer must negotiate with union representatives regarding a decision to eliminate meat-cutting jobs in favor of selling packaged meat.

The union challenged a May 2000 vote at a Wal-Mart store in Palestine, Texas. Judge Keltner Locke found that the Wal-Mart workers had a fair election process and their rights weren't violated during the campaign before they voted against union representation.

The union also challenged Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal- Mart's refusal to bargain with its representatives about the decision in 2000 to sell only pre-packaged meat at a Jacksonville, Texas, store. Locke ruled that Wal-Mart must bargain with the union about that limited topic.

Wal-Mart, which has argued that the union representing the Jacksonville store's meat department should never have been certified because the election was flawed, plans to appeal the decision that would also require the store to reassemble its meat-cutting saw and return it to the department while negotiations take place.

"We will challenge that that is even a proper order," said Richard Hammett, a lawyer at Baker & McKenzie, who represents Wal-Mart. He said there were no job losses or pay cuts as the result of the switch.

The judge also said that Wal-Mart's obligation to recognize the UFCW as the representative of the Jacksonville store's meat workers ended in July 2000 and that Wal-Mart had no obligation to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the union.

In recent months, organized labor has escalated efforts to unionize Wal-Mart stores after five years of failing to even dent the world's largest retailer's armor.

The latest rulings come against the backdrop of labor rulings against Wal-Mart in Las Vegas, where the retailer was found by the National Labor Relations Board last year to have violated labor laws in its fight against a national union organizing drive originating at 14 Las Vegas stores. Acting on a complaint issued by the NLRB on behalf of the UFCW, an administrative law judge ruled in January 2002 that Wal-Mart was to post notices at three Las Vegas-area stores pledging to obey the law, to stop preventing its employees from distributing union materials, and to stop confiscating union literature from employees, among other things.