Wal-Mart's new informer hotline and ban on sexual relationships between staff has caused an unprecedented media storm in Germany.
Today's Bild, Germany's largest and most popular newspaper, flashes a full page header on the "Sex Ban for Wal-Mart Employees" and says that the "Retail giant wants to regulate the private lives of its employees".
- "Honesty, respect, fairness and integrity", this is how the US retail giant Wal-Mart formulates its business values, writes Bild on its website.
- In reality, the U.S. supermarket group is leading its employees from the nose. Now, a 28-page "Ethics Code" creates an uproar among its workforce. Wal-Mart wants to sniff around even the love life of its employees, Bild says.
Bild is not alone in expressing a German disgust over the newest Wal-Mart scandal. The whole media landscape in Europe's largest economy is in uproar about the Bentonville-based multinational's lack of respect for its German workers, and for the European culture itself. Once again, world's largest retailer has shot itself in the foot.
Employees are also expected to paint their colleagues in black colours, writes Der Spiegel, Germany's most respected news magazine, telling about the company forcing its workers to be informers. Der Spiegel also tells that the company failed to consult with its works council before issuing these rules, which is a violation against labour laws.
- Management should have consulted with the works councils before issuing their 'ethics code', says Ulrich Dalibor, head of ver.di's commerce sector. - This was not done, which was a clear and serious violation of German legislation.
Ulrich Dalibor also points out that when a company demands ethically correct behaviour from its workers, or others, it has to behave in an ethically correct way itself. - We know only too well that this is not the case when it comes to Wal-Mart, the German commerce trade union leader says.
Wal-Mart has raised eyebrows in Germany by its constant refusal to join the country's employers' associations, and thus subscribing to the industry-wide collective agreements. UNI Commerce affiliated ver.di was, however, able to force the retail giant to declare that it will respect the collective agreement provisions. This took strong pressure from the well organised Wal-Mart workforce, including a series of strikes to warn the management.
This most recent expression of Wal-Mart's disrespect for its German workers does not help the company, which continues to generate important losses from its business operations. The Wal-Mart concept has not travelled well and the US retail giant has not been successful in competing on the European markets.
In the United Kingdom, Wal-Mart lags far behind the highly profitable market leader Tesco, which is known for its social partnership agreement with shop workers' trade union Usdaw and its decent employer performance. When UK supermarket chain Safeway was up for sale, Wal-Mart was in competition but lost to Morrisons, another British retailer.
In Japan, Wal-Mart-dominated Seiyu is equally unprofitable, and was disqualified by authorities from the salvage operation of ailing supermarket giant Daiei, which went to a Marubeni-lead group instead. Most recently, the US retail giant failed to acquire the Carrefour stores in Japan and Mexico, which went to local retailers when the French multinational disinvested from these countries. Wal-Mart was said to have been highly interested in these store chains.
On the North American arena, Wal-Mart is a frequent customer of the legal system, because of its workers' rights violations. Its ambitious and probably very expensive public relations campaigning does not seem to bring much results as the retail giant continues to get bad press on a daily basis. The decision to close the first unionised Wal-Mart store in De Jonquière in Quebec, Canada, rather than enter into collective agreement negotiations with UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW caused an uproar all through the continent as well as abroad.
Posted by UFCW 227 at April 13, 2005 05:06 PM