Closer links with trade unions in China are part of a global union plan to challenge the low price-low wage strategy of Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company.
UNI global union wants to stop the Wal-Martization of the world by bringing together unions in different countries to organise its workers and bring them the benefits of collective organisation.
A special report on Wal-Mart is being presented to 1,500 delegates at UNI's second World Congress, being held in Chicago on 22-25 August.
Wal-Mart is viciously anti-union in North America and stands accused by unions of driving down wages and conditions in suppliers and competitors and dumping social costs like health care on taxpayers.
Wal-Mart is bad news for workers, for women workers in particular and for whole communities," said UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings.
"If it succeeds in establishing a new corporate model for the 21st century based on low wages, low benefits and insecure jobs it is also bad news for the whole global economy."
UNI has already been to China to meet union leaders and cooperation is planned in unionising the western multinationals moving into China - including Wal-Mart, which is relocating its purchasing operations to China.
"Chinese workers need as effective trade union representation as workers anywhere else in the world," says the UNI report.
Pressure to build global labour rights into world trade rules and build coalitions with community groups worried about the impact of Wal-Mart on their towns are also part of the UNI global plan.
Unions are also urged to use their investment power to pressurize Wal-Mart - Danish unions recently dumped their Wal-Mart stock in protest at the company's anti-social approach.
The world retailer employs 1.5 million workers worldwide and has annual profits of $9 billion. It is also the subject of the biggest legal class action in US history, alleging discrimination on pay and promotion, on behalf of 1.5 million women who work or worked for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has union busting squads to stamp on union activity in its stores and has closed or reorganised operations in Texas and Canada to nullify worker votes for representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW).
US union activists are already working with community groups to stop more Wal-Mart shopping centres devastating existing retail centres - and destroying three jobs for every two that Wal-Mart brings.
The UNI report spotlights pay in Wal-Mart USA at $9.70 an hour compared to $14 for workers in other large retail companies and more expensive health benefits, taken up by far fewer Wal-Mart employees than competitors.
"We reject the Wal-Mart way and at Chicago UNI will be imagining a better future for working people everywhere," said Philip Jennings. "We will work with the UFCW and those unions already established in Wal-Mart in Europe and elsewhere to stop a damaging race to the bottom."
* UNI - Union Network International - is the global union for skills and service workers, representing nearly 1,000 unions in 150 countries with 15 million members.
The report recommends a nine-point action plan:
· Focus on organising
· An international - not a national - union response.
· Closer focus on China
· Defending social partnership and collective organisation
· Press for agreed global labour standards to be built into world trade agreements
· Exploring new and more effective ways to organise – and to share best practices
· Building alliances with society groups
· Solidarity between unions in developed and developing world
· Using investment funds power to exert market pressures on Wal-Mart.
To read the full report go here
For more information on Wal-Mart go here