Landslide vote puts an end to a 10-year struggle
Almost a decade after it began, the battle to unionize a Saskatchewan Walmart store is over — workers voted to decertify in a landslide 51-5 vote.
In Weyburn, Sask., a city of 10,000 located southeast of Regina, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) have been embroiled in a fight to unionize the workers and win concessions from the retail giant at the bargaining table.
After organizing efforts began in 2004, the UFCW was approved by the labour relations board. However, the company and workers could never come to a consensus and reach a collective agreement. Shortly after, a decertification vote was put forward.
The UFCW objected to the vote, eventually taking the case to the Supreme Court of Canada which ruled it would not hear the case. The votes were revealed — and the only union to ever exist at a Walmart in Canada was no more.
So what happened?
Convoluted labour negotiations and steely resistance from the company could have turned those Walmart workers off, according to Norm Neault, president of the UFCW’s Local 1400 chapter in Saskatoon.
The bargaining process, at times, felt like a race to the bottom, he said.
"The process has been really, totally frustrated. Nine years battling this out in the courts, that’s not very consistent of how you would see labour relations go on between a union and an employer," Neault said. "It’s hard for me to believe workers wanted to be union-free because they had such good working conditions, benefits — and that a union couldn’t improve on that — I find that difficult to accept."
He went on to cite the potential for a store closure as the likely culprit. Workers going up against big chain stores, such as Walmart, are usually fearful their location might shut down altogether — which is sometimes a more viable option than pouring resources into settling a labour dispute.
On the bargaining table for the UFCW were equal wages and benefits, shift premiums, and seniority rights, among others.
Neault said their goal was to create consistency across the retail sector.
"We came up with what I believe were consistent proposals with many, if not all, of our contracts that we have, and Walmart was just not willing to accept any of that," he said.
It was the Supreme Court decision itself, which upheld the provincial labour relations board’s ruling to defer the case, that was the breaking point during the negotiations process.
"It was difficult to negotiate with the employer and get the first contract legislation. We were hoping for assistance from the board to not only give us some guidance but make sure that we’re kept on track," Neault explained. "Rather than take a look at it they dismissed the whole application. That’s frustrating…and I hate to say it, but it almost leads us in the direction that we have to call strikes every time — that’s not what we’re about."
From Walmart’s perspective, employees had the last word.
"Our associates in Weyburn have spoken, and we respect their decision," said Andrew Pelletier, Walmart’s vice-president of corporate affairs and sustainability. "We are pleased their voices have finally been heard because they have waited more than two-and-a-half years for their votes to be counted."
This case has been watched closely by key industry players in the labour relations field.
According to Lorenzo Lisi, an employment lawyer with Aird & Berlis LLP in Toronto, both parties effectively used just about every legal option available to them to settle the matter.
That the Supreme Court of Canada decided not to hear the case is significant because it indicates that, in many scenarios, the courts will tend not to interfere and have the workers speak for themselves, he said.
"From an employer’s perspective, I was very happy to hear that the court was not going to interfere and it was going to allow the (labour board’s) decision to stand, and have the true wishes of the employees taken into account," Lisi said.
For a company as big as Walmart, unionizing at the Weyburn location can cause unique complications, he went on to say.
Once a union gets a wedge in their door, they would have to worry about problems such as competing wages and benefits between union and non-union staff, meaning they would have to manage their business differently at different locations should the union drive have snowballed to other stores.
One particularly interesting aspect of this case is that both Walmart and the UFCW poured their resources into this seemingly never-ending conflict, and used just about every legal option available to them in order to uphold their certification.
Lisi argued unions tend to lean on labour laws, especially in matters involving decertification — this time that backfired.
"I always chuckle a bit when I see unions rely on the law all the time to get certified; get upset when the same law says employees should have free choice," Lisi said. "It’s a long fight. They got to a point where there was an application for decertification, the union didn’t want to have those votes counted for obvious reasons, unions rarely do. And unions, just like they accused Walmart in this case, are just as obstructionist in using the law to have those votes not counted, in many cases, but not always. So both sides used the process, and Walmart was successful."
For Neault, the battle may be lost, but the war is far from over.
"The struggles that workers have to achieve respectable livings and respectable working conditions and dignity and respect has gone on forever. No, it’s not over. I’d even say it’s a chapter — it’s a page — that’s turned. There’s a big book here," he said. "At what lengths at any given time are workers willing to do to achieve it? Certainly what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger."
