Globalisation has an important impact on social relations. With retailers expanding their operations worldwide, trade unions are set to change, too. Shifting work patterns will mean that, where unions once represented only full-time employees, they will now need to embrace both part-time and temporary workers.
Elsevier Food International, Vol. 4, Number 4, November 2001
Pascal Kuipers

Up until recently, Carrefour's reputation for social policy matters and consultation of trade unions in decision making was less than impressive. When the French acquired the Belgian retailer GB in July 2000, it was clear how the Belgian union LBC regarded the situation. "Companies are never frank when they announce an an acquisition," said a sceptical- sounding LBC representative, Hugo Vander Elst, in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard.
"We don't know yet what Carrefour has up its slleve. In the last ten years we've experienced one restructuring after another. Although regotiations were sometimes tough, we always managed to prevent compulsory redundancies. If Carrefour wants to change that, we will fight them to the finish."
The fuse, then, had been lit - but it still took eight months before the explosion actually occurred. On Friday 16 March 2001, the employees of two distribution centres suddenly stopped working, thereby paralysing the supply chain for hundreds of GB stores. This wild-cat strike occurred a day before the announced general strike of Saturday 17 March, when the unions intended to protest against the flexibility measures that - according to them - Carrefour wanted to force upon its employees. The new owner of GB had planned to implement dynamic and flexible changes, including a dramatic increase in shopping hours: the stores would be opened from Sam to Wpm. In Belgium, a country that has seen GB restructure itself over a ten year period, such decision-making should have involved careful communication and consultation with the trade unions. Carrefour, however, failed to do this and then made things even worse by trying to bypass the unions and incite GB's employees directly to break the announced strike. Compounding Carrefour's communicative mistakes was a denial of the Friday wild-cat strike- Carrefour said that 80 per cent of the warehouse employees had wanted to go to work but were not allowed entrance by the unions- and a belittling of the Saturday strike, which Carrefour's spokesperson deemed insignificant, pointing at the 48 per cent of the supermarket staff and 33 per cent of the hypermarket employees who- according to Carrefour- were willing to work.
This questionable numbers game certainly rubbed the unions up the wring way. As Vander Elst put it: "This is a multinational that thinks it can bulldoze everything over here.
Carrefour must respect the Belgian social consultative model."

Arrogant and brutal

UFCW organises protests aginst Wal-Mart, whose practices it compares to, "...a third world ditactor."

The conflict might not have escalated had Carrefour shown any sympathy towards GB, a company that had undergone continued restructuring over several years causing constant agitation amongst employees and suspicion within the unions. Carrefour made a big mistake in keeping the unions out of the picture. But once it actually consulted them, both parties quickly reached an agreement - and just ten days after the general strike.
On 29 March 2001, shortly after Carrefour had stopped struggling with the Belgian unions, British retailer Marks & Spencer suddenly announced its plans to cease all activities in Continental Europe. This was a dramatic decision, necessitating the closure of 38 stores in six European countries, and the loss of over 4,000 jobs. How well developed were M&S's skills when it came to communicating the news? The answer would appear to be, 'not very', if we look at the example of one employee in an M&S Paris store, who received his notice of resignation via e-mail, a day after the European press had been informed of M&S's plans to withdraw entirely from the European mainland. The announcement was a complete surprise and according to M&S's management - not negotiable with the unions. Union Network International (UNI) organised a large turn out in London on 17 May, blaming M&S for not respecting the necessary legal procedures when making its massive redundancies. What made things worse was the £810,000 (US$ 1,198,089) bonus that chief executive Luc Vandevelde was set to receive. This stirred up such a commotion that he later renounced it.
'Arrogant' and 'brutal' are how the UNI has described M&S's behaviour, particularly in France where the British retailer has its largest operation (18 stores) on the European continent. "It's obvious that the company is only looking for the most advantageous way of getting out of France, without having a genuine concern for its workers," said UN] in its 13 August press release'. One month later, with speculation rife about a possible sale of its French assets to the US retailer Wal-Mart, UNI said that Marks & Spencer would deliver, "a final blow in the face of its French workers" were it to sell to the US giant. According to UNI, Wal-Mart " ... is known as a bad anti-union employer, particularly in its American home-market."

Union busters
"We are particularly worried about Wal-Mart," says Jan Furstenborg, director of the global trade union UNI Commerce. "It is a bad employer at home in the United States. We see a clear risk that, if it is allowed to get a stronger foothold in Europe, it could have a bad influence on conditions within the whole industry. I want to point out that we are not alone in this belief. European corporate leaders too have expressed the same concerns about the future of the retail industry."
If the allegations are to be believed, Wal-Mart's social track record indeed looks murky: store workers' wages below collective agreements, workers lacking health insurance, employees 'brainwashed' into working overtime without pay, employees working through meals and rest breaks, staff looked up in stores until the work is done, gender discrimination, and the active discouragement of associates from joining a union, together with discrimination against those who are already union members. The United Food & Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) says Wal-Mart uses fear and intimidation " ... like a third-world dictator." According to the UFCW, "Wal-Mart has a flying squadron of union busters dispatched from Bentonville and ready to descend on workers anywhere in the US ... Wal-Mart's tactics would be condemned as human rights abuses if they occurred anywhere else in the world." From Wal-Marts point of view, "the secret of staying union free is the internal elimination of problems". This quote is taken from a confidential manual for Wal-Mart managers, written in September 1991, which is published on the UFCW website (www.ufcw.org). As a rule Wal-Mart does not consult unions, nor does it comment on internal social affairs. Though it was produced ten years ago, the manual sheds some light on Wal-Mart's state of mind. "Staying union free is a full time commitment," it tells Wal-Mart's operational managers. Other comments include: "Union-free is not a dirty word. You should be proud of remaining union free", "Associates do not generally vote for unions - they vote against management", and "Unions are like water or electricity - they follow the path of least resistance". As an active union buster, Wal-Mart is not alone. Metro Turkey, the Turkish subsidiary of German retailer Metro AG, is reluctant to recognise the union Tez-Koop-Is and refuses to consult it on regulated wages and working conditions. Metro Turkey refers to legislation originating from the military dictatorship period, which enables the company to withhold recognition if the trade union does not have a membership that includes at least 50 per cent of its staff. According to UNI, membership dropped from well over 50 per cent to around 30 per cent due to a union busting campaign.
In November 1999, UNI and Tez-Koop-lz signed an agreement with Metro Turkey and its parent company Metro AG. "This has now proved to be an empty paper," said UNI in December 2000. Almost one year later, this problem still hasn't been solved.

ILO Principles
On May 15 2001, two days before the protests against Marks & Spencer in London, UNI Commerce and Carrefour signed a global labour rights agreement that provides for world-wide workers' rights, including the right to join trade unions. "The Carrefour agreement is ground breaking and we are actively implementing it together with management," comments Furstenborg. "I believe that the first results already show that building a social dialogue and good labour relations on a global level is beneficial for both the company and its employees. "
UNI Commerce now has a formal position as a social partner in Carrefour and can raise issues over workers' and trade unions rights in every region of Carrefour's operations. Furstenborg says that UNI Commerce is also "engaged in a positive dialogue" with multinational retailers like UK retailer Tesco and German retailer Metro AG (despite the latter's reluctance to intervene over its Turkish subsidiary). These discussions take place mainly on a European level, but Furstenborg stresses that workers rights will also be assessed globally. "As a global trade union organisation, our particular role is to see that the engines of the globalisation process - the multinational companies - respect the principles of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO declaration has three main principles: no child labour, no discrimination and full right of workers to organise and bargain collectively." On a European level, UNI Commerce calls for a directive that gives workers the right to be informed and to be consulted in advance of impactful decisions such as the one from Marks & Spencer. The European Commission also wants to speed up the adoption of such a directive. UNI's discussions with Tesco, Metro, Carrefour, Casino, Rewa/Billa and other multinational retailers and wholesalers anticipate the future enlargement of the EU, as these retailers are represented in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In Poland, for instance, the trade union Solidarnosc already has a membership of over 2,000 employees drawn from Metro AG's hypermarket chain Real.- UNI Commerce negotiated acceptance of this and the formal position of the union with Metro's management. Other countries in which UNI Commerce operates are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia.

New relations, old rhetoric
In an increasingly global retail world, how organised are the unions in the emerging markets of South America and Asia? "In South America, trade unions are well developed -look at Brazil, for instance," says Jan Hol, Ahold's vice president of communications. "As far as I know, we have no contacts as yet with trade unions in Asia."
In Asia, commercial workers are not well organised. Because the region is an important growth market for global retailers, UNI Commerce and its Asian/Pacific affiliates are actively engaged in an organising programme that includes recruiting members, building union structures and ensuring that companies respect and see the benefits of an organised workforce. Japan, South Korea and Thailand are leading the field because in these countries global retailers are already well represented.
Other markets, where multinational retailers have yet to establish a foothold, will follow soon. According to UNI Commerce this will mean a break with traditional patterns for commerce trade unions in many Asian countries. Traditionally these unions organised only full time workers, but now they will deal increasingly with part-time workers and temporary and fixed term employment contracts.
This holds true for all unions worldwide: they must also change internally as the industry becomes increasingly globalised. "The US trade unions want the same thing as the unions in Europe: timely involvement, direct communication with management, the opportunity to raise issues, and input in setting terms of employment," says Hol. "When we deal with trade unions in the US, our experiences are good. Not all our chains are unionised, however, because not all employees are interested in joining a union. Giant Carlisle is an example of this."
"Unionisation in the US is a regional affair", says Delhaizes spokesman Guy Elewaut. "Food Lion and Kash 'n Karry are concentrated in the south-eastern region, where union membership is low. Hannaford is based in the north-eastern region, where unions have larger representation amongst employees. At Hannaford, however, unionisation is low, except for a small warehouse where some 40 to 50 people are union members. We knew about this when we made the acquisition. In general we acknowledge the unions and we want to establish a constructive relationship with them when they have a membership base amongst our employees."
Alan Spaulding, executive assistant at UFCW, has a different opinion: "With Delhaize, relations have never been good. The previous US management vigorously fought worker attempts to unionise and the company remains virtually non-union to this day, even now that it is fully under the parent company's control." "This is an outdated statement," responds Elewaut, who stresses that Delhaize's relations with all unions - including UFCW -are good. "We have nothing against trade unions. Again, we want to create a constructive relationship with them."
"There will also be unions that have to reconsider their approach towards their employers," says Furstenborg. "In particular, the young commercial workers of today do not want to live in an eternal conflict with their employer, in a situation where the appearance of a union representative at a work-place always means that there is trouble." Furstenborg sees positive changes: "We can see clear signs that workers - also young workers - are beginning to find their way to trade unions once again. The unions that have succeeded in changing with the times have good experiences." The implementation of the Euro on January 1, 2002 may well be a good test case for new relations between the employer-union-employee triangle. In Germany for instance, the staff of supermarkets and banks have been banned from taking holidays in January and February because management foresees problems with the new currency. British newspaper The Times has reported that employees have threatened strike action or to report sick if a holiday in these two months is not allowed. "[this is] nothing less than slavery!" was the fierce reaction of one German trade union leader.
It seems, then, that old fashioned rhetoric persists even in times of change.