Union loses vote, decertification looms
REGINA — The United Food and Commercial Workers’ decade-long pursuit of a union and a contract at the Walmart store in Weyburn seems to be over.
Friday, Fred Bayer, registrar of the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board, emerged from the boardroom in the board’s downtown office and read the results of a 2010 vote by the store’s employees on whether they want to keep their union local: 51 employees did not, five did and 13 abstained.
The results will be presented to a panel of the labour relations board on Wednesday.
Gordon Button, spokesman for employees who launched the decertification action, said he’s “100 per cent certain” it will be granted. The union first applied for certification at the store in 2004. The application was granted in 2008, but was challenged by Walmart and overturned in Court of Queen’s Bench the next year.
Separately, dissident employees sought decertification and the store’s workers voted on this Dec. 22, 2010.
But the votes could not be counted until this week because of legal duelling between UFCW, the largest private-sector union in Canada, and Walmart, long a subject of union organizing drives in Canada and the U.S.
With a local in place, the Weyburn store was the only unionized Walmart store in Canada, though the UFCW had applied to represent Walmart workers in North Battleford.
The final legal stage came Thursday, when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the UFCW’s appeal of earlier LRB decisions on union accusations of unfair labour practices.
A Walmart representative at the ballot count declined to comment, and the chain’s Canadian head office did not respond to a request for an interview. Norm Neault, president of UFCW Canada Local 1400 in Saskatoon, is expected to comment Saturday.
Neault told The Canadian Press this week that “it’s not over yet,” adding, “We are going to continue to keep up the good fight and make sure that we are able to organize Walmart and bring the type of wages and benefits to the workers that they deserve.”
On Friday, Button predicted employees in the store will be “pretty happy” when they hear the news.
“Most of them were with me; otherwise I’d never have done it ... I talked to the people even before we got started and this is what they wanted, so that’s what we did,” Button said, adding there are perhaps 10 employees from the 2004 vote left at the store.
Button, an inventory control supervisor, was not working at the store then, but said he’s been told workers initially signed union cards in an attempt to get “a lot more money.”
He said store veterans told him UFCW organizers made home visits “followed them around” and stopped them on their way to work, saying, “You gotta sign these cards.”
“I guess they wanted ‘in there’ in a bad way; I guess if they could get into one Walmart, they’d be in a lot more,” he said.
Button conceded UFCW or another union might someday make another organizational drive.
“If they want a union in there and the guys say, ‘Yes,’ so be it.”