The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, was cautioned by the
All-China Federation of Trade Unions Wednesday not to retaliate
against some of their local employees who've set up four trade
unions over the past 10 days.
The federation, led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and
backed by the government, will take measures to protect the workers
if they are targeted by Wal-Mart, said Guo Wencai, director of the
federation's grass-roots building department. It wasn't permitted
to replace trade unions with other organizations, the official
said.
Wal-Mart should not question the legality of trade unions, Guo
said, as under Chinese law it was compulsory that any company or
institution with a staff of 25 or more must set up its own trade
union.
According to some local media a Wal-Mart spokesman had
questioned if these trade unions were legal. He said the company
had not been officially informed by the federation about the
matter.
The federation had never given prior notice on the establishment
of any of the existing 1.17 million grass-roots trade unions across
the country, Guo said.
The official confirmed that since the first Chinese Wal-Mart
trade union was set up in Jinjiang City, Fujian Province, on July 29, four more
Wal-Mart trade unions had been established by local employees,
three in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province and one in Nanjing, the
provincial capital of Jiangsu Province.
It was unlikely that the setting-up of trade unions would have a
negative impact on the Wal-Mart stores, and instead, they may
benefit from it, he said.
Currently, all the stores in China are operating normally, and
hopefully, Wal-Mart trade unions would be established and operated
like all others in the country which are set up in a relaxed and
harmonious manner, according to the official. According to previous
reports the number of trade union members topped 150 million last
year.
Guo disclosed that in the first six months of this year almost 9
million Chinese had joined trade unions while over 80,000 trade
unions had been newly set up in the country. Meanwhile, the country
had witnessed large-scaled growth of trade unions in foreign-funded
companies, he added.
(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2006)