Que. Wal-Mart unionists get their day in top court

Que. Wal-Mart unionists get their day in top court

SCOC agrees to consider whether retail giant broke labour laws

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service

Published: Thursday, August 07, 2008

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada will weigh in on a high-stakes dispute between retail giant Wal-Mart and former employees at a store in Jonquiere, Que., which shut down in 2005 after workers secured the right to unionize.

The closure drew attention continent-wide because Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and the Jonquiere outlet, located about three hours north of Quebec City, was one of the first in North America to be organized.

Former clerks Gaetan Plourde, Johanne Desbiens, Ingrid Ratte and Claudine Beaumont will have their day in court to argue that Wal-Mart violated labour laws in union-strong Quebec by shutting down during negotiations for an inaugural collective agreement.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer with more than two million workers, has been in and out of courts nationwide challenging union drives. The case of a store closing in Quebec after it unionized is headed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Adrian Lam/ Victoria Times Colonist

The former employees contend that they were sacked because of their union activities, which they say also violates freedom of association guarantees in the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights.

"This could have an impact on other employers who want to close their stores when employees are trying to unionize,"

said Nicolas Charron, one of the Montreal lawyers representing Plourde and Desbiens.

"It's a question of national importance that we think has not been clearly answered by the Supreme Court."

The employees are bringing their case to the Supreme Court after losing in the Quebec Court of Appeal, which concluded that the permanent closure of the Jonquiere store met the provincial labour code test of having "good and sufficient reasons" for terminating employment.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, with more than two-million employers worldwide, has been fighting unionization in various Canadian courts in recent years, but it is the first time the Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to tackle the issue.

By convention, the court gave no reasons for granting two separate applications from the workers, one from Plourde and one from Desbiens, Ratte and Beaumont. The appeals will likely be heard in 2009.

Wal-Mart has maintained that it closed the store, located in Quebec's union heartland, because it was struggling financially.

At a time when the Jonquiere store was on its death bed, the union demanded that the company hire another 30 employees as part of the first collective agreement, said Andrew Pelletier, spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. Almost 200 "associates" worked at the store when it closed in May 2005.

About six of 300 or so Canadian Wal-Marts are union certified, but none have collective agreements in place, said Pelletier. In the U.S., where the union movement is weaker, no Wal-Mart stores are unionized, he said.

Pelletier charged that the United Food and Commercial Workers union has taken advantage of "loopholes" in labour laws in some provinces, particularly Quebec, that permit unionization without a secret-ballot vote, provided enough workers have signed union cards.

A spokesman for the union could not be reached.