[Bob]

Walmart has the ultimate in effective strategies for beating the unions. If a store goes union, the company simply declares the site unprofitable due to increased expenses brought about by the union contract, closes the store and moves on to a different location. They are so huge that a store here and there are not critical to the over all bottom line and the message it sends when a store is closed will reverberate far and wide.

Do you happen to have a link to a story on this? I haven't read of it happening.

[101voodoo]

Here’s something bit if you google it there is much more. The Union will never crack Walmart to any extent. They are simply to powerful and the union cannot offer the employees anything that Walmart will pay under duress.
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At Jonquiere, the union did not last long. But the struggle between Wal-Mart and its former employees has become a cause célèbre in Canada. The United Food and Trade Workers’ Union (TUAC) has organized anti-Wal-Mart demonstrations across the country.

“In 30 years of union activism, I have never seen anything like it,” said Yvon Bellemare, president of the TUAC. He believes the closure of the only store that dared to unionize, “is a Wal-Mart message addressed to the United States and elsewhere to say, ‘If you want to unionize, we’ll close you down’.”

When Ms Lavoie and her fellow-cashier, Johanne Desbiens, proposed the union, the response from colleagues was lukewarm. Wal-Mart’s anti-union stance was well known. In 2000, when 11 Texas meat-cutters voted to join a union, their department was simply eliminated. “There was always a bunch at Jonquiere who were against the union and who were intimidating,” Ms Desbiens said. “There have been third parties saying we were going to be beaten up.”

But, gradually, more colleagues became involved. This, after all, was not the United States, where only 12.5 per cent of workers are unionized. In Canada, the equivalent figure is 28.6 per cent. Not all employees were happy with wages starting at about US$6.20 (£3.29) an hour and rules limiting some workers to 28 hours a week.

But Wal-Mart’s directors acted quickly. A meeting of all employees was called. The union organizers were publicly named. The intimidation of union activists began, although Wal-Mart strongly denies involvement in the threats made to Ms Lavoie and Ms Desbiens. “We would never, ever support the intimidation of anybody,” a Wal-Mart spokes-person told The Independent. “It would be grounds for dismissal.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0511-03.htm