A three-year agreement including annual raises and a grievance procedure was imposed on a Quebecois Wal-Mart by an arbitrator Friday. Although the contract covers only a few automotive employees, the union (United Food and Commercial Workers) believes it is a victory in the long struggle to organize Wal-Mart workers. However, Wal-Mart Canada spokesman Andrew Pelletier has already said that, if the contract disrupts the Wal-Mart business model in any way, the automotive department will simply have to be shut down, ?with regret,? a situation that has occurred once before, also in Quebec. The arbitrator found that the automotive employees were quite separate from other workers, but Pelletier believes this is not so, and has already commented negatively about the imposed agreement.
See "Union wins contract for 8 workers at Wal-Mart Canada", Ian Austen, The New York Times, August 18, 2008