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   Vol. 69/No. 10           March 14, 2005  
 
 
Colorado Wal-Mart workers lose union vote
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BY DANIELLE LONDON  
CRAIG, Colorado—Workers at a Wal-Mart Tire and Lube Express in Loveland, Colorado, voted against union representation in a February 25 election. In November, 9 of the 17 workers in the store’s tire department signed cards calling for an election in which they could vote for representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Since then two workers in the department left to attend college and a third was fired, Joshua Noble, one of the tire department workers who led the union-organizing effort, told the Denver Post. He said as many as six new workers were brought in after being screened by the company to ensure they were opposed to the union. The vote for union representation lost by a vote of 17-1.

UFCW representative Dave Minshall told the Reuters news agency that the union would file several charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Labor board officials had overseen the balloting. Minshall said Wal-Mart interfered with the voting, barred the union from sending its own representative to observe the vote, and added employees to the bargaining unit to dilute the strength of union supporters. Noble, 21, told the Post he and a few other workers who favor unionization had been making calls to undecided workers leading up to the vote. “In other departments, there are a few workers that are behind us, but there are a lot of workers who tell us that we’re troublemakers,” he said. Noble contacted the UFCW, he said, because he believes Wal-Mart should improve wages and benefits and give workers more adequate breaks. Two days before the vote, the union held a rally in support of the organizing effort in front of the Loveland Wal-Mart that reportedly drew close to 200 people. Wal-Mart is the largest private sector employer in the world, with 1.4 million workers. The UFCW has been trying to organize workers at the retailer for more than a decade. Wal-Mart has blocked unionizing efforts through firings of union supporters and threats to take away benefits if workers did join a union. A vote for union representation on February 11 lost by a vote of 17-0 at Wal-Mart’s Tire and Lube Express in New Castle, Pennsylvania. The bosses recently announced they would shut down a store in Jonquiere, Quebec, where workers had voted to join the UFCW. In 2000, after meat cutters at a Wal-Mart store in Jacksonville, Texas, won UFCW representation, the company retaliated by eliminating their job category companywide and switching to selling only pre-packaged meat in its stores.  
 
 
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