Wal-Mart will keep fighting 'card-check' labor union proposal

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.app.com/article/20090417/BUSINESS/90417033/1003

BLOOMBERG NEWS SERVICE • April 17, 2009

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. private employer, will remain “vigilant” in fighting legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize, the company’s top U.S. lobbyist said.

The measure probably won’t go anywhere in Congress after key members in both parties said they would oppose it, said Ray Bracy, senior vice president of Wal-Mart’s U.S. government relations. Still, the Employee Free Choice Act remains a top priority for organized labor in Congress.

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck approach,” Bracy said this week in an interview in Washington. “We have not declared victory.”

Labor unions view the measure, supported by President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress, as a way for workers to increase pay and benefits. The United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents 1.4 million supermarket and meat-packing workers, is urging the bill’s passage.

“From a worker and union point of view, there is no place to go but forward to pass the bill,” Jill Cashen, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based union, said by telephone yesterday. “It is not dead.”

In the past month, Senator Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, and Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who moved to support a version of the bill in 2007, said they planned to oppose the legislation.

FULL 2 page story at link.

[w4rma]

1. Despicable, evil company. (nt)