Wal-Mart's Amicable Relationship with (Non-U.S.) Unions

Kevin Kolben (Rutgers Business) has just posted on SSRN his article (forthcoming UCLA J. Int'l L. & For. Affairs) Wal-Mart Is Coming, But It's Not All Bad: Wal-Mart and Labor Rights in Its International Subsidiaries.  Here's the abstract:

This article analyzes Wal-Mart's conduct in its international operations from a comparative and transnational labor law perspective. It shows that while Wal-Mart is fiercely anti-union in its home operations, its subsidiaries do not necessarily act the same way abroad. In fact, rather than simply exporting its rather distinct animus towards unions and collective bargaining, Wal-Mart generally adapts to host-country institutional, political, and regulatory environments. Consequently, in most countries outside of North America, Wal-Mart peacefully co-exists with unions.

To make sense of this phenomenon, the article proposes a transnational labor framework to help explain and predict the conduct of Wal-Mart as well of other MNCs in their foreign operations with regards freedom of association and collective bargaining. This framework looks at firm-level analyses of MNCs in industrial relations and human resources scholarship; domestic legal and political regimes; private regulatory regimes and local norms; and host-country "tempering effects" to help explain MNC conduct. The article concludes that a) contrary to predictions of its immanent demise, local and national-level labor regulation and industrial relations systems remain relevant, even in the context of a highly anti-union MNC; and b) that the diffusion of MNCs, particularly low standard ones such as Wal-Mart, can possibly function in certain contexts as labor rights catalysts. As such, these catalysts can set in motion dynamics that will lead to improved labor conditions, and stronger regulatory regimes and industrial relations systems.

Of course, this begs the question: if Wal-Mart can get along with unions in other parts of the world, why can't it do so at home?  My question is not a rhetorical one.  Perhaps, as the U.C. Berkeley’s Labor Center's study (see Paul's post last week) suggests, Wal-Mart can and chooses not to.  Or perhaps it indicates that American labor law uniquely encourages companies to take a hard-line stance against unions.  The latter is suggested by Kolben's observation that other transnational companies, such as British Tesco and Swedish H&M, have an amicable relationship with unions at home but are strongly anti-union in the U.S. This would suggest that the solution is not to try to change Wal-Mart, but to change American labor law. 

rb