International News

Two things seem particularly noteworthy about the approval Wal-Mart won yesterday to acquire Massmart, a Johannesburg-based chain that operates across 13 African countries. One is that, despite the ample publicity Wal-Mart has engineered for its "buy local" efforts, the company in fact has zero interest in cultivating local suppliers beyond stocking a few token local veggies suitable for a nice photo-op.

And two: even in countries where the law clearly states that the public interest must be protected in large mergers, global trade agreements give corporations the upper hand, or at least give government authorities an excuse to ignore their own laws. More

"We have to demand that our politicians put these supermarkets back where they belong: as servants of our society and not masters of it," declared Tony Juniper, head of the U.K. organization Friends of the Earth, at a public forum held in London this month.

More than 250 people attended the forum, which was organized by a coalition of groups that have come together to counter the power of large retailers and to stop Wal-Mart's attempt to dismantle a British planning policy that limits the construction of big-box stores on the outskirts of towns.

(ILSR participated in the forum and a briefing for Members of Parliament that proceeded it. Highlights of the event were captured in a 12-minute podcast produced by Action Aid.)  More

One of the world's largest pension funds has sold its Wal-Mart stock, citing the retailer's "serious and systemic violations of human rights and labour rights."

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, which invests the country's surplus oil revenue for future generations, announced that it had dropped Wal-Mart from its portfolio and sold more than $400 million worth of the company's stock. More

In a deliciously ironic turn of events, Wal-Mart has called on the British government to intervene in the growing market dominance of rival retailer Tesco.

In comments to the London Sunday Times, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott suggests that having more than 30 percent of the market in one category is too much. "As you get over 30% and higher I am sure there is a point where government is compelled to intervene," he said. "At some point the government has to look at it." More

Global chains are pushing India to lift restrictions that prevent them from opening stores in the country. The move could lead to sweeping changes in a country where more than 95 percent of the retail trade is handled by local stores.

Leading the courtship is Wal-Mart. In May, John Menzer, head of Wal-Mart's international division traveled to India and met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. More

More than 40 percent of the towns surveyed for a new report by the London-based New Economics Foundation are so overrun by chain stores that they have lost their local identity and become little more than "clone towns."

"We are reaching a critical juncture," NEF's report contends. More

Wal-Mart has announced that it will close a Quebec store where workers recently opted to unionize. As we reported in December, the union had begun negotiating a contract with Wal-Mart, which would have been the first union contract at any of the retailer's 5,000 stores worldwide.

Wal-Mart has instead decided to shut down the store, laying off nearly 200 employees in the remote town of Jonquiere.

Wal-Mart insists that the store was not financially viable. More

The Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen or LO) has announced that all of its pension funds will sell their shares of Wal-Mart stock in opposition to the "Walmartization" of wages and working conditions worldwide.

"As the company has such a bad reputation, and a directly anti-human corporate philosophy, we see no other alternative than to disqualify Wal-Mart as an object for ethically responsible investment," said Svend S?rensen, president of one LO-affiliated pension fund. More

Under pressure from Ikea, Wal-Mart, and Costco, the Irish government has relaxed its seven-year-old cap on the size of retail stores. The changes apply to certain areas of Dublin and eight other towns.

The cap, which was adopted on a temporary basis in 1998 and made permanent in 2001, restricted stores selling food (including hypermarkets, which sell both food and non-food merchandise) to no more than 3,500 square meters (38,000 square feet) in Dublin and 3,000 square meters (32,000 square feet) throughout the rest of the country. More

Negotiations that could lead to the first union contract at any of Wal-Mart's 5,000 stores worldwide began last week in Jonquiere, a town about 250 miles north of Quebec City in Canada.

In August, after more than half of the store's 165 employees signed union cards, the Quebec Labour Relations Board certified the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 503 to represent the workers in contract negotiations with Wal-Mart. More