WASHINGTON -- April 13 -- Accusations that a former Wal-Mart executive illegally used company funds to finance unionbusting are just the latest charges of hostile labor practices levied against the world's largest employer, just ranked no. 1 on the FORTUNE 500 for the fourth year in a row.

"News about Wal-Mart's workers' rights violations should come as no surprise," says David Bonior, Chair of American Rights at Work, a national workers' rights advocacy organization. "If it walks like a unionbuster, talks like a unionbuster, and acts like a unionbuster, it's probably a unionbuster."

The scandal emerging from investigative articles in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reinforces Wal-Mart's anti-union image. Other examples of union avoidance at Wal-Mart include the following:

• On April 5, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Wal-Mart Canada must hand over anti-union corporate documents, including one titled, "Wal-Mart: A Manager's Tool Box to Remaining Union-Free," to the Saskatchewan Labor Relations Board (SLRB) or face criminal sanctions. The SLRB seeks to determine if Wal-Mart breached Saskatchewan labor laws during a union organizing campaign in 2004.
  
• In February 2005, Wal-Mart announced it would close down the third North American store in the chain's history where workers organized a union. During the past two fiscal years, Wal-Mart has closed only one of its stores without opening a bigger one in its place.
  
• According to The Washington Post, from 1995-2004 the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency charged with protecting workers' rights, received and docketed roughly 250 cases involving Wal-Mart.
  
• In 2000, when 11 meatcutters at a Texas Wal-Mart store voted to form a union, the company suddenly eliminated meatcutting positions in all of its stores nationwide. In response to this and other illegal moves to thwart union organizing at the store, the NLRB ordered Wal-Mart to restore meatcutting duties in 2003.
  
• In February 2005, a worker involved in union organizing at a Wal-Mart tire center in Loveland, CO, told The New York Times, "It wasn't a fair fight. Every day they had two or three antiunion people from Bentonville in the garage fulltime, showing antiunion videos and telling people that unions are bad."
  

"The evidence against Wal-Mart is piling up," says Bonior. In addition to the company's history of union avoidance, Wal-Mart currently faces a class action sex discrimination lawsuit, and has recently settled with the government over child labor and illegal immigrant hiring violations.

"When we allow the world's largest employer to flagrantly disregard workers' rights, employees don't stand a chance," says Bonior. "Having our basic rights violated in exchange for cheap prices is no bargain at all."

American Rights at Work will release a report later this year that examines Wal-Mart's unionbusting practices and its impact on competitors' ability to pay living wages and provide good benefits.

American Rights at Work is a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to educating the American public about the barriers that workers face when they attempt to exercise their rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining. Our mission is to fight for a nation where the freedom of workers to organize unions and bargain collectively with employers is restored, guaranteed and promoted.

###