Unions Target Wal-Mart (picket shareholder meeting)

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2009/06/02/business/060309buswmtunion.txt

Last updated Tuesday, June 2, 2009 5:36 PM CDT in Business
By Lana F. Flowers
THE MORNING NEWS

SPRINGDALE — Unions trying to organize Wal-Mart workers picked shareholder meeting week to stage demonstrations in Little Rock and elsewhere in the nation.

Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. does not have any unionized stores or departments in the United States. Walmart employees who want to form unions will picket at 2 p.m. today at the Walmart Supercenter at 8801 Baseline Road in Little Rock, although the shareholder's meeting is 200 miles away in Fayetteville.

Unions want to call attention to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to form by secret ballot or when a majority of workers sign cards stating they want to form a union. The act also would require employers to meet with union employees within 90 days or face federal arbitrators, who would set terms of the union contracts good for up to two years.

Local opponents of the act were also busy this week. Rogers businessmen Chris Crossland and Pat Carroll, both of Crossland Construction in Rogers, are among a group of 11 from Arkansas who traveled to Washington, D.C., today to lobby against it.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., confirmed that Crossland and Carroll are to meet with Lincoln this morning.

Crossland Construction in Rogers held a lunch for about 288 people in late March. The lunch included speakers who were against the Employee Free Choice Act and those attending included bankers, real estate brokers, construction firms, construction contractors and others.

The free choice act appears to be dormant, according to Katie Laning Niebaum, a Lincoln spokeswoman. The act was introduced March 10 but has not been up for a Senate vote, she said.

FULL story at link.