BEIJING (Reuters) - China is determined to introduce trade unions in all local Wal-Mart stores, despite the retail giant's opposition to unions among its workers, a Chinese labor official said in state media on Wednesday.

Employees of a Wal-Mart store in Quanzhou, in the southeastern province of Fujian, established a branch of the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions on Saturday - the first such union in the U.S. company's spreading China operations.

Wal-Mart has rebuffed the federation's efforts to expand into its stores, and since the Saturday announcement company executives have said they were unaware of the latest move.

But an official union organizer told the Beijing Daily that China would press forward with an effort to unionize all Wal-Mart stores.

"Establishing this trade union in Wal-Mart was just the beginning," said Guo Wencai, director of the grassroots organization department of the Federation of Trade Unions. "Our goal is to cover every store with a trade union organization."

Wal-Mart has resisted trade unions in most of its worldwide operations and has said it listens to the needs of its Chinese workers and does not need the official trade union to step in.

But Guo indicated this was not enough.

"Even if nobody proposes setting one up, this organization must still exist," he said, adding that the state union would hold a publicity campaign among Wal-Mart employees.

China has previously threatened foreign firms with blacklists and legal action if they did not set up unions in their local operations. Only about one quarter of the 150,000 or so foreign firms in China have unions, the Beijing Daily said.

The paper cited another Chinese trade union official as saying its goal is to raise this level to 50 percent.

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"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
-Dr Seuss
You should have heard what i meant to say (apologies to Thelonious Monk)
"The police are not here to cause disorder....
...The police are here to preserve disorder."
Hon. Richard J. Daley
Chicago, 1968

Good!
I'm all for unionization in third world countries and places like China where the workers are basically slave labor.
Either WalMart will leave China or it will start helping the Chinese working class, possibly moving them into middle class (thus making a transition in China toward democracy more likely).

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

I personally find unions inefficient and a serious burden on the economy, at least in our nation as it exists today. Although in china... i'm not sure. Hell, if it keeps them from catching up to us economically (which they will regardless im sure...), i fully support unionization over THERE!

China has done it again!
I hope they will invent a next-gen capitalism with communism deeply in mind.

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War is not a matter of who is right but who is left.

The thing to note is that trade union in China are state-controlled -- meaning the government of China just forced Wal-Mart to give the government of China more power over their internal operations.

I support the concept of unions (if not always the reality), but this isn't the sort of thing one usually thinks of when discussing unions.

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

Well that sucks.
I was hoping it was actually workers demonstrating and acting together and upping their standard in a substandard area (the legitimate purpose and type of unionization). I guess not.
(*)(*)(*)(*).

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

At least it should work as a sort of cushion for workers.
For the lowest workers, nothing is as miserable as being dominated by unknown money monkeys far away from their home country, against which they have few means to protest.

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War is not a matter of who is right but who is left.

Well Garsh, that's a good model for us - a communist super-power! Hey they got other good ideas we could use too - forced abortion and infanticide! Oops, forgot -- think they stold the infanticide idea from Hussein Odumbo.

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Read this post quick before the mods delete it!