Yes indeed, in this week’s top ‘believe it or not’ story (here on Al Jazeera), capitalist running pig-dog lackeys Wal-Mart are now trading in China. Apparently it’s going well, and they’ve even celebrated by setting up their own branch of the Communist Party for staff.

Yes, you read that right - Wal-Mart are digging into their pocket to do their bit in helping spread Communism. We know from the US that they’re keen on state provision when it means they can avoid paying themselves for little extras like their healthcare obligations to staff, but this is a pretty hefty about turn
And it doesn’t stop there. There’s a Chinese Wal-Mart union too. The firm that does so much to avoid unions at home hasn’t been able to get around Chinese laws requiring employers to let employees form a union if there are more than 25 of them that wish to. Let’s hope that’s one more ‘made in China’ that makes it back to Wal-Mart’s shelves in the States.

Very interesting piece by Jonathan Guthrie in the FT (read it before they slap the curse of subscription view on it), “Unions need to swap the red flag for pastel shades”. He’s drawing together the T&G/Amicus merger with a new paper on unions’ finanical outlook from LSE/PSI (with the snappy title of “Accounting for Collective Action: Resource Acquisition and Mobilisation in British Unions”).

His opinion is that unions need to revise their offer to prospective members to break out of a gradual decline. In many new industries, he believes, people’s view of work has moved on, to the point where there’s no longer a natural understanding of what a union might offer them.

“Unionists should not take Billy Bragg’s rallying call to ‘bring up the banners from the days gone by’ any more literally than modern Christians do biblical prescriptions on camel husbandry. Leave those dusty banners in storage, comrades, they remind nervous punters of Arthur Scargill. Instead, pop on pastel polo shirts, brew some fresh coffee and organise a speed networking event.”

Now, I like the old banners more than most people I think (always look forward to a good march behind them on May Day), but he has a powerful point. Fingers crossed there are signs of a change here, with one of the proposed merger names (OneUnion) sounding very fluffy and aspirational - just right for the large gains the union could make in the union-wastelands of the business services industry.

Funny how some of the unions’ best and fairest coverage (outside the Morning Star) seems to come from the FT. You’d not expect it given their readers, but I guess if there’s one thing a capitalist takes seriously it’s capitalism, so they’d want to hear pretty accurately when unions have something to say which might affect them. Union analysis seems to be taken much more seriously there than at the Times or Torygraph. Not enough to make me read it mind… (except Martin Lukes!)

I like shopping at the Co-Op as a rule - it still has that feelgood connection to the labour movement that you don’t quite get with ASDA-WalMart. However, funny things seem to be afoot at the company, whose funerals wing has taken the monumental step of de-recognising the GMB, and ending a relationship over 100 years old.

The Co-Op got their rebuttal in early, issuing a press release before the GMB could react to the news. They claim it’s merely a plan by the Co-Op Group as a whole to rationalise their relations with unions. The wider group has extensive USDAW, T&G and NACO (natch) membership, and the GMB is only operating in Co-Operative Funeralcare, as the smallest of the three non-specialist unions recognised there. Apparently the GMB are just one union too many to deal with, and things would go much more smoothly with fewer groups to talk to.

My guess is that this is a bit of window dressing (Surely a joint shop isn’t too difficult for management to deal with? In my experience, the unions in a joint shop do most of the extra co-ordinating work themselves), and as the GMB section have been the biggest pain to management, calling a company boycott over their current pay campaign, they’re hitting back by dealing only with those unions who aren’t in dispute. If so, it’s a pretty low act to try to disenfranchise by the back door those workers with a grievance - even if they were being rash in their tactics.

GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny said: “It is indicative of a senior management lacking the principles upon which the co-operative movement was founded”. I reckon he’s right. Co-Op may be playing by the letter, but most definitely not the spirit.

Tagged by Tygerland to write about “10 things that I’d never do”. This is harder than it at first seems. F’rinstance, there are all manner of categories which you have to decide to rule in or out.

First off, there are the kind of principled delusions of grandeur which aren’t ever likely to happen and would make me look a bit of a pompous fool to mention them, such as: Accept a knighthood, date Paris Hilton, be a space tourist, or deceive a tribe of south sea islanders who had mistaken me for a god.

Then we have another whole bunch which are entirely and obviously unethical, so you’d expect me not to do them as a matter of course - eg: mug giros off a pensioner, salute a bloodthirsty dictator’s indefatigabliity, eat a live marmoset. Though of course, if I don’t mention them, I could well be left open to the description of ‘potential marmoset abuser’.

Next up are the temporary ones. I like boycotts, so refuse to use RyanAir, T-Mobile, Esso & so on. But what happens when they see the light (through principle or financial necessity) and start to change a bit, a la McDonalds - surely you need to start actively buying again in order to justify the boycott in the first place? So in the hope that Michael O’Leary one day has a Damascine conversion, I’ll leave his airline off this list.

So after all that prevarication, I’m left with a rag bag of less dramatic ones, which I shall attempt to drag out to 10:

1. Vote Tory. I’m Labour, me. (though not above tacticality in cases of extreme first-past-the-post silliness).
2. Drive a Chelsea tractor or similarly inefficient motor.
3. Sing along with ‘god save the queen’.
4. Send kiddo to private school. (handy way to make my stinginess look like high principle - double points!)
5. Fare dodge on public transport.
6. Bungee jump (shudder… far too wussy).
7. Cross a picket (even if I don’t 100% agree - I’d still want them not to cross one I was on!).
8. Bin a book, when I could take it to a charity shop.
9. Switch to Apple Mac.
10. Buy the Daily Mail (unless it’s for my Mother-in-law, and even then make sure to tell her off for it)

10a. And to cap it all, I would never, ever, collude in the promotion of Iain Dale. What? Ooops!

I understand it is customary to draw this kind of thing out by passing it on to others until the whole internet collapses in on itself, but as I’m so late with this I can’t honestly think of anyone who might enjoy the task who hasn’t beaten me to it already, except perhaps Nighthawk, so Roger - consider yourself tagged!