We were pretty sure that an Associated Press story that we critiqued yesterday had secured its spot as the week’s most repetitive and mediocre article about people who work for Wal-Mart. But long-term rival Reuters kept itself in the running today with a spectacular, last-minute debacle.
In the “Latest News” section of CNNMoney.com this morning, just above “Is Marvel in over its head?” and “Computer viruses seek your cell phone,” was this headline: “Wal-Mart bows to unions in China.”
The Reuters story began thus: “Retailing giant Wal-Mart will let officials from China’s state-run trade union to form and join unions, a company spokesman said Friday as the two sides continued talks on the controversy.”
Sounds translated. Also, it is not the “Latest News.” The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post published essentially the same story yesterday. And the Wal-Mart spokesman cited in the Post/Bloomberg News story, Jonathan Dong, was quoted along the same lines on Wednesday.
Anyway, after reading “Wal-Mart bows to unions …” and “Wal-Mart will let … state-run trade union to form and join unions,” we were prepared for paragraph two, where Wal-Mart “confirmed the company had agreed to open its Chinese stores to the state-run union.”
In the third graf, Dong says Wal-Mart and the union are “working together now to achieve that goal” of opening Wal-Mart’s Chinese stores to the union. In the same line, we learn that in addition to “working together,” the “two sides were still negotiating …,” which wasn’t terribly surprising, given that not much time had passed since “the two sides continued talks” in the first graf, though we’d wondered whether the talks might have concluded when the second graf noted that Wal-Mart had already “agreed to open” its stores to the union.
But that was only the first six lines. In the fourth paragraph, Reuters clarified by reporting that Wal-Mart stores “would be open to forming unions.” Moreover, employees will be able “to decide whether to set up unions in their stories.”
Unfortunately, in paragraph five it is noted that the union has warned Wal-Mart not to act against “union members … who wanted to join the union.” So, apparently, the negotiations continued.
And then came paragraph six, when a union spokesman announced that “Wal-Mart will give union officials the opportunity to explain the benefits of joining” the union. And in the following graf, Dong explains that “Wal-Mart had agreed to allow unions in China …” because unions in China are different. They don’t “promote confrontation.”
That is a relief, because we learn in paragraph seven that “the two sides were still discussing” some details of the agreement.
But none of this matters. By the final paragraph, six stores had already “formed unions.” Which is a crying shame, because the unions don’t “represent the rights of the workers.” Either that, or foreign companies have reason to fear unionized employees’ “new legal rights.”
Close race, but Reuters wins.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.