Red star over Wal-Mart

KansasCity.com  | Dec 19, 2006 

Wal-Mart workers in China now have their own Communist Party branch. 
 
Employees at Wal-Mart’s China headquarters have set up a Communist Party branch, the company and party said Monday. The move comes amid a campaign to expand the ruling party’s presence in foreign companies.

The action follows the success of China’s state-sanctioned labor body this year in setting up unions at the U.S. retailer’s outlets. Wal-Mart is one of China’s biggest and most prominent foreign employers, with a work force of 36,000 and 68 stores.

The party branch was set up Friday at Wal-Mart headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen, according to the party newspaper People’s Daily and a Wal-Mart spokesman, Jonathan Dong.

Dong said he didn’t know whether Wal-Mart would have any formal interaction with the branch or whether its establishment would affect operations. Employees who answered the phone at the party’s Shenzhen office said they had no information on what the branch at the headquarters would do.

China’s 70-million-member Communist Party and its affiliated All-China Federation of Trade Unions have announced a target of setting up unions at 60 percent of China’s 150,000 foreign companies by the end of this year.