Dave ‘the chameleon’ Cameron showing his true colours already. The other day he made a speech and said (about Asda):

We need to big it up, talk about it, promote it, and get others to do the same!

This was prompted by Asda’s supposed family-friendly working hours and flexibility.

Today is the news that union members at Asda have voted for strike action after a dispute about negotiating rights and staff pay and conditions.

Paul Kenny, the GMB’s General Secretary says that “This is the first serious strike action in the Walmart empire”, which is not very surprising as the WalMart group which owns Asda is notorious for discouraging staff from joining unions.

They don’t like trade unions. A lot of companies don’t like trade unions. Firms like Asda might have flexible hours, but they much prefer the flexibility to be on their own terms without havnig to worry too much about what the staff really want.

The GMB has a website containing lots of information about what has been going on at Asda, including:

• The employee in Yarmouth who was sacked for having £3 change in her pocket.
• Managers sacked on the spot in Yorkshire
• Asda trying to bribe workers to give union bargaining right by making pay deals conditional on giving up those rights.

The GMB says:

Since the beginning of June 2005, GMB has heard a number of reports about Asda consistently trying to keep up with its competitors without caring about the impact on its workforce. Asda has included Tesco as one of the supermarkets that it is vying with in terms of productivity and profit.

This has led to unacceptable pressure on employees to work in “battery farm” conditions with concerns about the introduction of dehumanising technology to increase productivity, demands on staff to significantly increase their workloads to an unrealistic capacity, the victimisation of GMB representatives and numerous sackings across the country.

Even allowing for the usual amount of union hyperbole in these matters, does this sound like the sort of treatment of employees that we should be bigging up, talking about and promoting? Dave the chameleon thinks so – he wants to encorage other companies to “do the same”.