Asda takes legal action to stop strike |
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Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:45
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LONDON - UK supermarket chain, Asda, which is owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc, has announced that it will be taking legal action against GMB trade union. The issue is what Asda described as 'serious irregularities' in the way the union took the ballot to call for a strike.
Earlier this week, GMB had announced that its members had voted 3-1 in favor of calling for a strike against the group. David Smith, people director at Asda said that they were not satisfied with GMB 's handling of the ballot, "We're sad we feel we have to do this, but there were serious flaws in the ballot process with people who don't even work for Asda being sent ballot papers. We've tried raising this with the union but they've ignored us - instead they've gone ahead and called a strike regardless," he said. "With only one per cent of our colleagues voting for a strike, we've got to do all we can to protect the other 99 per cent. The GMB's left us with no choice but to take legal action to try and put a stop to this."
But GMB has reacted strongly against this measure by ASDA. Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB said that Asda had "failed to identify any grounds to the union on which the ballot could be deemed unlawful despite repeated requests from us. We await the details of Asda's objection to our legal ballot." GMB National Secretary Phil Davies claimed that Asda and Wal-Mart were collaborating to o illegally break the strike.
The dispute concerns the claims by GMB that they have 7,000 Asda workers as their members, but Asda claims the figure is closer to 4,500.
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