Wal-Mart and transnational union solidarity in the South African competition tribunal process

The merger of Wal-mart with the South African listed company Massmart set headlines buzzing for most of 2011 in South Africa.  This deal is to be the first major entry of a foreign multinational into South Africa’s dominant food retail sector, and the first effort by the world’s largest retail employer Wal-Mart to gain a foothold in Africa.  This paper considers the role of the Global Union UNI and support by the US based United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in the Competition Tribunal and Appeal processes in South Africa.  Through interviews and participant observation, this paper examines the role of global union solidarity and local activists in conditioning the terms of capital mobility and accumulation and in influencing state actors.  It seeks to problematise the prescriptive literature on ‘new labour internationalism’ by examining the motivations and contradictions of multiple players in the process.  By doing so, it unpacks a core contradiction in the aims of a global campaign against Wal-Mart, one that will surface more widely as Wal-Mart continues to enter more countries in the Global South, that between labour rights and ‘development’.