Wal-Mart's Walton heirs richest women in America, shuts down only union shop

Alice Walton is the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Christy Walton is Sam's daughter-in-law. Each has a net worth of $23.2 billion US, thanks to the ubiquitous discounter, America's largest employer.

Alice has a taste for objects you can't find in any Wal-Mart: fine art. She's led her family in hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the Crystal Bridges Museum. The new art museum will open in 2010 in Bentonville, Ark., the location of Wal-Mart's headquarters.

In August, an arbitrator imposed a contract at the shop on Maloney Boulevard, just across the river from Ottawa.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart said it would close the garage, where five mechanics work, rather than raise the prices it charges customers.

"Wal-Mart thinks a cheap oil change is more important than the Canadian Constitution," said Wayne Hanley, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, which represents the workers.

Wal-Mart said the contract imposed in August increased the mechanics' wages by more than 30 per cent.

"Our wages were competitive prior to the collective agreement. And this collective agreement makes the situation unworkable," said Yanick Deschênes, a director of Wal-Mart in Quebec.

However, a Quebec Federation of Labour spokesman, Dino Lemay, said Gatineau doesn't have a minimum wage for mechanics, like the ones in many other Quebec cities.

He said the minimum wages in those cities are higher than the ones Wal-Mart workers got under their union contract.

"It works for Montreal, and it works for Quebec, but it doesn't work for Gatineau. It doesn't make sense," Lemay said.