This book explores how and why the labor practices of the world's largest employer, supermarket giant Walmart, were contested by unions and government regulators as it expanded to Latin America starting in the 1990s. With an in-depth case study of Brazil, and a comparative chapter examining Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, this book analyzes the problematic encounter between diffusion of home-office anti-labor practices and evolving national institutional contexts that are quite varied and in some cases enable considerable resistance by unions and/or regulators. Walmart's "repressive familial" and "anti-union" model is found to generate costs and conflicts that contributed to its unprofitability and ultimate exit from Brazil in 2018. This experience, contrasted with country situations where Walmart's overall competitive and labor and human resource practices "fit" better with national markets and institutions, underlines the brittle, problematic nature of diffusionist corporate models lacking adaptive capacity to significant cross-national variations across host countries.
This book explores how the labor practices of the world's largest private employer, Walmart, were contested by unions and regulators in Latin America. With an in-depth case study of Brazil, and a comparative examination of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, the authors analyze the problematic encounter between diffusion of home-office antilabor practices and evolving national institutional contexts that sometimes enable considerable union and/or regulatory resistance. Walmart's "repressive familial" and "anti-union" model is found to generate costs and conflicts that contributed to its exit from Brazil after 23 years.
Scott B. Martin is a Lecturer in International Affairs at Columbia University, and The New School, USA.
João Paulo Cândia Veiga is Assistant Professor and Chair of Political Science of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil.
Katiuscia Moreno Galhera is VisitingFaculty at Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, Brazil.
