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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. violated US labor law when it disciplined an employee for wearing a union T-shirt in the store where he worked and telling co-workers about a union meeting, a Federal appeals court ruled. ''Wal-Mart failed to demonstrate how the T-shirt interfered in any manner with the operation of the store," the court said yester-day. The court upheld most of a decision by the National Labor Relations Board that the employee didn't violate a policy at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, that bars workers from soliciting inside the company's stores. The Appeals Court, based in St. Louis, ruled in Wal-Mart's favor on one issue, saying the company could sanction employee Brian Shieldnight, who worked in a Wal-Mart store in Tahlequah, Okla., for asking another employee to sign a union authorization card. [more]

Labor Board Orders Wal-Mart Hearing
After workers at the Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express in Loveland rejected unionization 17-1 in a vote Feb. 25, a spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 said the union would ask the NLRB to dismiss the results. Local 7 spokesman Dave Minshall had said no union member was allowed to observe the election and that Wal-Mart added employees to the unit to dilute the strength of the union supporters. "The claims made by the UFCW are simply not true, and we are confident that the (NLRB) regional office will find no evidence of these allegations," said Christi Davis Gallagher, a spokeswoman for Bentonille, Ark.-based Wal-Mart. A hearing was scheduled for March 25 at the NLRB office in Denver. "After a preliminary investigation I have concluded that the (union's) objections raise substantial and material issues of fact, including credibility resolutions, which can best be resolved at a hearing," NLRB regional director Allan Benson said. Organizers of the unionization vote had hoped to establish what would have been the second union at a Wal-Mart store. Workers in Canada also are fighting the world's largest retailer to form a union. [more]