Wal-Mart welcome, but unions protest.

LAS VEGAS -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., here as elsewhere, is aggressively going after grocery market share.

To underscore that point, the Bentonville, Ark.-based giant opened four Neighborhood Markets here on January 26 of this year. The outlets, which average about 40,000 square feet, resemble food/drug combination stores in terms of the shopping experience they offer and the way products are organized.

Meant to offer a convenient alternative to a Supercenter for fill-in shopping, Neighborhood Market units feature drive-through pharmacies and two front entrances, one for the grocery side of the store and one for the drug side, which includes health and beauty aids as well as the pharmacy counter.

Wal-Mart reportedly plans to operate a total of 12 Neighborhood Markets in Las Vegas within the next few years. The four that opened in January joined seven Supercenters and five Wal-Mart discount stores in the area.

The local debut of the Neighborhood Market format was met by pickets protesting their status as the only nonunion grocery stores in the Las Vegas Valley. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which represents about 7,000 members, has long opposed WalMart's expansion in the area, contending that the company offers workers noncompetitive wages and poor benefits.

Wal-Mart denies those charges, and has argued that the large number of people who apply for positions at its stores effectively rebuts the notion that it offers substandard jobs. The company said that about 950 people applied for the 320 openings at the four Neighborhood Market stores.

The UFCW has aggressively targeted Wal-Mart in Las Vegas and in southern California, both with store-organizing drives and with public relations initiatives aimed at tarnishing the retailer's image with consumers.

The UFCW is one of the four largest unions in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which recently held its executive council meeting in Las Vegas. In the wake of that event AFL-CIO president John Sweeney proposed creating a $22.5 million fund that would be devoted to recruiting new union members. About $7.5 million of that total would go toward organizing drives at such large companies as Wal-Mart and Comcast Corp.

Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has won a labor victory involving a former produce clerk in nearby Henderson, Nev. An administrative law judge last month cleared the retailer of wrongdoing in the 2003 termination of the former associate, who contended at a National Labor Relations Board hearing that he was dismissed for trying to organize fellow workers at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

"We're pleased with the judge's decision that Wal-Mart didn't violate any laws," a WalMart spokeswoman said.

Wal-Mart was found to have illegally confiscated union literature at the Henderson store and telling employees to destroy or disregard such literature. The company was ordered to post a sign at the store informing employees that despite its antiunion stance, Wal-Mart cannot legally remove union literature or stop employees from organizing a union.

The union called the order requiring the sign a slap on the wrist, and vowed to appeal the verdict regarding the dismissal.