OTTAWA, Oct. 22 - On Tuesday, a group of employees and managers from Wal-Mart's Canadian subsidiary will hold an unusual meeting, at least by the standards of the company. The gathering in Jonquière, Quebec, will be the start of talks that the retail workers' union hopes will produce the first collective agreement in North America covering Wal-Mart workers.

Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press Pierre Martineau, left, and Patrice Bergeron, Wal-Mart employees in Jonquière, Quebec, helped organize a union certification drive.

The opening of negotiations will be the latest step in a two-year effort by the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, to organize Wal-Mart's 241 stores in Canada. The Canadian arm of the international union has found more success with Wal-Mart than its United States counterpart, thanks in part to differences in labor laws. Six applications for union certification at Wal-Mart stores are pending or under appeal in three Canadian provinces.

But the union's success so far in Jonquière - the store's union local was certified by the provincial labor board in August - offers no guarantees about the outcome.

Earlier efforts by the Canadian branch of the United Steelworkers of America at a Wal-Mart store just across the border from Detroit, in Windsor, Ontario, brought certification, but the union failed to sign a contract before the local collapsed.

And Wal-Mart Canada, which has an undisguised dislike for unions, is already saying the Jonquière outlet is a money-losing underperformer, raising worker concerns that it will be closed before any contract is signed.

"It's very clear that they don't want a union," said Louis Bolduc, the union's Quebec coordinator. "If we have to start a fight between them and every union in Quebec, we will."

Wal-Mart first came to Canada 10 years ago, when it purchased 122 discount department stores owned by Woolco Canada, which is now defunct. Among the 22 stores it did not buy were 10 with unionized employees. Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada, which is based in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Ontario, said the store selection was "generally performance based" and not focused on union status.

Despite the steelworkers' unhappy experience in Windsor in the 1990's, Michael J. Fraser, the Canadian national director of the food and commercial workers union, said his organization decided to make a target of Wal-Mart when its Canadian operation began expanding into the grocery business. Most of the union's members work for Canada's large grocery chains.

"It was partly a defensive thing," Mr. Fraser said. "Our concern was that when they started opening large retail food stores that paid lower wages and offered lower benefits, that would have an impact on all our members in Canada."

The union's main pitch to Wal-Mart workers was a promise of improved wages and benefits. Mr. Fraser said that Wal-Mart generally pays 8 to 8.50 Canadian dollars an hour, or $6.50 to $6.90. His union's members earn about 12 to 14 Canadian dollars, or $9.75 to $11.35 and, in some cases, up to 24 Canadian dollars, or $19.50, an hour. When benefits are considered, Mr. Fraser estimated, the gap in earnings between his members and Wal-Mart workers is 10 to 20 Canadian dollars an hour.

In addition, Mr. Fraser contended that the union could give Wal-Mart employees a way to settle disagreements and disputes with the company fairly - something, he said, that they currently lack.

"For people who work at Wal-Mart, you do what you're told, when you're told, or you're out of there," Mr. Fraser said.

Mr. Pelletier, of Wal-Mart, rejected the union's charge that the company was a substandard, low-paying employer. He confirmed that wages start at about $8.40 an hour, but said that they could rise to $15. On top of that, Mr. Pelletier said in an e-mail message, profit sharing "can add hundreds (and even thousands) of dollars in bonus payments" depending on the performance of an employee's store.

When Wal-Mart opens a new store in Canada, Mr. Pelletier noted, it typically receives 10 applications for every job. Wal-Mart was also ranked 14th on a list of Canada's 50 best employers compiled by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm, and published by The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto.

"Are we a perfect employer? No, of course not," Mr. Pelletier said. "Our strategy is to be the best employer possible."

He added: "The debate seems to have become union and nonunion. It should be: Are you a good employer or not a good employer?"

While the union has been attempting to organize Wal-Mart stores throughout Canada, Mr. Fraser said that its efforts had been concentrated on the provinces of Saskatchewan and Quebec. Labor law in Canada is an issue handled by the provinces, except for a few industries like airlines and railways.

"Quebec and Saskatchewan, in my view, have two of the best sets of labor law in Canada," Mr. Fraser said. For his part, Mr. Pelletier called the two provinces' legislation "almost antiemployer."

Despite that, the union's efforts have not always been successful. Its applications at two Saskatchewan stores are being challenged not only by Wal-Mart, but by a lawyer who said he was being paid by employees who said they were coerced into signing union cards. The union has applied to represent workers in a third Saskatchewan city, Moose Jaw, even though it has yet to sign a single member there. Mr. Fraser said it was arguing that it had successor rights because the city formerly had a unionized Woolco store. An effort in Manitoba failed in two votes and Jonquière failed its first vote.

Mr. Fraser contended that those defeats were mainly the result of unfair labor tactics by Wal-Mart, like reducing work hours for union sympathizers, and fear among workers in areas with limited job opportunities. Mr. Pelletier argued that the union defeats were a clear sign that workers like things as they are.

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart sent out a news release that, among other things, suggested that the Jonquière store was in financial distress. Mr. Pelletier said that the store had lost money since it opened three years ago and that its employees had been regularly briefed about its financial position.

"Things have gotten worse in recent months," Mr. Pelletier said of Jonquière's performance, though he declined to offer specific figures for it or the two other Wal-Mart outlets in the Saguenay, a region north of the city of Quebec.

He attributed the poor performance to divisions among the staff created by the union certification. In particular, he blamed the exclusion from the bargaining unit of several workers, mainly supervisors, office workers and security guards, that the labor board found to be in the categories of managers or excluded employees.

"We're going into the process and the talks with the union in good faith," he said. "We're trying to be cautiously optimistic about the situation with respect to Jonquière.''

While Wal-Mart has never closed a store in Canada, Mr. Pelletier said, Jonquière's survival depends on better financial performance.

"We have been struggling with that store for many months now and we hope we can salvage it," Mr. Pelletier said.

To Mr. Bolduc, the union's Quebec director, suggestions that Jonquière is unprofitable and may be closed are just a tactic to frighten employees at other Wal-Mart stores away from the union.

"It's the first time that Wal-Mart has said that one of its stores in Canada is not commercially viable," Mr. Bolduc said. "Yet the parking lot is always full. If it's not profitable, maybe the prices are too low."

But hanging over Jonquière is another instance of a large corporation based in the United States closing an outlet in Quebec after it was unionized. In an earlier episode, the Teamsters organized workers at a downtown Montreal franchise of McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Ltd. Shortly after contract talks began, the fast-food outlet shut.

Gilles Trudeau, a professor of labor law at the Université de Montréal, said that a Supreme Court of Canada ruling since then on an unrelated case has made it clear that Wal-Mart or any other employer can shut a recently unionized factory or store without fear of legal repercussions.

"If Wal-Mart really decides to close in Jonquière, it's going to be really hard for the union and the workers," Professor Trudeau said. "There's no recourse."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company