Dictating when a business can close
There is certainly a lot that can be said regarding the closure of this unionized Wal-Mart store in Québec, and today I started thinking about what it means to demand that a business — any business — must keep a store open. Shouldn’t an owner have the freedom to close up shop for any reason it wants? I’m not really sure what I think of this, but the idea of freedoms is an interesting one. The lawyer for the employees “alleges the store closing violates the freedom of association guaranteed under the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. It may be hard to sympathize with Wal-Mart’s argument about the store being unprofitable, but what would life be like if employers had to justify to a court, and by what measure, that a business was unprofitable to avoid lawsuits from employees. Anyway… I just think it’s an interesting situation.