It’s the largest retailer in the world, the world’s third-largest public company with more than 11,000 stores and 2.2 million employees worldwide, and it’s not unionized.

For the labour union movement, Walmart is the Holy Grail.

 And like the grail, it has been an elusive target. With a couple of exceptions, Walmart has remained union-free, though it pays its employees peanuts, averaging between $9-$12 an hour for its rank and file workers.

 Peanuts would be better. At least they’re a decent source of protein.

The Grail became even more elusive Friday when workers at the Weyburn Walmart, the only unionized store in Canada, voted to decertify, by a vote 51-5 with 13 abstensions.  Actually, they voted on December 22, 2010, but the process has been held up in court. When the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeal against the decertification vote last week, it paved the way for the vote count Friday, and it should be formalized by the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board later this week.

 Another victory for founder Sam Walton’s family, the Arkansas-based clan that still controls the retail giant.

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself, why would people who are paid so poorly vote to decertify their union?

Good question. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that after workers at the Jonquiere, Quebec Walmart voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union in 2004, Walmart closed the store the next year. “You can’t have a store that is a struggling store anyway and add a bunch of people and a bunch of work rules,” said Walmart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.

Or that in 2000 butchers in a Walmart store in Jacksonville, Texas voted to join a union and two weeks later Walmart closed its meat counters and started selling only prepackaged meat, offering the meat cutters other, non-unionized jobs. “Our decision to expand case-ready meat has nothing to do with went on in Jacksonville,” said a Walmart spokesperson.

Etc.

Faced with that and numerous other hard-nosed Walmart responses to union organizing, if I were an employee of the only unionized store (still standing) in Canada, I’d be a little nervous, too. This job doesn’t pay much, but it’s a job. And for a lot of people, jobs are hard to come by.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union vows it will continue to fight the good fight, but as long as Walmart’s business model continues to be: sell everything for ridiculously cheap prices, it’s apparent they won’t be increasing paycheques anytime soon.

Or tolerating a movement from without or within that threatens the Walmart way.

“We shall overcome” is labour’s anthem. In the wake of the Weyburn Walmart decertification vote, it’s more like an ironic lament.