NO: Dominic Burch - PR manager, Asda press office

I have to say that quite frankly we're baffled by the War on Want report - a lot of it is mumbo-jumbo. We have great relationships with our colleagues and have always been willing to work closely with unions where we have partnership agreements. Union membership at ASDA is relatively low (less than 10 per cent), but we've always respected the right of colleagues to join a union if they wish. We continue to respect that right. We have a partnership agreement with the GMB that covers our stores.

In depots we have a mixture of partnership and collective bargaining agreements - the latter at sites where we have acquired a depot from a third party operator such as the one you refer to at Washington. Where those agreements are in place, we continue to respect them.

A lot of the content appears to have simply been lifted from a number of different US union publications. Some of the people quoted haven't worked for us for quite a few years. The Iowa study and others are clearly union-sponsored papers that are designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. If it were true, then business growth would be declining, or at best static, where we operate, and the opposite is true.

On so-called 'Chip-Away' Strategy at Lutterworth - as I have explained to every journalist that I've spoken to - it is the output from a management away day at our Lutterworth depot last October. One of the proposals discussed was to 'Manage the site without involvement from the GMB'. This has obviously caused a stir, but the document you refer to is simply a record of all the things discussed at this meeting - it is not a strategy that was implemented - in fact it was even written up as a 'Parking Lot' idea i.e. a non-starter.

Any suggestion that this depot or any other for that matter has plans to stop involving the GMB is utter nonsense. As David Smith said in Personnel Today last month [October] - we back our colleagues' right to join a union and we've had partnership agreements with the GMB for donkey's years now. The depot in Lutterworth has a structured and professional relationship with the GMB that ensures proper consultation at all times and regular meaningful meetings.

The open and direct dialogue we have with our own people, plus flexible and innovative employment policies, is part of the reason ASDA has been consistently voted, by its own people, as one of Britain and Europe's best places to work. Only last month we were named Scotland's best employer. It's worth pointing out that we won the first of these awards after, not before, ASDA became part of Wal-Mart.

Dominic Burch
PR manager, Asda press office

YES: Matthew McGregor - Senior Campaigns Officer, War on Want

Like many companies, ASDA Wal-Mart's glossy PR rhetoric fails to match the less pretty reality. The anger of the GMB at ASDA Wal-Mart's increasingly anti-union stance is obvious, with union reps even talking about the importation of US anti-union tactics.

Recently, staff at ASDA Wal-Mart had a 10% pay raise offer withdrawn after they refused to give up their collective bargaining rights. ASDA's proud boast to accept the principle that workers are allowed to join a union if they wish is particularly ironic. Even Britain's weak labour rules give workers that right under the law.

It is telling that ASDA Wal-Mart concentrate on the union aspects of War on Want's alternative report rather than the high cost of their low prices strategy. ASDA Wal-Mart's relentless drive to push down the price of goods in its stores has taken a heavy toll on their suppliers as well as their staff. Suppliers are engaged in a race to the bottom in cutting labour and social standards to compete for ASDA Wal-Mart's tough demands. Wal-Mart even demands that suppliers open their books to the company to identify more and more cost savings.

The multi-million dollar PR war room that Wal-Mart has set up in the US to counter increasingly negative press about the corporation may have a new branch in the UK, but the facts speak for themselves: Wal-Mart's policies drive down wages and lock in poverty pay in some of the poorest countries in the world, while undermining trade unions in the UK.

Matthew McGregor
Senior Campaigns Officer, War on Want