I’ve never been a big fan of Wal-Mart—despite the aggressively low prices, I have always found the stores to be crowded and cheap, with marginal customer service—but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire it as a smart business.

Setting aside my personal feelings about shopping there, I have always marveled at Wal-Mart’s ability to manage itself profitably with ruthless efficiency.

And that’s why this holiday announcement from the world’s largest retailer shouldn’t come as any great surprise: Wal-Mart announced this week that it has agreed “to pay up to $640 million to settle 63 suits alleging it routinely underpaid employees around the country, ending years of embarrassing legal battles over its treatment of workers,” according to The Wall Street Journal.   

“The workers and their lawyers will receive at least $352 million, and the payments could reach $640 million, depending on how many claims affected workers submit,” according to The New York Times.

“Union critics of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, saw the settlement as proof of their view that the company achieves its low prices in part by cheating workers,” the Times added. “But the company rejected that characterization, saying it had already corrected wage practices that it has long attributed to local managers acting without authority.”

As I’ve noted before, Wal-Mart management has an uncanny ability to know when to fold its tent and get in front of a negative issue, as the company did last year when it came to criticism over not providing adequate health care to its workers.  Still, the company’s actions on health care, I noted at the time, were disingenuous and little more than PR spin given that Wal-Mart touted that “92.7 percent” of employees were covered by a health plan—any health plan—when in fact only 50 percent were being covered by an actual Wal-Mart health plan.

In other words, there is ALWAYS something else behind the scenes that Wal-Mart is trying to accomplish when it offers up a settlement like this. The company doesn’t do it because it feels it is the right and honest thing to do for workers; no, Wal-Mart only gives in when there is some bigger issue at stake.

And, here’s what is behind this settlement, according to The Wall Street Journal’s law blog: “Wal-Mart wanted to settle the lawsuits not just to avoid potentially more costly defeats in the courtroom, but to resolve issues that might be used to argue for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The legislation, expected to be considered by Congress next year, is fiercely opposed by Wal-Mart because the company worries it will make it easier for workers to unionize,” according to Paul Secunda, an associate professor at the Marquette University Law School.

Secunda told the Journal’s law blog: “This is part of their overall strategy to get their labor house in order, and compared to what unionization might cost them, I think they probably realized it was a small price to pay.” In other words, this settlement by Wal-Mart is less about doing the right thing by workers and more about posturing for a long-term strategy to fight the Employee Free Choice Act.

I’ve said here before that I think the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act pushes the frighteningly wrongheaded notion that the secret ballot, a pillar of our democracy, is somehow good for electing presidents but flawed when it comes to union organizing. It’s a bad idea that is going to make for even more divisive labor-management relations, in my view.

But, a disingenuous Wal-Mart “settlement” as a hedge against the Employee Free Choice Act, if that’s what the company is doing, doesn’t help matters either. It’s just the beginning of the PR spin and posturing we’ll undoubtedly be bombarded with from both sides as the battle over this terrible piece of legislation heats up in the new year.

So, Merry Christmas and happy holidays from Wal-Mart. Ho, ho, ho indeed.