I live in northern California, and even though the California grocery workers’ strike is currently only in the southern part of the state, we’re starting to get ads up here pushing both sides of the strike. From the strikers’ point of view (actually the ad I’ve heard is from the CA Teachers’ Union), management is taking food from the mouths of workers’ babies (yeah, I’m being facetious here but not by much), while the management side of it says that the workers are simply being asked to participate in paying for their healthcare ($5/week for singles and $15/week for families, plus low copays for prescription drugs and office visits).
Frankly, if management is right, I have very little sympathy for the workers. I have to pay a hell of a lot more than $5/week for my healthcare coverage (my company subsidizes some of it, but I still pay more than that), plus I have to pay copays on doctor visits and prescriptions. I suspect (though I don’t know for certain) that unionized grocery workers make reasonably decent money, so if the healthcare thing is the only issue, I just don’t see what the big deal is.
WalMart is planning on opening a bunch of Mega stores in Ca soon, which will sell groceries amoung other stuff. They are non-union, and do not contribute to worker benifits. Ca grocers are trying to bring their costs down in anticipation of WM.
Quoting union sources from the article;
"Officials say workers would take a 50 percent cut in health care coverage or pay up to $5,000 of their average $20,000 annual wage to continue funding it. " This cut would effect new hires.
I don’t claim to be exceptionally well-versed in the whole thing, but it’s becoming obvious that the unions vastly overestimated their indespensible place in the grocery world.
Replacement workers are reported to have gone to 3-hour training sessions and then made pretty good work of taking over from the union people.
I also heard on AM talk radio that the Kroger CEO (I think it was) called the current lost sales a bargain if they get a better cost-sharing arrangement from the unions for the future. Management has flatly rejected binding arbitration, and they are apparently in any mood to move from their position any time too soon.
I personally think that the union leaders subconciously wanted to feel good by showing their muscle. What good is power if you never get to use it?
The grocery workers are essentially unskilled labor, except for the butchers. I don’t think anyone wants any yahoo back there with the meat saw. I think they thought that somehow the stores would collapse without them, but it hasn’t happened. There is a supply/demand component to labor, and apparently the demand wasn’t nearly as great as they thought. They aren’t the teamsters or the longshoremen.
I’m guessing that once the first home forclosures start happening among the union ranks, the leadership will crack.
Full disclosure: My sympathies lie with management.
The contract ended and the two sides couldn’t even come close to coming to terms. In the old contract, all workers who worked more than 24 hours a week (that’s right 24 hours a week), got full, free health care. The cost of this health care to the corporations has gone up astronomically in the last few years.
Managment is asking for:
-Employees to cover some of the health care costs. $5/week single, $15/week family. The actual coverage would not be quite as good but would still be excellent.
-Tiered pay. In other words, all new hires would be at a lower pay rate than the current employees but seniority would still be counted when assigning shifts and whatnot. This is a major sticking point. (Aside: The last major strike of this union was in 1980 or so. They agreed to tiered pay then. I was 15 years old and almost got a nice bagger job in the market until the strike happened.)
-The ability to open any new stores as non-union stores. Employees of the new stores could vote to join the union at a later date. Indeed that is the law.
-Increasing the employees pay but not at the rate that the union would prefer.
The union majorly screwed this one up. They are getting very limited support from other unions if any at all. After less than a week of confusion, the replacement workers are doing an excellent job, just as good as the union guys did, granted there are less customers than normal. (This is my observation here in Santa Barbara.) The union had been prepping for a strike for months before it happened by collecting “strike fund” money from their members.
When I was a kid, the checker job took a fair amount of skill. They had to enter in the prices of the items by hand and do it quickly. They had to figure out the correct amount of change to give. Now all they do is put the item in front of a bar code reader and the computer tells them how much money to give the customer.
The good news is that reports are coming out that they are finally making some headway in the negtiations and we may have resolution as soon as Friday.
Thank you for this thread. I live in So. Cal and every time I go to Vons (the only market in walking distance), I get harassed by striking workers, who yell at me to shop elsewhere.
Hypothetically speaking, if the strike ends and the workers go back to work, does management retain the right to lay off these employees if business goes downhill? I ask because I would be extremely amused if the strikers’ insistence I shop elsewhere comes back to bite them on the ass like that. After all, I only go to Vons because it’s nearby, and if I have to shop elsewhere, it’ll be at a place infinitely better than Vons. I’d have no reason to ever go back.
The whole conflict is in the context of WalMart. One of their biggest competitive advantages is that pay their workforce next to nothing with next to no benefits. A gigantic savings which is one of the factors they use to decimate existing businesses wherever they go. They are going to move into So Ca.
Until WalMart came along, the businesses there could more or less afford to have a unionized workforce and pay decent wages with decent benefits. With WalMart on the horizon, they can’t afford to. Thus the conflict.
Without going on too much of a hijack, the next time you go to WalMart, you might consider where the money you’re saving came from.
The whole conflict is in the context of WalMart. One of their biggest competitive advantages is that pay their workforce next to nothing with next to no benefits. A gigantic savings which is one of the factors they use to decimate existing businesses wherever they go. They are going to move into So Ca.
Until WalMart came along, the businesses there could more or less afford to have a unionized workforce and pay decent wages with decent benefits. With WalMart on the horizon, they can’t afford to. Thus the conflict.
Without going on too much of a hijack, the next time one buys at WalMart, consider where the money you’re saving came from. Savings from paying spit nothing to their workers, the foreign workers they buy from, and by the way forcing everyone they come near to match their attitude.
Harassment has been minimal here in Santa Barbara. I’ve heard one or two second hand accounts that aren’t very credible. On one of the first days of the strike I was politely asked to support the workers and I politely declined. One guy mumbled “to hell with you” at my wife under his breath when she shopped at Vons. She was amused.
Most of our shopping is done at the independent upscale local market anyway. Once in a while we’ll go to Vons. It’ll be a cold day in hell when they approve a WalMart in Santa Barbara. We wouldn’t shop there anyway. Too big and crowded for me, too pedestrian for the wife.
I’m in Northern California. The workers at my local Safeway store are competent, friendly, helpful, and keep the store spotless. There are always enough checkers. There are no WalMart groceries here yet, and the town is trying to keep a WalMart from moving in, but if they are anything like the other parts of WalMarts I wouldn’t shop there for a million bucks.
I’m torn about shopping at the Safeway - I support the strike, but my branch is not striking, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone in it out of work. I think the picketers should be around the WalMarts, myself. (probably not legal, though.)
I thought another management demand was a cap on management contribution to health coverage at current levels. Sure, the little contribution now wouldn’t hurt, but in five years this is going to be a lot.
Soon it will be just like department stores - shoppers drive all the service out of the former high end stores by shopping at the discounters, then start complaining why they neve can find a clerk when they want one.
Except that Nordstroms is thriving as is Trader Joes, Gelson’s and the even higher end independent market (Lazy Acres) here. That statement is not supported by the facts.
Where I live, I’m not sure if this is everywhere, they’ve stopped picketing the Ralphs, even though the Ralphs workers are still on strike. The replacement workers really aren’t as good as the people who used to work, because they always seem to get the wrong charges or not be able to work the scanner. It’s a little disconcerting to walk into the store and not see all the old clerks.
The only grocery stores in my area that aren’t on strike are Gelsons and Trader Joes. I know Gelsons doesn’t have unions, I’m not sure about TJ. But it seems wierd to, in support of the Ralphs and co. union, shop at a store without one completely.
Occasionally on the news there are lead stories about striking workers accosting customers at supermarket entrances. I remember one customer swearing and yelling about one of them handling his son, and one woman pleading to be left alone while some guy pointed and yelled.
It takes a certain kind of gall to expect strangers to take up your cause and inconvenience themselves; it takes an extra special kind to berate them and argue with them when they won’t.
I don’t have a cite yet, but I’m almost certain you’re wrong on #3.
Let me look around a little bit and see what I can come up with… Your links just go to a blog.
Okay… Here are some figures to put things in perspective.
(note- I’m having a hell of a time finding unbiased cites - but hopefully this will be enough to convince you)
It’s a fact that WalMart is the #1 grocery retailer in the US.
This is a chain that had barely started selling groceries less than 10 years ago. That sounds like a threat to me…
Looking at the bottom of this page you can see some figures about Walmart, including the fact that Kellog’s Corn Flakes cost about 1/2 as much at WM as other grocery stores.
USA Today has an article covering the opening on the Supercenters in CA…
Don’t you think that the #1 grocery retailer in the US entering a new (for them) market might pose a little bit of a threat?
