No way would I cross. I worked in retail for seven years, and I just couldn’t justify crossing to myself.
Unless it was an emergency (had to get to the pharmacy or whatever).
I’m trying really hard to remember that this is not the Pit and therefore not unleash some of the rage I’m feeling at people who pop off comments like “I don’t believe in unions, never have, never will” without providing even a shred of a reason for the opinion…
To address one specific point, regarding insurance. There is a reason why peeopl cover themselves under both their and their spouse’s policies. The primary policy may have much higher deductibles or copays. The primary might not cover drugs that the secondary does. There may be issues with dependent children. For the company to come in and boot spouses off of policies unilaterally is IMHO grotesque.
Otto, I worked for two unions, one at a local grocery, and another when I worked for UPS. The grocery union was a joke. All it did was protect the jerk-offs, and give them the same raises everyone else got. I paid something like $13 per month for that benefit, and this when I was working 20 hours per week at $3.75/hour. I did get vacation, but was told when I could take it. Didn’t care about that, I was 17, where was I gonna go? School? And joining the union was mandatory.
UPS is a Teamsters joint, and is a strong union. The big selling point was the $8/hr starting pay. That was 15 years ago, and the starting pay now is $8.50/hr. Plus $100 initiation, plus a monthly dues, I forget what it was.
I think that collective bargaining was really imprtant when The Man was working the poor downtrodden ten hours a day 6 days a week. Safety and such were greatly improved due to unions. Working in a grocery store ain’t working in the mines.
And my current employer has done all the health care changes listed. It irritates me, cause they’re saving pennies when they owe $100 bills. But the job market is kinda tight, so here I sit.
And people who aren’t paying a dime towards their health care premiums should shut the heck up and join the real world.
Hell yeah I would have crossed. I don’t give a crap about other people’s pay, it’s their fault they have that crappy job, and they accepted the pay as is. I have no respect for anyone who goes on strike, unless illegal activity is involved.
I would second what Doctor Jackson says. I have seen too many situations where unions jack up pay for employees so the business is no longer competitive in the market. Also numerous situations where slacker employees are protected from being fired. There have been good things that unions have done in the past, and I am thankful for that. But I think that in many cases they have no interest in the success of the business, only how much money can they get and how much power can they wield.
To answer the OP: Hell yeah I’d cross.
I’d cross, because of two jackass union members many years ago.
I was about 10 years old going into a Save-On drug store that a local union was trying to unionize. I don’t recall all the issues, I was 10 after all, and was just going in to buy candy or something.
Two of the three union members at the door screamed at me for crossing their picket line, and again on the way out.
That, and my brothers lousy experience with his union, have soured me pretty heavily…
I agree with this statement, I was a “union hand” for a little over a year (local 669 Sprinkler fitters) it cost me 2 1/2 % of my pay and a little every month and I got NOTHING from the union, the first time I needed them they acted like they didn’t know me so I went and got a job that I didn’t have to pay someone for.
unclviny
[stunned Aussie]US bosses pay for health insurance??[/sA]
I’m tired, I’ve just finished work, I need to pick up some milk and bread. I’m going straight in there. And any picketers thinking of heckling me had better think twice.
I got my groceries yesterday night, but yes, I’d cross. Everybody is trying to cut healthcare benefits, because it’s getting really freaking expensive for employers. I used to get health insurance for free through my employer, and now I have to pay some of it. At least I have insurance. I have no idea what checkers and bagboys get paid, but I bet it’s pretty reasonable given the work they’re doing. I hear arguments all the time of “These people have to support their families!!” Well, so do a lot of people who make $5.25/hr (or whatever min. wage is now) with no benefits, doing a lot more dangerous and difficult work. Also, I shop regularly at Dierberg’s and Schnuck’s. . .as for supporting families, etc.–I dare say at least 50-60 percent of these employees are high-school or college kids.
I’d cross it in a second. . .knowing many people who dropped out of unions (in places where they weren’t forced to be in one) because, as DTT said, they often protect the slackers while doing little for the real grievances of the rest of the hard-working, dues-paying members. You can try to refute that all you want, and I’ll concede it’s not always the case, but I’ve seen it happen too many times where real issues of workplace safety and danger (especially in cases involving only a few people) are ignored or back-burnered in order to focus efforts on giving the whole union an extra 15 minute smoke break every day. On preview, I see unclviny making essentially the same point.
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- I work at one of those three stores, on the Illinois side of the St-Louis metro area. The Illinois side contract was (if I heard it right) historically negotiated after the MO side was done, and patterned after it. There has been no official comment from either the store or my union on the matter. The IL side (local 881) has a no-strike clause in the contract, and the general feeling is that if the MO side strikes for long they will end up being replaced–just because unemployment is where it is now and there are so many people looking for jobs, and most of the jobs don’t involve more than a couple days of training at most.
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- The union does offer some health benefits, but joining the union is compulsory if you need or want health benefits or not.
- Mostly what they do is protect fuck-offs from being fired.
- My union has never gone on strike in the past, for the simple/obvious reason that these are unskilled jobs and the workers are too easy to replace. And that was when unemployment was low.
- Co-workers current discussions tend to run towards “how long would you strike?”. I guess I might do it for maybe two weeks before asking what the store would hire me back on at, or find another job elsewhere if the union was vandalizing cars and really harassing line-crossers. I work nights and hate-hate-hate my job but can’t find anything else that pays near the $12/hr rate it does. If I could get 80% of what I’m making now working day shift Mon-Fri, I’d leave in a second and not look back. -I don’t blame anyone else for my shitty job; I did go on my own nickel and get an IT degree, but all those jobs are currently MIA also–and the only jobs I can walk right into pay way less than what I am currently making.
*And a semi-funny story:* the union has bulletin boards placed in the break rooms, where they are allowed to post their own notices. We joke that all the union officers and presidents have their own pension funds in Wal-Mart stock, because every time they post "warning news" about how we should boycott Wal-Mart for getting into the grocery business, the paper includes news on how much Wal-Mart stock or market share has gone up.
~I never cross picket lines. And I try to avoid large chain stores wherever possible.
So I have to go to a smaller store and pay $0.25 more for bread. It’s worth it.
There’s a list of unionized supermarkets on the union’s website.
http://ufcw655.com/strikeinformation.htm#UNION%20GROCERY%20STORES
Straub’s is on the list, along with a number of small, independent, neighborhood-type stores.
Even if I were tempted to cross (and there’s a store within 500 feet of my office) Mrs. Kunilou would never accept the food in the house.
I’d rather cut off my ear than cross it. I was raised to believe that crossing the picket line is just not done, but maybe that is because I was raised where kids don’t always get to visit the doctor when they are sick, people don’t always have houses to live and and dinner might not be a possibility if it is the end of the month. As a kid I went without more than a few meals myself, and the free market certainly didn’t give a shit about some hungry kid.
If business owners are allowed and encouraged to organize (through internal heirarchy, boards of directors, professional associations and the like) then it only makes sense that workers should organize, too. How else are they ever supposed to “compete” in this “fair market”?
sigh, like Otto, I’ve suddenly some of the little faith I had left in my countrypeople that they’d do the right thing. I hope you never have to experience what it is like to have no control over the most important aspect of your life- your ability to provide for yourself and your family- when you know you are the very cog that makes the company you work for run up those profits.
If I went to my usual grocery store and saw a strike going on, I wouldn’t hesitate to walk right past them and do my shopping.
I don’t see how the workers’ problems with management have anything to do with which grocery store I think has the best products for the lowest prices.
I’ve got more . . .
Dude, you can’t just look at numbers with no context and then say how terrible it is. What if these workers are already being paid a dollar an hour more than the norm in their industry and locale? What if every other store is paying the same but offering only a 60 cent raise over three years?
Whoa, I thought slavery was outlawed quite a few years ago! These workers were forced to work under these conditions with no choice in the matter? That’s appalling! :rolleyes:
Yeah, but Unions aren’t a non-free market thing. The management isn’t forced to listen to the Unions, so forming a Union may or may not be an effective strategy to raise one’s wages and improve working conditions.
This isn’t how it works, pally. The spouses aren’t “booted off,” the company just announced that it will no longer provide benefits for certain spouses. The employee can pay for those benefits himself if he still wants them. It’s not like they are no longer available.
I have extremely mixed feelings about this strike. On the one hand, the workers’ demands don’t seem entirely reasonable to me, and the only result I see is their being permanently replaced by non-union workers in all of the stores being struck. On the other hand, I was taught from small that one never, ever crossed a picket line. It’s really easy to say “we don’t need unions anymore, they’ve served their purpose, the free market will regulate itself.” I’m not convinced. By the same logic, we live in a civilized country and don’t need police anymore, especially since some police are corrupt, right?
I didn’t cross the line, I went somewhere else instead. But I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking about the situation.
I would not cross. There’s no excuse for treating workers like dirt; without unions, we’d all have even worse pay than we have now.
Nobody on this post knows the issues, I am only posting a memory of what I did in the 70s. La Raza Unida was boycotting a store for the Farm workers and against Coors Beer. I purposely went in and purchased grapes and a few six-packs. I walked out eating and drinking. The harassment was enjoyable, now I work under a contract. Things change…
Without unions, we’d also have less corruption, no union officials off on overseas “fact finding trips”, no untouchable layabout workers with friends in the right places. I have been a union member for over a decade. I’m very disillusioned, and I think it’s time to quit (it’s bloody expensive).
The workers are engaging the store owners in their quest for more pay. If they don’t get what they want, they are free to apply for work elsewhere.
I am engaging the store owners in my quest for a cheap loaf of bread. If I don’t get what I want, I am free to shop elsewhere.
The two things are separate.
Would I cross? Depends. Is there a store around with non-picketing employees and comparable prices? If so, then I wouldn’t cross, not out of support for the workers but because I wouldn’t want to get shot at (hey, they do that here in WV).
If I would have to either drive far for the same prices OR shop at a more expensive store, yeah, I’d cross.
I don’t see why I should pay an extra 20-40 bucks for groceries just because some people are pissed off about not getting a raise. I’m sorry their employer sucks, and I’m sorry they’re not being paid what they deserve, but I don’t see how shooting myself in the foot is going to help matters, considering I make less money than probably ALL of said hypothetical striking workers.
I never had an opinion regarding unions until I moved to West Virginia. I can’t speak for all states, but here they have done SO much more harm than good. They’re one of the major reasons there are no good jobs here — no good-paying employer wants to move their business to a state in which they are guaranteed to have to deal with noisy, mean, gun-toting unions who would literally rather run a business out of state than to compromise on their new contract from time to time. Coupled with WV’s brutal taxes on businesses, it’s not worth it to even look at this state to set up shop.