The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members struck the Vons and Pavillions supermarket chain in Southern California on October 11. Two other chains, Albertson’s and Ralphs, immediately locked out workers at their stores to back up the Vons bosses. Altogether, some 70,000 workers are on strike or locked out at 850 stores, which are being kept open by thousands of newly hired strikebreakers.

Large picket lines greet potential shoppers and delivery truck drivers at many of the stores. Pickets pass out leaflets explaining the issues and why their picket lines should be honored. In response, many shoppers leave and shop elsewhere.

The picket lines have been spirited, marked by the number of grocery workers who are in their late teens or early 20s. As soon as picketing began here, city bus drivers and many other passersby honked in solidarity. Young strikers at one of the picket sites in Los Angeles would jump on the buses, distribute fliers about the strike to the riders, and then jump off.

Two days later, on October 13, more than 2,000 bus mechanics represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union went on strike against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in the Los Angeles area. The bus drivers have honored mechanics’ picket lines, shutting down the vast majority of bus lines as well as all subway and light rail lines in the area.

The mechanics have been working without a contract for more than a year. This is the second major transit strike in Los Angeles in three years. In 2000 the bus drivers union struck for more than a month, shutting down the third-largest transit system in the country. As with the grocery strikers, the main issue is maintaining health benefits.

Support is coming from all directions, say striking and locked-out grocery workers. “People are very supportive,” said Elvira Belma, at an Albertson’s in Southgate while on picket duty October 15. “People are dropping off pizza, chips, soda, water. One thing is for sure, we won’t go hungry.” Sheet metal workers, longshoremen, teachers, oil workers, meat packers, and others have joined and brought food donations to UFCW picket lines.

The strike is having a measurable effect. There are far fewer cars in supermarket parking lots. There are daily reports in the media that shelves are not being restocked. In many stores deli and bakery departments remain closed. Most stores have cut back their hours.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters drivers are refusing to drive through picket lines at stores.

The grocery workers are fighting against cuts to their health and pension benefits and a company-proposed two-tier wage structure with much lower pay for new hires. The UFCW is asking for wage increases, but the companies have offered a freeze.

Many workers are in no mood to give up the health-care benefits the union has won. Full- and part-time workers do not pay premiums for full family health insurance, which includes dental and vision care.  
 
Bosses’ propaganda campaign
The employers and big-business media are campaigning to portray the union’s health-care demands as unreasonable. An October 11 Los Angeles Times editorial, “Health Care on the Line,” said the “union stance echoes the old hard line of the United Auto Workers. But those days are gone.” Another article, in the same paper, referred to the UFCW agreement as a “Cadillac contract.”

In their offensive against the UFCW, the grocery bosses are running full-page ads that claim, “Our employees, hands down, enjoy some of the best, most comprehensive health care benefits in American industry—and will continue to receive a very generous benefit. They currently pay no premium for individual or full family coverage—almost unheard in today’s world. With health care costs skyrocketing we think it is reasonable to ask our employees to share in a very small portion of that cost going forward—$5 for individuals and $15 [per week] for families.”

A UFCW fact sheet, “Setting the Record Straight: Why We Are on Strike,” responds that “This is a lie.” The union points out that the supermarket giants want to “increase copayments, institute deductibles and place caps on payments for prescriptions and surgeries. The union estimates that this will amount to a 50% cut in medical benefits that would shift almost a billion dollars in health care costs onto the workers over the term of the contract.”

The bosses also peddle the myth that grocery workers are highly paid, pointing to the top wage of $17.90 for high-seniority cashiers. Unionists point out that many workers earn less than $10 an hour. Gina Guglielmotti, a clerk at Ralphs, said, “I get paid 80 cents above minimum wage. We want to stop the constant depression of wages.”

In addition, 75 percent of supermarket workers are part-time and rarely work a full week. “The majority of part-timers never work a 40-hour week; the exception is around Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said grocery worker Elvira Belma. Vons, Ralphs, and Albertson’s “want to slash wages for new employees,” says a union flyer. “This would create a new ‘second class’ of workers who would be paid much less than their coworkers.”

Wall Street investment firms are cheering on the supermarket giants. “It’s a question of survival,” said one analyst from Merrill Lynch, “They’ve got to narrow the cost gap with their nonunion competition. They can’t fight with one hand and one leg tied behind their back.” Safeway, owner of Vons, isn’t hurting for money, with a cash flow of about $800 million a year after capital expenditures, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“This strike could go on for a while,” said Ted Luebky, who works in a Vons meat department. “It’s clear that the market is taking a hard stance against us. They want to break the union. We need to stand up to them.”
 
 
Related article:
Meat packers join grocery workers on picket line  
 
 
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