Rite Aid Workers Fight For a Union

After two years of reported harassement, intimidation, and firing of workers trying to organize a union, a majority of Rite Aid workers at the site voted to join the International Longshore Workers Local 26. For the past year they have been trying to get a contract.

Today is the annual Rite Aid shareholder’s meeting in New York. Angel Warner who works at the Lancaster Rite Aid distribution center and has been at the forefront of unionizing efforts will be attending today’s meeting to represent the workers in Lancaster.

We invited Rite Aid on to the show but they declined our invitation. Cheryl Slavinski, Rite Aid’s Director of Public Relations denied reports of firing workers who were trying to form the union. She told Democracy Now! producers that Rite Aid has been “bargaining in good faith” and is “anxious to settle the contract and move on.” She added that Rite Aid is “the most unionized drug store chain in the nation.”

Well Rite Aid worker Angel Warner joins me now here in the firehouse studio.

We’re also joined via Democracy Now! video stream by Harper’s Magazine Washington Editor Ken Silverstein. His latest article in the July 2009 issue is called “Labor’s Last Stand: The Corporate Campaign to Kill the Employee Free Choice Act.”

Angel Warner, 49-year-old mother of two, who has been working at the Rite Aid’s Southwest Distribution Center in Lancaster, California since it opened 10 years ago. She and 600 other workers have been trying to organize a union for the past 3 years. She is attending the Rite Aid Shareholder"s meeting today.

Ken Silverstein, Washington editor of Harper"s Magazine. His latest article in the July 2009 issue is called "Labor"s Last Stand: The Corporate Campaign to Kill the Employee Free Choice Act"