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Indybay Feature

1/24 Demo in Support of Grocery Workers

by Walter Johnson, Sec-Treas. of SFLC
Join us at a mass rally and protest at the Safeway on Market and Church from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, January 24, 2004.
LETTER FROM WALTER JOHNSON, S.F. LABOR COUNCIL

January 16, 2004

Dear Trade Unionists and Supporters of Labor Rights:

The strike/lockout fight of the 70,000 UFCW brothers and sisters in Southern California is at a turning point.

These workers have been on strike or locked-out at Safeway, Albertsons and Ralphs stores since October 11th. The grocery chains want to slash healthcare coverage for current workers and basically eliminate it for new workers. This strike is really important because if Safeway succeeds, it will send a signal to employers in Northern California and throughout the state to slash healthcare coverage. Every one of us could be next.

These grocery workers are not striking over $5 to $15 a week in health-insurance premiums, like the supermarkets claim. Current employees would have to pay $95 a week out of a $12/hour salary for healthcare by the 3rd year of the contract. Safeway is trying to basically eliminate healthcare for new hires -- going back on its commitment to provide good union jobs in our communities -- even though it continues to make huge profits.

If the grocery workers are going to win this fight, they need the help of every union member and every supporter of labor rights, from north to south, in escalating the fight for healthcare.

The San Francisco Labor Council is calling on all union members and supporters of labor rights in San Francisco and across the Bay Area to step up their support for these embattled workers.

This is what the Council is asking working people to do to support the strike:

1) Don't shop at Safeway! The S.F. labor movement has targeted Safeway for a boycott campaign. We need to hit this company in the only place it understands: its wallet.

2) Join us at a mass rally and protest at the Safeway on Market and Church from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, January 24, 2004. Our goal is to assemble upwards of 500 people. We want to have an idea of how many people can turn out for the rally. Please fill out the Coupon below to let us know you are coming -- and please ask your union or community group to make a pledge to bring people to the rally.

3) Join us on the picketlines at the three targeted Safeway stores in San Francisco: Mission & 30th St., Church & Market, and Potrero & 16th St. The Council is recommending the targeted times of 4 pm to 7 pm on weekdays and 1 pm to 5 pm on weekends -- but any time you can help is greatly needed. There are UFCW workers from Southern California on the picketlines during working hours every day of the week.

4) Help us with phonebanking to union members! We will be doing phonebanking for the January 24 mass rally and protest and for daily picketline support the evenings of Tuesday thru Thursday, Janaury 20-22. Come to the SF Labor Council from 6 pm to 8:30 pm. Our office is located at 1188 Franklin St. #203 (@ Geary).

5) Contribute to the Strike Fund through the UFCW State Council (checks should be sent to UFCW State Council Strike Fund, PO Box 5158, Buena Park, CA 90620).

Join this important fight. By supporting the striking and locked-out workers of UFCW, we are defending healthcare for everyone!

In solidarity,

signed/
Walter L. Johnson
Secretary-Treasurer,
San Francisco Labor Council
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Kim Rohrbach (kmrx [at] earthlink.net)
Members of DASW and other affinity groups will be attending the 1/24 rally and taking action inside the store. Details below; come one, come all.


SUPPORT STRIKING GROCERY WORKERS
Direct Action and Rally at the Church & Market Safeway in SF
Saturday, February 24th 1-5 pm

MEET AT 9 am, Art & Rev space: BANNER MAKING PARTY! Bring your hands and
creativity:)!

MEET AT: 11 am for day-of action gathering/planning: Art & Rev Space, Red
Stone Building, 16th & Capp. This is to make day-of decisions r.e. direct
action inside the store. We are planning a NON-ARREST ACTION.

MEET AT 12:45 @ 16th & Valencia: we will march as a group to the rally,
providing an extra boost of energy and comotion to folks on the picket line!
by eugean17
picket lines are for shutting the job down. not moral witness

strike all the stores nation wide

picket lines mean don't cross
by "Lefty" Hooligan
Beyond Unionism

“Lefty” Hooligan writes for the punk rock zine Maximum Rocknroll, and this piece is an edited version of a forthcoming column. To get a copy of Maximum Rocknroll write to PO Box 460760, San Francisco, CA 94146-0760.

Labor unions curtail the anger and rebelliousness of their members while pimping their labor to the highest bidder. Largely ineffective in defending let alone advancing real working class interests, even the most revolutionary unions serve to prop up capitalism once they gain a little power and position. Yet I hold a union card.

I’m a member in good standing of the National Writers Union, which is a branch of the United Auto Workers. AFL-CIO baby. I’ve held cards in everything from AFSCME to the IWW, none of which has made me any less dubious about unionism as a labor strategy. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in a strong, organized labor movement. I just don’t think labor unions are the best organizing tools with which to fight capitalism. I certainly don’t think they’re up to the task of creating and wielding social power based on the self-organization and self-activity of the working class as a class.

That said, union struggles in this country have contributed to incremental social reforms that make the lives of ordinary people a little less abject and destitute. The labor movement helped bring us the eight -hour day and the forty-hour week, health and safety regulation, workers comp and health benefits, unemployment insurance and social security. That working folk should have a lot more goes without saying, but there’s no reason why we should allow what little we have to be taken away piecemeal by the capitalist ruling class. Taking away these meager social benefits may or may not make working people more revolutionary. It will certainly make our lives more miserable.

There’s a huge labor action going on in southern California as of this writing. Thousands of grocery workers led by the United Food and Commercial Workers union have struck Safeway-owned stores, resulting in thousands of more UFCW workers being locked out by Albertsons and Kroger-owned Ralphs grocery stores. These supermarket chains want to create a two-tiered work force where new workers would get no health benefits and older workers would have to pay hefty premiums, all supposedly so they can compete with the hideous Walmart superstores. The Teamsters are honoring picket lines, and scabs are now driving Safeway trucks around southern California. Informational pickets have started up at Safeway stores here in northern California, AFL-CIO union leaders are calling for a nationwide boycott of Safeway-owned stores, and the UFCW is promising action at Safeway stores across the country.

I haven’t gone into a Safeway since the union folks came up from southern California to picket. My girlfriend’s a red diaper baby, so crossing a picket line for her is like a devout Catholic chomping into that little wafer at Communion. We’ve enjoyed searching out the various smaller grocery alternatives in the area and intend to minimize our shopping at grocery chains even if Safeway, Albertsons and Kroger do give their workers a good contract. Not crossing the line, talking to and showing support for the picketers and strikers, cutting up your Safeway card and mailing it to CEO Steve Burd, boycotting Safeway-owned stores; these are all nice, union-endorsed suggestions for actions the rest of us can take. Now for a few hooligan suggestions that are intended to take things beyond unionism.

I have five, but before I hit them, I need to make clear these suggestions are in no way endorsed or supported by any of the labor unions involved in the southern California grocery strike. And, in this age of the Patriot Act, I also need to make clear these suggestions are offered in a spirit of discussion, debate and free speech.

Remember free fucking speech?

RUMOR MONGERING: Proctor and Gamble still gets shit from people who think their symbol is Satanic. That’s nothing, I heard that the Safeway “S” logo is actually a clever Nazi SS design. And now that scabs are working Safeway stores, I hear that the rat and vermin problem has gotten way out of control. You get the picture…

STONER SHOPPING: Also called short term memory shopping, you go into a Safeway and fill your cart to overflowing with perishable meats, frozen foods, ice cream, eggs and the like, only to remember halfway down some back aisle that you left your wallet or purse in the car. Once you get outside, you realize you didn’t really have the money to buy all those groceries after all, leaving your full shopping cart parked in that supermarket aisle. Hopefully, the scabs will put it all away before it goes bad. This absent-minded shopping is not, I repeat, not illegal.

SALT OF THE EARTH: We practiced some stoner shopping during the UFW boycotts of grapes and iceberg lettuce back in the day. Another clandestine tactic is to salt down various produce items such as grapes or lettuce, particularly after they’ve been moistened. And Safeway has those clever produce watering sprinklers that sound like thunderstorms. Come to think of it, Safeway was also the major grocery chain that carried scab lettuce and grapes. This action is highly illegal by the way, as it involves the malicious destruction of private property.

LOCALIZING ANTI-GLOBALIZATION: Give those college kids a war in Iraq or a WTO conference in Cancún and there’s all sorts of creative direct action. But what about poverty and misery at your local Safeway grocery store? What about people chaining themselves to the doors or locking themselves down in the aisles to protest Safeway’s treatment of its workers? The image of the Black Bloc storming the checkout stands segues nicely into my final suggestion, that being…

AUTOREDUCTION: Imagine thirty, forty people entering a Safeway to shop, filling up their baskets, and all arriving at the checkout stands at the same time. They take up every cash register, with enough backup to cover any other checkout lane that might open up. Then these well-organized shoppers all simultaneously demand they get their groceries for free, to be given to the striking workers. Better yet, these thirty, forty shoppers all at once head for the doors with their full shopping carts, giving away their groceries to strikers and passersby once outside.

I’m sure your regular AFL-CIO honcho is having apoplexy over my suggestions, hoping that a couple of Teamsters would help me into the trunk of my car. The various and sundry political parties that claim to represent labor—from the deadbeat Democrats to the vile Leninists—are reading me a list of invective from extremism to adventurism. But you know what? Fuck ‘em all! Labor unions and political parties have failed miserably at halting, to say nothing of reversing the steady erosion in wages, social benefits and living standards for working people in this country over the past fifty years. It’s time working people took matters into our own hands.

“Lefty” Hooligan
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