top
California
California
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Surrender at the Supermarket: The national failure of the grocery workers' union

by upton sinclair
The four-and-a-half-month-long Southern California grocery strike illustrated perfectly the basic time-tested strategy of a successful labor action: Organize. Promote solidarity. Prepare for a long fight. Stay the course no matter how deep the financial hardship. Outlast the other side by a day.
LA Weekly
MARCH 5 -11, 2004

Surrender at the Supermarket
The national failure of the grocery workers' union
by Robert Greene

The four-and-a-half-month-long Southern California grocery strike
illustrated perfectly the basic time-tested strategy of a successful
labor action: Organize. Promote solidarity. Prepare for a long fight.
Stay the course no matter how deep the financial hardship. Outlast
the other side by a day.

Unfortunately for the 70,000 members of the United Food and
Commercial Workers, who this week return to work under their worst
contract terms in decades, that successful strategy was employed by
the three supermarket chains, not by the seven UFCW locals or their
Washington, D.C., head office. The corporate owners of Ralphs,
Albertsons and Vons/Pavilions presented an unmoving, united front,
even when it meant absorbing a huge sales hit over 20 weeks. They
helped their own cause with a profit-sharing deal, still secret when
the combination strike-lockout started, perhaps even illegal.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is suing them over it. But
no matter. It did what they needed it to do, and the companies now
have pretty much what they demanded in October: a contract that
partially shifts the health-benefits burden to employees and moves
new hires to an inferior pay scale. The three corporate giants
slashed their labor costs. The union got clobbered.

"I don't think it can be read any other way than a defeat for the
union," said labor expert Sanford Jacoby, a professor at UCLA's
Anderson School of Management. "I suppose it could have been worse.
The stores are still unionized."

Under the deal, negotiated in late February and ratified by employees
last weekend, current workers at 859 stores from the Mexican border
to San Luis Obispo and Bishop will continue to receive health
benefits without having to pay premiums — but only for the next two
years. Beginning in the third year, workers will have to pay up to $5
a week in premiums if the supermarket contributions to a health-care
fund don't cover rising health-plan costs. Chances are they won't,
given the continuing steep cost increases. Premiums for an employee's
family could be $15.

A second employee tier, which the union said in October it could
never accept, will mean greatly reduced health benefits and pay for
anyone hired by the supermarkets after the current employees return
to work. Since most union grocery workers in Southern California now
work only part-time schedules, and the stores assign work hours
weekly or biweekly, a two-tier system will give cost-conscious
managers an incentive to favor the new hires with the most hours.

UFCW International president Doug Dority insisted on calling the
Southern California action "one of the most successful strikes in
history." But Dority was compelled to admit that his union was not up
to championing employee health benefits nationwide. He attempted to
recast the strike as a loud call for political intervention.

"We must have national health-care reform," Dority said in a
statement released on the UFCW Web site. "No one company, no one
union, no industry or group of workers alone can fix the health care
system . . . Now is the time for action. 2004 is the year to put
health care reform on the political agenda and demand that every
candidate for office commits to comprehensive, affordable health
insurance for every working family."



It is hard to overestimate the damage the settlement does to UFCW and
its members. Union negotiators here gave in on almost every major
point of contention at just the moment when grocery workers around
the country prepare to battle the same three chains on precisely the
same issues. The supermarket companies will now bring the Southern
California contract and its major concessions to talks later this
month with union negotiators in Washington, D.C., northern Virginia
and Baltimore. In May, the precedent here could undermine UFCW
efforts in Seattle. In September, contracts are up in Northern
California, Denver and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, workers in Arizona and
Indiana who stayed on the job and continued to bargain after their
contracts expired will have a tougher time turning away concessions.

The real squeeze on grocery workers around the country springs from
the knowledge that the long strike and lockout here decimated the
UFCW's strike fund. Negotiators for Kroger Inc. (owner of Ralphs and
a number of chains around the country), Safeway Inc. (Vons and
Pavilions here, Safeway and others around the nation) and Albertsons
will come to the table knowing that the union they face lacks the
funds to give them any serious trouble.

How could this happen? UFCW is in many ways a throwback to an earlier
time when the grocery industry was made up of locally owned chains.
Ralphs, Vons and Safeway were all homegrown Southern California
stores, and as recently as the 1980s the CEO of Vons did commercials
for his stores on local TV. The seven locals around Southern
California were a good match for the supermarkets.

In the '80s and '90s, though, consolidation gobbled up chains like
Hughes, Boys, Lucky and Alpha Beta, leaving three corporate giants.
Kroger became the largest grocer in the world — until 2002, when it
was overtaken by Wal-Mart.

The three chains' coast-to-coast presence gave them the financial
power to weather hard economic times, or strikes, in one part of the
country as long as shoppers were still rolling their carts through
checkout lanes in other regions. UFCW, though, remained fractured,
promoting local and separate control while other unions were coming
to terms with the need to centralize finances, strategy and
organizing. New labor vigor crystallized around the Service Employees
International Union, which promoted energetic organizing, scrupulous
planning and carefully targeted work actions. The SEIU culture became
the new standard in the 1990s, when its leader, former janitor John
Sweeney, became head of the AFL-CIO. Among Sweeney's opponents was
Doug Dority.

The drawbacks of Dority's approach became apparent as seven Southern
California leaders squabbled over strategy, failed to acknowledge the
corporate willingness to forgo short-term profits, and stumbled over
outreach to other unions that stood ready with resources and good
will.

Among the biggest gaffes and setbacks: The union failed to present a
clear message to the public, shoppers and even its own members. In
the early days of the strike, picketers outside the Albertsons at the
Baldwin-Crenshaw plaza urged shoppers to get their groceries at, of
all places, the nearby nonunion Wal-Mart. The union misplayed strong
public support of the strike by lifting pickets at all Ralphs stores,
thinking the move would put pressure on Safeway, when in fact the
three chains were sharing profits. Having removed the pickets, some
leaders invited shoppers to return to Ralphs while others asked them
to stay away. In the words of one UFCW representative, "We don't want
them to shop there, but they have to do what they have to do."

Outreach to the crucial Teamsters union was spotty. Early pickets
were sent to grocery-distribution warehouses, but the Teamsters
crossed freely. Later, just before Thanksgiving, the Teamsters agreed
not to cross the lines — but they returned to work a month later
after the UFCW gave them the okay.

Leaders realized things were going poorly and called in the AFL-CIO
in December to take over strategy, but failed to follow up. They
forgot to give special consideration to their more than 800
supermarket pharmacists and may lose them to another union. They got
extraordinary support from dockworkers, janitors and entertainment
unions, but they failed to take full advantage of that support or of
a smattering of sympathy strikes in Washington, D.C.

The day before the settlement was reached, the hotel and restaurant
workers (known as HERE) and the clothing, textiles and laundry union
(UNITE) announced a strategic merger that will allow them to employ
some of the tactics that have made SEIU successful — like lining up
contract expiration dates and presenting management with the prospect
of a nationwide action. That's something UFCW was not equipped to do
this time around. But in the future it may have to go that way.

"UFCW has to critically evaluate what happened here," said Kent Wong,
director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UCLA. "It
speaks to a broader need for labor solidarity."

Meanwhile, around Los Angeles, community and shopper support that was
squandered by union leaders may remain strong. Amanda Shaffer,
organizer of the Community Strike Support Network in Northeast Los
Angeles, said rallies to support strikers will turn into efforts to
fight nonunion Wal-Mart and promote living-wage and health benefits.

"I'm disappointed that the union didn't win something bigger and
better," Shaffer said. "Most of the people I talked to said they just
couldn't stay out any longer. But organizing went really well, and
there's a lot of energy to keep working."
Add Your Comments
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network