Safeway Grocery Workers' Rally

Here's copy of a leaflet that some authentic enemies of capitalism and myself have given out at 7 Safeways and an Albertson's supermarket here in San Francisco, as well as at the Market and Church demo yesterday:

YOU HAVE TO PLAY HARDBALL TO WIN AGAINST MANAGEMENT TODAY!

An effective strike by Safeway employees will be a major step in reversing attacks by bosses and investors on all working people. A fight against management's attempts to rob you of access to health care will find a sympathetic response from tens of millions of wage earners all over the US. Health care is a major issue for all of us. We are all suffering from the same kinds of hardship at the hands of corporate America

A SAFEWAY STRIKE MUST BE RUN IN A WAY THAT WILL MEAN VICTORY FOR STRIKERS AND DEFEAT FOR MANAGEMENT. A strike that can be won means:

1. A strike run directly by the rank and file -- not by the UFCW apparatus. All major decisions concerning the strike must be made in mass meetings of strikers.
One way to make this happen in a strike is to start holding meetings with your co-workers now. Get together with co-workers in your store. Vis! it other stores and find out what's up with other Safeway employees -- there is still time to meet, discuss, and plan for action.

2. THE STRIKE MUST BE A NATIONWIDE STRIKE. Only a nationwide strike will be costly enough to company shareholders to make them back down on their attacks on Safeway workers.

3. ALL STORES MUST BE SHUT DOWN BY MASS PICKETING -- not by a few symbolic pickets.
Many Safeway shoppers are working people just like you. An aggressive, uncompromizing nationwide strike will find support from tens of millions of working people all over this country. It can be a step toward turning around twenty-five years worth of attacks on the wages and working conditions of all of us.

Only a strike that is very costly for Safeway investors can be won. If you hit them where it hurts, and hit them hard, again and again, they will have no choice but to back down and cave in to your demands.

HOW NOT TO RUN A STRIKE: THE DEFEAT OF THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SUPERMARKET STRIKE AT THE HANDS OF THE UFCW.

The UFCW is a union with a long history of betraying its members to management during strikes. The most famous example, before the So Cal supermarket strike, was in the Austin, Minnesota P-9 meatpackers strike of the mid-1980's.

Recent antics of the UFCW leadership in Southern California were a textbook example of a union membership being defeated by a union leadership, a union acting in the interests of management and stock market investors against rank and file union members.

1. The UFCW always acts to isolate striking workers from one another. The strike was isolated to Southern California. Isolation means defeat.

And strikers were isolated from other strikers in the LA area who went on strike over the same issues!

In mid-October 2003, mechanics for the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority went out on strike in a dispute over who should pay for rising health insurance costs.
What was the UFCW's response? According to a UFCW striker on a picket line at a Pavillion store (an upscale branch of the Vons chain) on California Street in Pasadena, business agents from the UFCW instructed supermarket strikers to not go to the MTA picket line. The UFCW bureaucrat claimed "it would confuse the issue" in the minds of the public -- and this in a strike that had overwhelming widespread popular support.

The MTA strike was about health care issues that were virtually identical to the ones that had triggered the So Cal supermarket strike.

2. The UFCW was successful in keeping a workforce with little or no experience of strikes or collective action against bosses under control. No mass meetings were held to discuss strategy or the direction of the strike. Union members generally felt excluded from having a voice in how the strike was run. THIS DOESN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN AGAIN.

3. The union made it easy for management to get goods into struck stores. Teamster drivers didn't cross picket lines, but would park their trucks on the street, then allow supermarket managers to drive Teamster trucks up to loading docks. The UFCW didn't even ask the Teamsters to honor UFCW picket lines.

As a "good faith" gesture, three weeks into the strike, on Oct. 31st, the UFCW disbanded picket lines in front of Ralph's supermarkets. Employers immediately announced that they would be sharing profits and losses for the duration of the strike.

Working people living from paycheck to paycheck, and now in the middle of a long-term strike, were forced to match their limited economic resources against corporate supermarket chains -- thanks to the UFCW.

Out of a limitless servility to the bosses, and contempt for the needs of striking workers, at this point the UFCW began giving out leaflets urging shoppers to buy at Ralph's, where UFCW members had been locked out and were on strike. The UFCW ordered picketing to cease at distribution centers. This allowed Teamster drivers who had honored picket lines to go back to making deliveries for the struck supermarket chains.

4. By mid-January, the UFCW cut strike pay from a lousy $240 a week to $100 a week. And union officials who slashed pay and benefits for strikers were themselves bringing home six-figure salaries and fat expense accounts.

According to UFCW reports filed with the US Department of Labor, half of the top UFCW officials drew in upwards of $200,000 in wages, living allowances and expense account perks in 2002. Union President Doug Dority pocketed just under $400,000. Richard Icaza, head of UFCW's LA local 770, took home $278,783.

After a five month long strike, the antics of the rich businessmen who run the UFCW brought union members the same shitty contract offer they had overwhelmingly rejected and struck against in the first place.

Safeway workers here in the Bay Area must be prepared to take the direction of the strike into their own hands -- outside of and against the control of the UFCW. Independent cluster meetings and member to member communication are essential first steps to creating real rank and file organization and strength.

WHEN YOU FIGHT AGGRESSIVELY IN YOUR OWN INTERESTS, YOU ALSO ACT IN THE INTERESTS OF EVERY OTHER WAGE-EARNER IN THIS SOCIETY.

angryworkers [at] yahoo.com

We really needed someone to rewrite all this information for us and put it out in the form of a new flyer to add to all the other overly wordy flyers.

Try at least adding a graphic next time please.

but not clipart!