The UFCW, Save Mart and their Poverty Creating Partnership

In fact a direct quote from the UFCW(United Food & Commercial Workers) International website says...

We are North America’s Neighborhood Union—1.3 million members standing together to improve the lives and livelihoods of workers, families, and communities.

This to me seems to be quite the contradiction! The UFCW claims that they are “improving the lives and livelihoods of workers” but yet this hard working, 37 year old woman with a small child who works five days a week to get her 24 hours has to resort to using WIC to feed her and her family? That doesn’t seem like a very “improved livelihood” to me.

By the UFCW’s self proclaimed “Greatest Contract in the Nation” it will take this woman somewhere in the ballpark of 11,440 hours of working in that deli to reach the top pay of $15.30 an hour. And if you do the math at 24 hours a week and the 11,440 hours to reach top pay you will see that it will take this woman over 9 years to reach that top pay of $15.30. It’s a wonder this woman had to turn to public assistance just to provide for her family and survive. Let’s not forget about the $510 initiation fee and the monthly dues of anywhere between $24 - $54 that’s deducted from this woman’s pay check every week just to be part of this “Greatest contract in the Nation”.

It’s quite the contrast when you view the pay of the union officials payed to represent this woman by her hard earned dollars while she slaves in that deli 5 days a week for those minimal hours. It definitely begs the question...... Who is the UFCW really working for? It would seem by viewing the U.S. Department of Labor’s LM2 Reports that the only lives being “improved” is that of the UFCW officials and their family members they employ!

A week or so after I noticed my co-worker(union sister) paying for her groceries with WIC she confided in me that she would probably have to get food from the “food bank” this particular week because she had to get her car smogged and pay the registration and after that there would be no money for food! In our conversation I said to her “it’s pretty screwed up when you have a union job and have to get your food from the food bank.” She agreed as we talked more about her situation.

All this got me thinking! How many others in the grocery business under these UFCW contracts are in this womans position? How many families are having to send monthly dues to the UFCW and then turn around and have to feed their families from food banks or public assistance? I’d be willing to bet none of these UFCW officials feeding at the trough of human labor are having to feed their families from food banks! What’s a matter with this picture? Where has labor(unions) gone wrong?

Here’s one answer where labor has really missed the boat! This year the UFCW named Save Mart’s Owner and CEO Bob Piccinini Person of the Year

I guess that answers my question “who is the UFCW really working for?”

Piccinini and other Save Mart executives have been pushing a program in their stores for quite some time now, it’s called Save Mart Employee Association

Save Mart charges employees $1.00 a week to be part of this association. They bait the employees with promises of “aid” in time of hardship. They also entice employees with drawings, discounts etc. The most disturbing part of this association is that in the stores there is a pamphlet that tells members of this association how to contact many public assistance programs like Medi-Cal and WIC! Sound familiar? It should it sounds just like a page out of the Walmart play book! Teach your employees how to get on and use the public assistance programs so you the employer don’t have to pay a fare wage and provide adequate health care for your employees, or in simpler words......slave labor!

I felt compelled to tell this story because over 30 years ago when I walked into the grocery business and became a UFCW member it was something to be proud of! While the wages weren’t that of other union jobs the benefits were outstanding! A person could reach the top pay scale somewhere between 1700 and 2500 hours. I personally made the top wage of a Journeymen Clerk in less than a year. You could raise a family, buy a home, drive a decent car, and maybe even afford to send your kids to a decent collage. This was a job that was somewhat respected. But now even in these difficult times not many choose the path of a grocery worker, there is very little left, if any at all that attracts people to want to make this a career, I mean really what kind of career has it's workers turning to food banks to survive?

The fact is the greedy “partnerships” between the grocery companies and the unions that represent the workers will never end until workers stand up and say enough is enough! The big question is when will grocery workers stop participating in corporate’s race to the bottom?

Just how far down will the workers of these unionized grocery stores let themselves fall before they decide to stand together in unity and wage war against these greedy “partnerships” that keep trying to convince them they are worth less? I guess only time will tell.