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Members Stand With Striking December 16, 2003 IBEW locals and the labor movement at large are showing inspiring solidarity with the workers picketing three supermarket chains in California over rising health insurance costs. The fight pits the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) against large, profitable companies over their insistence on demanding retrogressive benefits and wages. It is widely viewed as representative of the struggle facing many unions in an economic culture increasingly dominated by Wal-Mart. "Theyre trying to break this union," said Orange County Local 441 Business Manager Douglas Chappell. "This battle belongs to all of us." Local 47 members employed by Southern California utilities are no longer reading meters at Vons, Albertsons or Ralphs in deference to the plight of their brothers and sisters during the eight-week-old strike. "Weve told our meter readers not to cross the picket lines," said Local 47 Business Manager Patrick Lavin, Diamond Bar, California, who is also Seventh District International Executive Council member. "Weve asked all of our members to honor their lines." Local 11 has also been instrumental in helping striking workers, participating in rallies for the workers and donating money for the workers at Thanksgiving, said Los Angeles Local 11 Assistant Business Manager Marshall Goldblatt. "The stores are really playing hardball," he said. "The toughest part is seeing the single workers out there on the line. They just want to keep their benefits." San Diego Local 569 members have also donated a great deal of time and money to the striking workers. The dispute directly involves 70,000 rank and file members of the UFCW employed at 900 stores in California who have been on strike (in the case of Safeway-owned Vons) or locked out (in the case of Kroger-owned Ralphs and Albertsons) since mid-October. While UFCW members picket the stores, the job action is hurting their bottom line: recent Safeway 2004 profit forecasts fall below most Wall Street expectations, and Albertsons reported a larger-than-expected 50 percent plunge in third-quarter profit, citing strike losses. Steeply increased health care insurance premiums and the imposition of a two-tier wage system that pays new workers less than current ones are the two biggest issues separating the two sides. "No one should be fooled into thinking that this is only about Californias retail workers," said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill. "All of us in the labor movement and beyond have a stake in this fight, so we must support them for their sacrifices." IBEW members have "adopted" stores by helping out with picketing after work and on weekends at a store near their homes, Chappell said. Many locals and members are making financial contributions to strike funds, and Lavin said he and others have stopped by stores to relieve workers of picket duty and give them a break with donated doughnuts and coffee. The outcome of this strike will affect Local 47s negotiations next year with utility Southern California Edison, Lavin said. "Theyre fighting the fight for all of us in every industry right now so its important to lend them any kind of assistance we can," Lavin said. "How they do will have a bearing on how we do next." Retired Local 441 member Paul Rich thought of a unique way to assist the strikers: load his barbeque grill onto his truck and cook hamburgers and hot dogs for picketing workers at three stores daily, Chappell said. Plastered with Local 441 banners, the truck carrying Rich and his fellow volunteers is a mobile solidarity machine, Chappell said, sponsored by the local Democratic Party and the Orange County Central Labor Council. Lurking behind the scenes in this fight is Wal-Mart, the biggest private employer in the country as well as the largest grocer, now poised to break into Californias supermarket market. Aggressively anti-union, Wal-Mart pays around $7 an hour and charges so much for worker health insurance, most opt out. Paying wages of around $18 an hour under UFCW contracts, Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons argue they cannot survive against such a cost-cutting behemoth. "They feel if they can break the workers here, they wont have a problem in the rest of the country," Local 11s Goldblatt said. "I could understand if they are not making money, but they are." Click here to for up-to-the-minute news about the strike from the UFCW.
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