Local Strikers Brace for Prolonged Battle

By Mark McGuigan
Staff Writer

Oct 20 -- Santa Monica became ground zero this weekend for a supermarket strike that is testing the spirit and wallets of workers and the patience of owners, as the walkout enters its second full week.

The silence at the negotiating table following the breakdown in contract talks on October 11 is in stark contrast to the noise on picket lines at half a dozen stores across Santa Monica, where placard-toting workers are rallying for community support.

“It’s all about politics,” said picket captain Dennis Brown, who was monitoring about 20 strikers at Albertson's on Lincoln Boulevard. “Somewhere down the line someone’s got to give. If the big guys don’t want to give, then neither do we. This is our cause. It’s about what we believe in.”

The workers striking in Santa Monica are among more then 70,000 employees in nearly 900 stores manning picket lines across the Southland in response to proposals to cut health-care plans and slash new employee pay by the big supermarket chains Albertsons, Pavilions, Ralphs and Vons.

Supermarket operators argue that the cuts are needed to make their business more competitive as they prepare to come under increasing pressure from low budget “supercenters” such as Wal-Mart, which also plans to sell groceries in California later this year.

But this rings hollow to many workers and their supporters, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Speaking at a rally in Santa Monica on Sunday, Jackson urged the union and supermarket chains to unite against the common enemy.

“Workers are fighting for their lives, while at the same time the supermarket companies are fighting for their lives,” Jackson told the cheering crowd. “That’s why the two sides should turn toward each other and not on each other and deal with the Wal-Mart factor.

“Wal-Mart has more of everything except wages, healthcare and benefits,” he added.

The strike action is designed to hit the supermarket chains where it hurts most -- the bottom line -- in an effort to jump-start union negotiations that ended in a chilled stalemate 10 days ago.

“Morale is very good. We’re here for the long haul,” said Tom Hancock, a picket captain, who has been a Vons checker for 8 years. “We have prepared for the long run,” he said, explaining that the United Food and Commercial Workers (UCFW) union has been advising workers for weeks to begin saving money in the event of a walk out.

Customers who make their way to local stores are being politely asked to support the strike by taking their business elsewhere as picketers hand out fliers burnishing the message “Don’t Cross the Picket Line!” and listing the names of alternative union stores currently not on strike.

“We do not want to strike,” the fliers inform shoppers. “All we are asking in these tough economic times is to keep what we have earned. We want to stay on the job to continue to serve you.”

For the most part, support throughout the local community has been strong. All around the City the noise of car horns sounding in support of workers as people drive past picket lines has been incessant.

“The horns are a double-edged sword,” said Brown. “You have a lot of people who want to support us. It’s great, but we don’t encourage the horns,” he said, adding that they may upset neighbors with the ceaseless background din.

For Brown, a National Guardsman who has only recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, this new battle on the home-front offers a different sort of challenge, not least because his wife works for Ralph’s and is also out on strike.

Customers have been showing their support by either avoiding crossing picket lines altogether or by reducing what they purchase before going elsewhere to do a larger grocery shop.

“A lot of people coming in are not buying as much as they would,” explains Luis Leal, who has worked for Albertson’s stores for the past 18 years.

“The sooner we hear something the better,” said Leal, “the less business they do, the sooner they’ll talk.”

Despite the immense support throughout the local community and the die-hard spirit on the picket line, this week marks the first without a full paycheck for many workers, and the reality of a long, drawn-out set of negotiations may already be having an effect.

“People don’t have as much enthusiasm as the first day,” said Leal. “They don’t jump up and down as much.”

Although the union has a multimillion-dollar strike fund to support the action, veteran clerks and stockers -- who can earn as much as $17.90 an hour, or $716 for a 40-hour week -- must make do with between $200 to $300 a week from the fund, or 28 percent of their normal weekly pay.

Many of the grocery workers represented by the UFCW union view the supermarkets' proposal to cut health benefits as reneging on a hard-won deal. Through decades of hard bargaining and strikes, the UFCW in Southern California won what is widely regarded as a Cadillac contract.

“Yeah it’s a Cadillac all right, only with no tires, no engine and no transmission,” said one picketer of the plans to change the much vaunted contract.

With health-care premiums growing at double-digit rates in recent years -- 13.9 percent this year, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey -- the increase is far outstripping the overall pace of inflation, which is running at just over 2 percent.

For one 40 year veteran produce packer manning a picket line outside Vons on Lincoln, the current action by the supermarket represents nothing short of pure corporate greed. After taking part in the last such strike in 1978, he felt he’d now seen it all.

“They capped out chemotherapy at a $5,000 limit, they don’t want to pay for it,” he said preferring not to give his name. “If I need a $20,000 operation then I have to come up with $10,000.”

“I have never seen anybody take away so much from so many people who depend on Vons as this man wants to,” he said of Steve Burd, chairman, president and CEO of Safeway Inc., which owns Vons. “They’re trying to hurt people.”

According to the UFCW web site “employers’ profits have risen 10 times faster than their hourly contribution to worker health care… their profits overall have gone up 91 percent since 1998.”

“We really know what Enron workers felt like,” said Tom Hancock a checker with Vons for 8 years.

The strikers could be in for a long battle. On Thursday Burd told the Los Angeles Times that the contract offer presented by the three big chains was "as good as it gets."

Safeway, Burd said, was prepared to take on debt before giving strikers what they want.