The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 41           November 24, 2003  
 
 
California grocery workers strike enters 4th week
 
BY WENDY LYONS  
LOS ANGELES—A lively picket line and a nearly deserted parking lot at Von’s supermarket at 3rd and Vermont November 5 showed the continuing effectiveness of the three-week strike by grocery workers. At one point strikers and their supporters marched through the parking lot to the door of the near-empty market and held an impromptu rally. The grocery strike began on October 11, after United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members rejected the contract offer by the Vons, Ralph’s, Albertson’s, and Pavilion grocery chains. The bosses proposed no wage increases until October 2005, big cuts in health benefits and pensions, and union-weakening changes in work rules. They also demanded the right to outsource work to nonunion companies. Many workers say the central issue is the bosses’ drive to make workers pay more for their health-care plan.

The union originally struck only Von’s and Pavillion supermarkets. After Ralph’s and Albertson’s locked out workers, picket lines went up at outlets of all four chains.

On October 31, UFCW leaders pulled the picket lines from Ralph’s supermarkets. Ralph’s workers, who remain locked out, have reinforced other picket lines.

A meeting between the grocery bosses and the union has been set for November 10 by Peter Hurtgen, who was President George Bush’s representative during the West Coast longshore workers’ strike last year.

UFCW Local 770 president Rick Icaza said the pickets had been lifted to end the inconvenience to shoppers in the many communities where the chains have 90 percent of the market share, and to focus the struggle on the Safeway chain and its CEO, Steven Burd. The union has taken out full-page ads in newspapers in California and elsewhere blaming Burd for the demand to make workers pay for health-care benefits. A number of Ralph’s workers were picketing at 3rd and Vermont. Bruce Olson said at first he thought that taking down the picket lines was a mistake. “But I see how much the shopping has gone down at Vons now and I like being on another picket line,” he said.

“In a way it’s good to show compassion for customers, but on the other hand it looks like the union is weakening,” said Mike Laurin, a Ralph’s meat cutter. “More customers were starting to cross the lines where I work in the third week of the strike and now the struck markets are way down in business.”

Hilda Samayoa was picketing with her sister, Irene, who said her Los Angeles High School class recently visited the picket line to interview strikers for a history class. Most of her classmates back the strike, she said.

After polling picket captains, UFCW officials stated that traffic at the picketed markets had slumped 75 percent in the first weeks of the strike. An analyst for the Merrill Lynch financial management company estimated that the groceries were losing $131million a week due to the work stoppage. On November 5, Smith Barney downgraded the company stock to a “sell,” citing in part the “likely damaging effect of the Southland supermarket strike.”  
 
 
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