A new grocery labor war?

MORE THAN 200 grocery workers in downtown San Diego protested for a fair contract on Labor Day, picketing a Ralphs grocery store in the fight against management's attempt to cut health care and pension benefits.

The workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 135, have been without a union contract since March. They are among the 62,000 grocery workers at Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons throughout Southern California who have been without a deal as they push back against company demands to push as much as $11,000 per year in health costs onto workers.

"We have not had one cent of improvement regarding our health plan contribution," Mickey Kasparian, president of UFCW Local 135 of San Diego County, said at the rally. "We are now giving great consideration to a 72-hours notice [required before a strike]."

UFCW officials have met with management from the grocery chains for 12 to 15 hours a day. In August, more than 90 percent of the workers voted to authorize a strike, well above the two-thirds majority required.

Iggy Ponce de Leon, a member of the UFCW Local 135, explained: "We don't have a deficit crisis or debt crisis; we need to change the narrative. It's not about the pensions of our public workers, but about taxing the rich and corporations. You could have been on the beach today, but instead, you showed your fellow San Diegans you give a damn."

Holding signs reading "Health care Before Welfare, People Before Profits" and "Kicking Ass for the Working Class," UFCW members and supporters chanted, "Grocery workers won't back down, San Diego's a union town!" and "San Diego escucha: Estamos en la lucha" (Listen up, San Diego: we are in struggle).

Amid a sea of yellow UFCW "We Are One" T-shirts, Kevin Beiser, a math teacher and member of the San Diego Education Association, said, "Everyone is coming together for working families. I'm a member of the school board, my partner is here with the bus drivers' union, and my nephew is engaged in the Vons contract fight."

Beiser noted the support of five other unions, including the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, which has led delegations to worker support rallies at the supermarket chains.

"I'm here to stand for the right to health care," said Tim Hack of US Uncut a grassroots movement exposing corporate tax cheats and fighting public service cuts. "I was injured at a shoddy factory and am a victim of corporate greed. When these corporations are making billions in profits, how do they not have the money to provide for their employees' health and safety?"

With the picket winding down, organizers led protesters, including U.S. Rep. Susan Davis and state Sen. Juan Vargas, on a march through the aisles of Ralphs, chanting "No contract! No peace!" Customers joined in the action, and Ralphs employees, several with tears in their eyes, cheered, high-fived marchers, and banged brooms, deli knives and plastic bags in support.

"They're going to be cutting all workers' wages and benefits if we don't stand up now," said Grant Johnson, a UFCW employee at Vons. "We rally to send these grocery stores the message that the public won't cross a picket line."

Following the picket, the protesters marched through downtown San Diego to Horton Plaza for a Rally for the Jobless, where more than 350 people gathered. Trolley cars rang in support and members of the public honked and joined the rally.

"Today is not a day to celebrate but a day to agitate!" shouted rally organizer Frank Gormlie to hundreds of cheers. "The slumbering American giant of labor woke in Madison, and we're waking it in San Diego today. We stand in solidarity with the UFCW contract battle. An injury to one is an injury to all!"

THE STRIKE authorization vote comes at a time of rising opposition to cuts in employee welfare and growing demand for businesses to sacrifice their profits. Safeway, SuperValu and Kroger, the parent companies of Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs, respectively, recently announced combined annual profits of $4.5 billion, while the average worker in one of these stores makes $20,000 to $25,000 per year.

The labor dispute is over a health care proposal by Southern California's three largest supermarket chains to raise employee out-of-pocket contributions for health care, including higher monthly contributions and increases in co-pays and deductibles.

But union leaders say premiums are just the beginning, and that the corporations involved don't offer enough money to fund the benefits themselves. This lack of funding will leave the workers' insurance plans running out of funds within 16 months, which the union leadership believes will result in the elimination of all health care benefits for employees. The companies involved are, of course, using the economic crisis as the excuse for their actions.

John Grant, the secretary-treasurer of UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles, points to the financial struggles for many employees. "The industry's completely changed," he told a reporter. "[There used to be a time] when you could support a family, have roots, contribute to the community, send your kids to college. Now it's become necessary to get a second job."

A strike would involve 62,000 union workers from San Ysidro to Santa Barbara. Needless to say, Vons and Albertsons are already advertising for scabs or, as they call them, "temporary workers." The stores have already begun their corporate campaigns of misinformation to distort the truth and undermine the workers' fight. UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles has already called on the public to join clergy and elected and union leaders to adopt a Ralphs, Albertsons or Vons store in Southern California to picket if a strike is called.

Ponce de Leon has worked in grocery stores for more than 40 years and was a part of the UFCW strike in 2003-04. He explained the stakes of the struggle: "Everyone is afraid of another strike. There was a lot of pain and suffering out there. Unfortunately, if we have to do it again we will do it again. When I saw what was being proposed [by management], it was one of the most ridiculous proposals I've ever seen."

THE FOUR-and-a-half month strike from October 2003 to February 2004 was the largest and longest strike in the history of the supermarket industry and the first major strike of the new century.

The union's Web site states, "After 20 weeks without paychecks, workers won their fight to protect affordable health care, their pensions and job security." The workers, however, tell a different story. They see the strike as a defeat and feel that they got nothing. They saw Teamster-driven trucks cross picket lines to make deliveries, and many expressed a feeling of abandonment by union officials during and after the strike.

To end the strike, union officials made concessions. These included allowing a two-tier system that protected then-current employee benefits and wages, but cut benefits overall by agreeing to wage caps and benefit reductions for new employees. Exhausted and financially strapped strikers voted for the concessions and returned to work after many strikers' savings were depleted.

A 2007 San Diego Union-Tribune report described the state of employee health care following the strike:

The waiting period for health insurance for most employees increased from four months before the strike to 12 months under the new contract. Courtesy clerks must wait 18 months before they are eligible. It takes 30 months before a grocery worker is eligible for family coverage. The union said that of the more than 40,000 second-tier workers, only 75 have dependent health care coverage.

One result, according to Ponce De Leon and other workers, is that a once-stable workforce has become rife with turnover and turmoil. "Employees come through those doors and then leave right back through them a few months later," De Leon said.

As one UFCW member describes the effects of the two-tier system:

No one is making $23.50 per hour as the media claims. Two-thirds of employees are at $8-$12 per hour, and most of them will never see more than that. Raises are 10 cents an hour after many months of work, while management purposefully schedules employees with fewer hours so we never qualify for benefits.

After the tier system was put in place, did your prices at the register go down? After the 2007 contract negotiations, when more benefits were lost, did you see your bill go down then? Or did the compensation and bonuses of the top level executives go up?

If this union district falls, then so do the other unions in Northern California and Arizona. Wal-Mart and Target would love this. Then Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons employees can use the already overcrowded emergency rooms for health care, just like Wal-Mart's employees. When our kids wait three hours for health care and then we all pick up the tab through higher taxes, does that sound okay to anyone?

A GROCERY strike in Southern California today would involve 62,000 workers, down from 70,000 just eight years ago. The workers will have to confront the anti-union forces that are gaining momentum from their attacks on the private sector. There is also more non-union competition than there was in 2003, with the introduction of grocery stores such as Sprouts Farmers Market, Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and the expansion of Wal-Mart and Target grocery sections.

Therefore, one can expect the grocery stores to fight back harder. The new competition is shown in an NBC report that lists Ralphs, Albertsons, and Vons collectively possessing about 80 percent of the market share in 2003, a figure that is well below 50 percent today.

The employees also face higher risks. Unemployment, which currently stands at about 12 percent, is double the level in 2003. This makes it not only easier to recruit scabs who are desperate to work, but also more difficult if striking store employees and their families need to find additional work.

And the stakes are even higher this time around. A grocery strike in San Diego would affect more than 10,000 workers in the city. More than two-thirds of them are part-time workers, with wages starting at $8 per hour.

But in this fight, workers can draw upon the solidarity seen in the Wisconsin labor mobilization and the Verizon strike. And grocery workers can expect similar support from their communities: In the 2003 strike, some 70 to 75 percent of customers refused to cross the picket lines and shopped elsewhere, costing the grocery chains an estimated $2 billion.

To rebuild that support, the union has been actively seeking help from other unions and working people throughout Southern California. In San Diego, Labor Day rallies followed a string of UFCW rallies with representatives of multiple local unions, from a July 15 rally of over 250 supporters at Vons to an August 24 street picket with over 150 supporters at the downtown Ralphs.

These rallies, along with a recent Economic Summit for a Better San Diego with over 300 union members and community supporters, show signs of a more active, militant and united labor movement in the area. If the UFCW goes on strike, building these labor-community ties and coalitions are essential for the union to win.

Ponce de Leon closed out the picket and march on Labor Day by thanking "all the other unions standing side by side. We know we have friends. What kind of power do we have? Union power!"