Striking Grocers Interview

This interview was conducted prior to Thanksgiving with a member of the striking grocer’s union. Based on the sensitivity of the issue, the interviewee’s name is being withheld. The purpose of this interview is to give a human angle on the strike currently ongoing in California, beyond the statistics that are being thrown about in news articles.

In your years of working at Ralph’s, how many union strikes/corporate lockouts have you been privy to? And, given past experience, did you expect this present strike to have subsided in a short period of time?

I’ve been privy to only one labor issue that occurred in the mid 80s. It didn’t last anywhere near as long as this, it did last about two months. The issues at that time weren’t about healthcare, they were about contract issues regarding workers, what workers could and could not do in the store, what tasks they were allowed to do I also didn’t expect this to end in a short time, I personally it would last anywhere from three to as long as six months, because the issues are about healthcare, because the companies are not willing to make the contributions to maintain the current health plan. I believe it will take as long as necessary to get what they want.

How long do contracts generally run and how quickly have negotiations been handled in the past? This hiatus stemmed from Vons corporate headquarters attempting to dissolve future contracts to unlivable wages, would such a proposition in turn have found its way into your chain?

Contracts generally run from two to four years and negotiations, seeing as that I have been in one lockout, aren’t all that quick. Although the strike was essentially directed at Safeway, Vons being the subsidiary, if one grocery chain under this contract were to restructure all the members of the union would be effected, since we’re all under the same umbrella. So, what happens to one happens to all.

With the three chains trying to shift a billion dollars in healthcare coverage, what are some of the personal ramifications you’d experience? Cuts in pension have also been on the agenda during contract negotiations, what kind of pension plan is currently in place, and what kind of diluted form are the corporate heads attempted to place in its stead?

At this point, I haven’t experience any ramifications. For me, my healthcare coverage doesn’t end till December 31 and before that time I will be notified as to what contribution I need to pay out of pocket to maintain my current benefits. Regarding pension, the way it works is so much is contributed per hour per employee and for each year you complete you earn a pension credit of approximately seventy five dollars per months, so every year you work you earn that much towards your pension. If you were to work for ten years, you would have a 7500 dollar accrual. What corporate is proposing is to stop that pension contribution, so for all employees the pension contribution is to be lowered to the point that you aren’t going to accrue much even if you work for thirty years.

With 850 stores and nearly 70,000 workers on strike, the chains have been losing roughly $100 million dollars in revenue per week, has this strike escalated to the point, given the current duration, that most of the workers will be displaced?

What will end up happening to a lot of people is that they are going to be forced into an absolute major hardship, their homes, and others will realize that the future of business is changing and its not really a career investment of your time really, mainly because of the pension being lowered so much. But a lot of people will be displaced, and when this is finally negotiated and people go back to work, there is going to be a lot of animosity from returning workers towards management, so it will never really be the same as it was before this had taken place and definitely there will be a change of personnel.

During the course of the strike, what kind of provisions is the union giving to the workers, and for what period of time will these be provided?

"Union and corporate each have their own agenda and neither are buckling in."

As far as compensation goes right now, no one is able to collect unemployment. So unless they work another job, they have no source of income, other than to walk the picket line which pays 275 dollars for every forty hours worked and that will be lowered in coming weeks due to the duration of the strike, there isn’t enough funding to keep it at the current scale.

This past week, the teamsters have gone on strike as well, putting a halt to distribution of stock from company warehouses. Does this action alleviate some stress on the union and give hope that the corporate head will buckle under increasing losses in revenue, or will they attempt to find replacements for the teamsters as well, given the proximity to heavy shopping of the holiday season?

With the teamster now supporting the clerks puts more pressure on management, now that they have to find replacement drivers and workers at the plant that load the trucks to ship to the store, but I think they already anticipated this and they have auxiliary people in position. I feel that they have waited too long before they acted, I think they should have jumped in on this on the third week before they went on the first holiday, their support certainly creates more hardship for management, but nonetheless with the amount of money invested at this point, they’re not going to stop until they get what they want.

Would you agree that the deep-routed and strong union membership has prevented the contract negotiation period from being an all out calamity as opposed to the current war of attrition?

Union and corporate each have their own agenda and neither are buckling in. the union being very strong about this since if corporate does install what they are proposing, the union knows in a short time the health benefits would go away altogether and further cuts in the pension would be necessary to keep everything going to try to maintain medical, so retirees would experience a cut in their already established benefits, and future people wouldn’t get the benefits they were supposed to.

As far as the union members and the supportive public are concerned, what’s the next step, will this extend until the little man has been bled dry, or will the union prevail?

I couldn’t even fathom we’d have been gone this long, seeing as the amount of money that has been lost has nearly exceed half a billion dollars in nine weeks. With that type of investment they aren’t willing to back down, they are willing to spend up to a billion dollars cumulatively to fight the issues on the table, they don’t want to contribute the money to maintain the benefits the union is asking for. This has nothing to do with the five dollar co-pay, there’s an agenda they public is not being made aware of because corporate doesn’t want them to.