OK so I am dismayed in St Louis

[sistersofmercy]

Here in St Louis, we have a major strike, our three grocery store chains which supply most of the food source for the St Louis area are in a strike and a lock out. Some say the owners are trying to break the union. The owners and the union could not reach an agreement on pay and benefits.
This is my problem. It is beautiful here, lovely fall weather,acorns falling from the trees with a wonderful plop. But it would seem my neighbors do not have a problem with crossing a picket line. No business for these stores is not as usual but there is still business.
I don't get it, is not worker pay and benefits important? Are my neighbors so out of touch they do not understand the importance? Does the blood and sweat on the backs of many workers in previous decades to establish the rights of workers mean nothing?
So should we repeal the Child Labor laws? Oh wait I misspoke, that is right, we outsource that work to countries without child labor laws so wal-mart can get there items to sell cheap.
We have no respect!
I am dismayed.

[StlMo]

1. I have not crossed it. (Very few others have at the stores near me)

:dem:

[sistersofmercy]

2. I'm so glad to hear that, you have no idea!

I live near all three stores and it would seems the schmoes in my neighborhood, well some of them are crossing! Scabs!

[StlMo]

3. Glad to cheer you up!

:)

[sistersofmercy]

4. Thanks!

:toast: What part of St Louis are you from? I'm around Kirkwood.

[tekriter]

5. I have not crossed, either.

and I will not. I am fortunate to live near an independent grocer (Johnny's Market ) that is union but still working. It's a great place, like the store down the street from me when I was a kid. I highly recommend it.

:hi: :hi:

[sistersofmercy]

7. Hi!

Where's Johnny's? I have Hannekes near me but I don't know if it's union, probably not.
I would never cross!
I called the corporate office of Dierbergs and told them I would not, last Friday.
:hi: :kick:

[tekriter]

11. I was in Hanneke's two days ago...

Johnny's is at the corner of Gravois and Sappington, across the street from a new Walgreen's - like that narrows it down at all. It's about a half mile east of Lindbergh on Gravois.

It's a lot bigger than Hanneke's, about as big as the old Kroger store I used to go to on 39th street.

[sistersofmercy]

13. Kewl!

[SaintLouisBlues]

34. Here's a link to union grocery stores not on strike

http://ufcw655.com/strikeinformation.htm

Quite a few options in the Central Corridor, which judging by the
other posters and common sense tells me that's where most STL DU'ers
live.

Plus Whole Foods and Wild Oats are still open, but the union site
doesn't list them, and I'm guessing they are non-union.

Encouraging story in the Post today about how the mom & pop stores
are swamped. One store usually does 100 gallons of milk a day is now doing 600 gallons. Shopkeeps in the strip malls anchored by the
big supermarkets are complaining about a big drop-off in business.

[sistersofmercy]

35. Thanks SaintLouisBlues!

I hadn't read the Post today, lame I know!
Hey is your name for hockey or music? or both?

[SaintLouisBlues]

36. Both!

n/t

[tekriter]

6. and I'm in Crestwood...

near Rich and Charlie's restaurant on Watson.

[sistersofmercy]

8. I'm in Warson Woods

[homelandpunk]

37. Hi all! St. Charles here

Got a local IGA that we can use....won't cross pickets.

[SickOfSpin]

9. I'm not crossing, nor will anyone in my family.

Today as I was driving around the city I noticed a few cars in the lots, but nowhere near the traffic the stores usually get. It's gotta be starting to hurt the owners. I talked to one person today who was not happy about the striking workers, but said that nonetheless she would not cross.

By the way, does anyone know of a good independent butcher in the city?

[tekriter]

12. Not in the city, but not far (Affton)

Kenrick's Meat Market at 4918 Weber Rd, just a little east-southeast of Gravois.

Here's a Yahoo map link (hope this wors - it's about 900 characters long):

http://yp.yahoo.com/py/ypMap.py?Pyt=Typ&tuid=21219036&ck=310535707&tab=B2C&tcat=24271873&city=St+Louis&state=MO&zip=63126&country=us&msa=7040&cs=5&ed=GH_MdK1o2Txud6beJv_my7OdUuoahZ9rgKMv5aChP4sS&stat=:pos:7:regular:regT:12:fbT:0

[SickOfSpin]

15. Thanks!

I appreciate the help. I think before this is over we're all going to be scrounging for alternate sources for all sorts of things!

[sistersofmercy]

14. If your near manchester, Baumans at manchester and brentwood.

[SickOfSpin]

19. Thanks to you also!

That's also a good one to know, 'preciate it. Actually, I'm in South City, right at the dividing line between Tower Grove and Compton Heights. "Farty-Far" is just a minute away. Both of the suggestions are pretty easy access for me. Thanks again!:-)

[sistersofmercy]

21. Oh there's one on Kingshighway makes the brauts for Grant's Farm.

Oh man are those brauts good! It's gw-something. I think it's at Kings and Chippewa on east side of kingshighway by the mcdonalds i think.

[tekriter]

25. I used to live on DeTonty, near what used to be

Incarnate Word Hospital.

Pretty much grew up in Tower Grove Park.

[SickOfSpin]

29. That's really close

I'm just off of Shenandoah. I bought a rehabbed house in this area about 10 years ago when it was a lot spottier than it is now(the "big houses" are one block over)in terms of renewal. In the last two years there's been an explosion of rehabbing and improvement in my neighborhood (Tower Grove East). I never thought the home values would appreciate like they have - not that it's like the 'burbs in appreciation but at one time everybody thought the whole city was gonna turn into a slum. When I bought I was thinking low mortgage and low taxes. Who knew?

Good to meet you.:hi:

[demgrrrll]

22. Tomboy Market in St. Louis Hills. Great deli and butcher shop

Depending on where you are coming from you would make a right or a left turn from Chippewa I want to say the street name is Donovan. There is another butcher shop on Nottingham around the 5400 block.
They want the people to sign a form and agree that they will never make more than 11 dollars an hour and cut their medical benefits, that is what I have heard, not read. I went to Tomboy today.

[tekriter]

24. I forgot about that one...

my wife used to live in the apartments across the street (Donovan).

Fire trucks used to wake us up at least three times a week!

[SickOfSpin]

27. The archives in the P-D

can catch you up in about 2 minutes on the whole disgusting mess. The final straw was probably when the employers, in anticipation of a strike, advertised for replacement workers at higher wages than current employees.

[newyawker99]

39. Hi SickOfSpin!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. I would starve first before I crossed a picket line.

People don't care because they have been made to believe that Unions are evil. Unions prey upon the poor companies forcing them to overpay their employees. Forcing them to pay these lazy employees overtime pay and provide them with health care and holiday pay and vacation pay etc. Unions are the reason jobs are leaving the country because they forced these poor companies to pay outrageous wages. That's what people in this Country have been told about Unions by the repukes who want to bust Unions.

Watch your neighbors as they are crossing those picket lines and see if they look those Union members walking the picket line, in the eye. Bet they don't. That would humanize those union workers to your neighbors, they might relate to them on some level. It is easier to cross that picket line if they just think of those union workers as greedy.

[sistersofmercy]

16. You are so right about that!

Problem is where I live and the other areas I've seen the picketers have to stay on the sidewalks away from the store. The sidewalks surround the parking lots.
Anyway, I honk for them as I pass!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Story from 1994

Fred Meyer is a Pacific Northwest grocery-variety store originally family-owned but bought out by a holding company in the early 1990s. The new management decided to improve "flexibility" by making everyone's schedule completely unpredictable, including the number of hours, so that people might qualify for benefits one month and not another, or someone who had been full time for 10 years would all of a sudden become part-time.

The grocery workers' union went on strike and set up pickets. At the time, I was living in a neighborhood that is sort of New Age/Generation X/new and old left, but close enough to blue collar neighborhoods that blue collar people shopped at the same Fred Meyer I did.

When the picket lines went up, the New Age/Generation X/new and old left types were moslty scrupulous about not crossing the picket line, and they would do things like bring the picketers cookies or pizza. I had to go into the building once in a while because the FedEx office was there, and I always apologized and assured the picketers that I wasn't going to buy anything.

Sad to say, a lot of the blue collar types (not the unionized workers, but the minimum wage types) just kept shopping at Fred Meyer as before. I couldn't really blame the blue collar workers who went to work as scabs, because Fred Meyer was offering the scabs more than it paid its regular workers (not an uncommon situation), and I'm sure a lot of people were desperate and uninformed.

But it was sad to see that the type of people that unions are most helpful to were disrespecting the picketers by shopping at Fred Meyer.

[sistersofmercy]

28. Yes that is sort of what is happening here.

But the family owners still own the stores.

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

17. I saw Kurt Warner working at the Shop 'n Save

He had shaved his head and was wearing glasses, but I know it was him. I like Kurt, and have been a (CA) Rams fan all my life, but why did he have to sink so low?

Mabye he has seen enough of Alice from the Brady Bunch (Brenda).

[sistersofmercy]

26. Well that stinks!

I'm not a big football person but he and is wife do a lot of charity work, perhaps this year they can do a coat drive for the children of Dierbergs, Schnucks and Shop n save workers?

[Terwilliger]

20. very difficult to persuade people of the importance of unions...

when the right-wing does everything it can to denigrate them, and "remind" people that they're like socialists, and commies, and everything they're supposed to hate

picketers should have picketer supporters, I agree

[sistersofmercy]

23. That's why I'm dismayed.

But I guess it's just my stupid township that isn't supporting.
Yes the evil right wingers do have ppl believing unions are bad, how they worked that one I'll never know, stupid Reagan! Blah I spit on him!

[izzie]

30. People do not understand what unions have done for them

It will come back when they see the mess we are moving to.

[sistersofmercy]

31. Sad but true.

But for crying out loud this is St Louis we're a picketing town. Unions are strong here but apparently not this union.

[diamondsoul]

32. Have mercy on the blissfully ignorant, SOM.

Until recently I was just as likely to cross a picket line, purely from not knowing the plight of so many workers in this country. We can thank Dennis Kucinich and his campaign efforts for waking a lot of people, myself included, up from our ignorant stupor.

Since I started volunteering for his campaign and learned a bit about Union busting and the tricks pulled to keep workers from organizing and getting what they deserve, I've started going out of my way to support Union shops, refusing to cross picket lines (something I've done before, but not quite so zealously as I do now), and considering a thousands of social issues that I'd never thought much about before.

It may not be callousness or not caring, but pure ignorance that you're seeing, in which case, I'd go join the picketers. If people see familiar local faces known not to be employees, they're more likely to think twice about the issue.

[sistersofmercy]

33. Thank for your post...

It made me feel so much better. I like Dennis, I like him a lot but I just don't think he'll get the nomination, so forgive me as well! He is the best of the Dems!

[Capn Sunshine]

38. It's coming to LA this weekend

NO WAY am I crossing the picket line. I'd sooner starve. Unions ARE important. I used to think not until the cheap labor conservatives went after them and the light dawned.

Over the years Union people took a lot of heat to keep things cool for the rest of us. we OWE them big time.