Supermarket chains, grocery workers dig in for lengthy strike

[IndianaGreen]

This affects grocery workers in Indiana as well.

Posted on Tue, Oct. 14, 2003

Supermarket chains, grocery workers dig in for lengthy strike
ALEX VEIGA
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Thousands of Southern California grocery clerks began their third day on the picket lines Tuesday with no sign of a new labor contract, while clerks in three other states also began a strike.

The Southern California strike affects 70,000 unionized workers at three supermarket chains who have vowed not to return to work until they receive a contract with health benefits they can approve.

A contract dispute over health care benefits also led more than 3,000 Kroger grocery clerks in West Virginia and others in a handful of stores in Ohio and Kentucky to vote to strike Monday. Late in the night, union workers at 44 Kroger stores in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky went on strike.

"What happens in Southern California will shape what happens in other areas," said Greg Denier, spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers national office. "Southern California is leading the nation in this fight."

The Mercury News

[IndianaGreen]

1. Update 10/25/03: Kroger Workers Reject Contract Offers

Subject: (CENTRAL) JOBS WITH JUSTICE: Kroger Workers Reject Contract Offers

Date: 25 Oct 2003 13:41:51 -0500

Jobs With Justice Supporters,

The workers of one of our coalition members, the United Food and Commercial Workers, have voted to reject a contract offer by Kroger.

See: http://www.ufcw700.org/index.asp and

http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/3/086558-2773-031.html

Those of you who saw NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS about the Tyson strike know that the Kroger offer follows a pattern by U.S. corporations to increase profits for the rich by reducing employee wages and benefits to the poverty line and below. This follows the megarich robber barons like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and, more recently, the Waltons. As Union Theological Seminary's Joseph Hough stated on the program, the increasing divide in wealth is a moral issue that endangers the future functioning of our society... and may call for nonviolent civil disobedience.

See: http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index.html

Jobs With Justice wants our UFCW brothers and sisters to know that we stand with them in their struggle to receive fair wages and benefits from Kroger for their labor. It is the people who serve us when we shop that makes the difference for Kroger, not the products.

[bemildred]

2. It's not just asking them to pay $5 for health care.

They want to introduce a lower-tier wage scale for new hires.
If you know anything at all, you know that is an attempt to
break the union. Once it's in, they work hard to get rid of the
old "highly paid" employees. They picked this time to do it because
their profits are high and there are a lot of people out of work
that they think they can get to cross the lines.

I have found some new stores to patronize, and I won't go back EVER
unless the stores capitulate and make a fair deal.