Follow-Up: California Grocery Strikes
Ten
months after the UFCW settled the strike by agreeing to a 'two-tier'
contract, it seems that the split between younger workers and older
workers has doomed the unionization of California grocery stores.
Nearly
10 months after the end of the bitter Southern California grocery
strike and lockout, the three companies and the union that waged the
longest labor standoff in U.S. supermarket history are still in
turmoil.
Profits
at Albertsons Inc., Safeway Inc.'s Vons and Pavilions stores and Kroger
Co.'s Ralphs are being pinched by the price cuts they've made to woo
shoppers alienated by the 4 1/2 -month dispute.
The stocks of all three companies have fallen since a new contract was signed in February.
The
chains maintain that they'll rebound, largely because the two-tier
contract allows them to give new hires significantly lower wages and
benefits than veteran workers.
Safeway,
for one, doesn't want to wait for attrition to realize the payoff. The
Pleasanton, Calif.-based company plans to offer buyouts to roughly
one-third of the 22,000 people who work at its 293 Vons and Pavilions
stores in Southern and Central California to hasten their replacement
with new hires.
People
familiar with the buyout program said Safeway was prepared to spend up
to $50 million on it. So if 1,000 workers accepted, they would receive
$50,000 each.
“They
want to get rid of the old-timers and bring in a new class of
citizens,” said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 770, which represents 4,266 Vons and Pavilions employees
in the Los Angeles area.
As
it is, the two-tier system is breeding discord between experienced
workers and new hires who aren't happy about being paid less to perform
the same tasks. Turnover among new hires is unusually high, union
officials said, and some new employees are chafing at paying union dues
that average nearly $50 a month.
(Click Here To Read The Rest of the Article)
It seems
obvious that to keep the union movement going, younger employees are
going to have to get on board and join the labor unions.
When those union leaders sell them out… well, there is a reason that new employees chafe at paying union dues.
I really don't know the solution here (living on strike pay alone won't
go very far), but labor leaders are going to have to figure out how to
address these problems – and figure out how to do so fairly loudly.
Blog For Iowa 