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June 2004

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Bay Area Grocery Workers

By Javier Armas
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U -F-C-W! Safeway, we’re coming through!” chanted hundreds of UFCW members and officials at a meeting held on March 14 at the ILWU Local 10 Hall in San Francisco. This meeting was the first step taken by the Bay Area UFCW locals to prepare for the expiration of their contracts which could lead to a strike next fall. Watching the Southern California strike and the lockout unfold last October, nine locals formed the Bay Area Coalition—the organization that engineered the March event. This UFCW meeting was attended by 800 people. 

The Coalition represents nearly 50,000 workers at Safeway, Albertsons, Ralphs, Cala, Raley’s, Andronicos, and several other independent Bay Area stores. Eight of these locals (101, 120, 1179, 373R, 428, 648, 839, and 870) share a master contract that expires September 11, 2004. When the ILWU drill team entered the meeting in marching formation, they unleashed a fresh energy. 

“Southern California began the war of 2004 and we’re going to win it,” said Local 839 Shop Steward Dorothy Smith. The sentiment of the meeting was overwhelmingly to fight for decent contracts. “The store managers are already telling us the contract from Southern California is coming to Northern California,” UFCW Local 839 President John Briley warned in his opening remarks. The meeting continued with Rev. Phil Lawson and Fr. Louis Vitale of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, California Senator Barbara Boxer, and Teamsters International Vice President Chuck Mack promising religious and institutional support. 

Rank-and-file workers from each local then spoke about the coming attacks. “I worked my way through college at Safeway and had a baby daughter,” said Vince Herrera of Local 428. “With the baby’s check-ups and the immunizations, the flu and earaches she had, I would still be in debt today if I didn’t have a well-funded benefit package.” With plenty of bag lunches, the meeting broke into several workshops where union officials spoke about legal rights in the workplace and encouraged workers to wear union pins. Members also discussed with union representatives the tactics of the companies’ intimidation and propaganda, including a Safeway video that scares workers from striking and supporting the union. 

From this meeting, the Coalition planned local community actions and workplace training drives. Jim Grogan, a coordinator for the Coalition, said: “We’ve been having routine meetings with the members, letting them know what their rights are and talking to them about escalating actions.” For example, on April 9, Good Friday, the Interfaith Labor Prayer Service, in concert with the UFCW Coalition, organized parallel actions taking advantage of a clause in their contract that states, “No employee will be refused time off between the hours of 12:00 noon and 3:00 PM on Good Friday for the purpose of attending religious services.” The Good Friday action in Pinole, California, drew around 100 people including 60-70 UFCW members from Locals 588 and 1179. Lupita, a clerk in a Pinole Safeway, said she attended to find out about the new contracts because she knew nothing about the situation. 

In addition, community support for the grocery workers has begun. The Bay Area Strikers Solidarity Organization (BASSO) that grew out of a solidarity movement with the Southern California grocery strikers, has been organizing in the Bay Area for class solidarity across industrial lines. BASSO organized a key event on April 2 in Oakland. This event included a panel discussion with Craig Bague, a member of UFCW Local 1442 in Southern California and part of their strike force. Bague’s key points in his presentation to the community included a strong warning: “You guys are in the fight of your lives, trust me. They are going to do every dirty tactic you can think of.” 

Bague electrified the audience in his introductory remarks and continued: “They have more money than you and that is the bottom line, so the pressure has to come nationwide. Whether it’s boycotts or strikes, it has to be nationwide because they have too many arms on this octopus that is bringing in money to them and they are going to act as a coalition. It’s like a fighter fighting another fighter and saying, ‘I don’t want to hurt this guy because we want to be friends afterwards,’ and in the meantime he is beating the shit out of you.” Bague finished his remarks about where to go from here: “To walk on a strike line out of your own volition is what BASSO is about and that’s why this organization is important.” Bague received a standing ovation. 

The event concluded with Richard Mellor, a member of AFSCME Local 444, offering the audience sharp political lessons: “In this coming contract the employers will feel confident. The AFL-CIO has to make it publicly known that a national strike needs to be prepared to fight these companies. In order to do this we need to violate the anti-union laws that have been in place to keep the working class docile.” This political strategy came from the lessons of the strike in Southern California that was narrow and isolated. Mellor also warned the audience about past boycott failures: the Greyhound strike in 1980, the Hormel strike in 1986, and the Diamond Walnut strike in the early 1990s. All these strikes were lost because boycotts were used as a tactic, rather than extending the strike nationwide. 

The UFCW rank-and-file is nervous and lacks information about the new contracts. Several workers have said that they will accept whatever is offered, while many others assert that this is going to be a critical fight for their very livelihood and they will not accept concessions. 

These fights are crucial to the power dynamics of the workplace in the next 50 years. The U.S. economy has been gradually gravitating towards a service economy and away from a manufacturing economy. The service industry will remain a permanent fixture since Blockbusters, McDonalds, and Safeway cannot be shipped overseas. The grocery industry is one area of this service industry that is unionized and offers benefits such as healthcare and a pension. However, a combination of the union movement unable to unionize Wal-Mart and the recent series of attacks on Safeway, Albertsons, and Kroger workers will push the living standard of the working class down. 

Systemic class attacks are leading to horrific working conditions in the U.S. For example, 48 million people in the U.S. don’t have any access to health care and more than one million people lose their health insurance every year, while another 62 million are seeing their health benefits reduced or their premiums increased. Because of inaccessibility to health care, the New England Journal of Medicine (336, no. 11, 1997) concluded that almost 100,000 people die in the United States each year because of a lack of needed care—three times the number of people who have died of AIDS. These figures occurred even when the U.S. spent 14 percent of its GNP on health care—more than any other indus- trialized country in the world. 

A wave of attacks on health-care pensions is going to hit the Northern California grocery workers as the defeat in Southern California gives the companies confidence to continue their attacks. 

The outcome of this situation depends on what strategies will be implemented to defeat the grocery companies. If the UFCW keeps the Bay Area strike isolated, then it will suffer the same destiny as the Southern California strike. Safeway estimates that the Southern California strike cost the company $167.5 million in profits (involving 17 percent of Safeway stores), which is insignificant compared to the $10.5 billion dollars it earned in gross profit in 2003. The Southern California strike proved that determination from the ranks can’t be a substitute for a winning strategy by the union. The general assumption was that the Southern California grocery workers were not interested in participating in a labor conflict, but 91 percent of the workers continued striking until the end. This was not the factor responsible for having to accept such a horrific contract. 

If the AFL-CIO organizes a national confrontation against the grocery companies, where all these companies are struck until the end and the community is mobilized to engage in militant picketing, then we will see these waves of attacks reverse. As the November elections approach, the AFL-CIO will donate millions to Kerry’s campaign and provide thousands of volunteers, which could also be used to launch a real offensive against these companies. 

The time has come for the millions of union members to stand up for a winning strategy, because what is at stake impacts far beyond the grocery industry: 110,000 CWA phone workers might have to go on strike to protect their health care if the SBC phone company feels they can follow the same path of gauging health care benefits. SBC uses the same excuse of needing to cut expenses to stay competitive—even though they reported $8.5 billion dollars in profit in 2003, which is 5.7 billion more than the previous year. 

Could a new labor movement revive and change our present conditions? That depends on whether we can succeed in a couple of struggles to serve as examples of how to win. Until then, we will see the U.S. working class subjected to an inevitable increase of misery and exploitation.  

Javier Amas has been working with the Los Angeles Strikers Solidarity organization.  
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