Public Employee Press

Rally backs grocery strike

Activists from DC 37 and other city unions demonstrated Feb. 5 in the Wall Street financial district to support 70,000 striking California grocery workers.

Out of work for about five months, the workers are in a bitter contract fight with three large supermarket chains that want to gut their health-care benefits and impose a two-tier wage system.

“This affects all of us,” said Rodney Carroll, a Local 371 activist at the rally. “Our health benefits are at stake. If they succeed in hitting the grocery workers, we’re next.”

The supermarket companies want grocery workers to start paying for their health care coverage, sticking them with premium contributions of up to $260 a year for individuals and $780 for families.

For new employees, management wants to cut its health coverage payments to $1.35 per hour from $4. The United Food and Commercial Workers union says this would sharply reduce benefits and cost workers up to $4,000 a year.

The employers’ plan would further erode the livelihood of grocery workers by introducing a two-tiered wage system, chopping cashiers wages from $17.90 an hour to $15.10 for new employees.

The striking and locked out Southern California workers are employed by Vons (Safeway), Ralphs (Kroger) and Albertsons, which had combined operating profits of $9.7 billion in 2002.

Hundreds of demonstrators at the rally organized by the Central Labor Council carried signs with messages like “Hold the Line for Americans’ Health Care.” The theme of the rally was “Worker Need over Wall Street Greed.”

Nationwide, the AFL-CIO and the UFCW are mobilizing members to support the grocery workers through demonstrations, boycotts, petitions and a hardship fund. Visit the UFCW Web site at www.ufcw.org to participate in an e-mail campaign. Checks may be sent to the UFCW Strike Hardship Fund, 1775 K St., NW, Washington, D.D., 20006.