Doug, A member of your listserv forwarded to me your e-mail address. I work as a researcher at the UFCW International and we are circulating an academic petition for people to sign concerning the Southern California Grocery Strike. If you could please post the petition to your listserv and circulate to your colleagues, it would be enormously appreciated. Thank you in advance, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely, Joey
__________
As you are likely aware, the 70,000 grocery members in Southern California are entering their 4th month of being on strike against Safeway, Kroger, and Albertson's. We are asking academics and colleagues to sign a petition supporting the grocery workers and a fair bargaining process. Please sign the petition online located at http://www.ufcw.org/hold_the_line/petition_academic.cfm . I have included the text below. Please circulate the e-mail. We need to show these companies that all communities stand in solidarity with the working families who are taking a stand for affordable health care. If you have any questions at all or would like additional information, please feel free to contact me.
In solidarity, Joey
Petition for the Academic Community http://www.ufcw.org/hold_the_line/petition_academic.cfm
Statement on the Southern California Grocery Strike:
What's at Stake for America
Over 70,000 supermarket workers have been on strike or locked out since October 11, 2003. Millions of customers have been inconvenienced, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been drained from the Southern California economy. The strike/lockout has exacted a terrible human and economic toll.
But the implications of this labor dispute are even more far-reaching. If Safeway and its coalition partners, Albertson's and Kroger, succeed in imposing the changes in workers' health insurance benefits that they are currently demanding, it is only a matter of time before other employers will follow suit. All Americans who care about access to decent health care have a stake in this conflict.
Safeway and the other supermarket chains claim that they are seeking "modest" changes that would require employees pay only $5 to $15 a week toward their health care premiums. However, the truth is more disturbing. These employers propose to slash their insurance contributions by 65 percent (from $3.85 under the last union contract, to only $1.35 per hour) for all employees hired after October 6, 2003. In this industry with its high employee turnover, it is estimated that 30 percent of employees would be in this category by the end of the next three-year contract.
For current employees and retirees the proposed plan would retain a variant of their old plan. But with younger, newer employees left out of this traditional plan, and increasingly older and sicker employees remaining, the health-care costs per employee inevitably will rise, threatening the overall viability of the plan. As Professors Rick Brown (UCLA) and Richard Kronick (UC San Diego) wrote recently in the San Francisco Chronicle, "For new hires and their families, the employers' proposal would lead to the end of affordable health care." Eventually, they add, for current employees as well the resulting plan "will be forced to drastically curtail covered benefits or increase employee-paid premiums to unaffordable levels." 1
If these proposals by Safeway, Kroger and Albertson's are implemented, a major sector of private industry would effectively be abandoning its longstanding commitment to providing health-care benefits for its employees-an example that other employers would likely follow, thus jeopardizing the quality of employer-provided health-care plans throughout the economy.
Safeway, Kroger and Albertson's are companies with billions of dollars in assets-and their southern California stores are profitable operations. These corporations surely can afford to do the right thing and maintain their commitment to providing decent health insurance benefits to their hard-working employees. Those employees, and all Americans, deserve no less.
1. E. Richard Brown and Richard Kronick, "Holes in the Safety Net," S.F. Chronicle, 12/8/03.
Petition for the Academic Community http://www.ufcw.org/hold_the_line/petition_academic.cfm
Statement on the Southern California Grocery Strike:
What's at Stake for America
Over 70,000 supermarket workers have been on strike or locked out since October 11, 2003. Millions of customers have been inconvenienced, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been drained from the Southern California economy. The strike/lockout has exacted a terrible human and economic toll.
But the implications of this labor dispute are even more far-reaching. If Safeway and its coalition partners, Albertson's and Kroger, succeed in imposing the changes in workers' health insurance benefits that they are currently demanding, it is only a matter of time before other employers will follow suit. All Americans who care about access to decent health care have a stake in this conflict.
Safeway and the other supermarket chains claim that they are seeking "modest" changes that would require employees pay only $5 to $15 a week toward their health care premiums. However, the truth is more disturbing. These employers propose to slash their insurance contributions by 65 percent (from $3.85 under the last union contract, to only $1.35 per hour) for all employees hired after October 6, 2003. In this industry with its high employee turnover, it is estimated that 30 percent of employees would be in this category by the end of the next three-year contract.
For current employees and retirees the proposed plan would retain a variant of their old plan. But with younger, newer employees left out of this traditional plan, and increasingly older and sicker employees remaining, the health-care costs per employee inevitably will rise, threatening the overall viability of the plan. As Professors Rick Brown (UCLA) and Richard Kronick (UC San Diego) wrote recently in the San Francisco Chronicle, "For new hires and their families, the employers' proposal would lead to the end of affordable health care." Eventually, they add, for current employees as well the resulting plan "will be forced to drastically curtail covered benefits or increase employee-paid premiums to unaffordable levels." 1
If these proposals by Safeway, Kroger and Albertson's are implemented, a major sector of private industry would effectively be abandoning its longstanding commitment to providing health-care benefits for its employees-an example that other employers would likely follow, thus jeopardizing the quality of employer-provided health-care plans throughout the economy.
Safeway, Kroger and Albertson's are companies with billions of dollars in assets-and their southern California stores are profitable operations. These corporations surely can afford to do the right thing and maintain their commitment to providing decent health insurance benefits to their hard-working employees. Those employees, and all Americans, deserve no less.
1. E. Richard Brown and Richard Kronick, "Holes in the Safety Net," S.F. Chronicle, 12/8/03.
_______________________ Joey J. Hipolito Research Associate United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) 1775 K Street NW Washington, DC 20006 phone: (202) 466-1590 fax: (202) 466-1587 jhipolito at ufcw.org