[lbo-talk] Fwd: Southern California Grocery Strike

[Doug Henwood]

Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:02:11 -0500
From: "Joey Hipolito" <jhipolito at ufcw.org>
To: <dhenwood at panix.com>

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