> I like Bill and like shopping at his store. I cross that picket line
> every time it goes up. I have tried to converse with the picketers
> about how this is demonstration is counterproductive but they
> usually begin telling me how clueless I am
This is indeed pretty clueless on your part, John. In most cities in this country, retail work has been spectacularly degraded by capital, chiefly the big chains like Wal-Mart, of course, but an attack on union standards anywhere is an attack on union standards everywhere. I don't know a whole lot about NYC, but my guess is that the UFCW still has substantial density in the grocery industry there -- in NYC they're defending their standards from the attacks that have overwhelmed them most anywhere else. They should be applauded for at least holding the line in NYC even if they have failed elsewhere.
Your friend may not like the "added expense" that a union represents for his business, but in case you haven't noticed, that's the way the class struggle works. It may be an especially small petty proprietorship right now, but if he ever started employing more people, the union would be facing another anti-union grocer, a trend that would bode ill for standards across the city. The union is smart to take on a renegade employer when that employer is small, rather than waiting until it gets bigger or undercuts union employers. Unions don't call for boycotts regularly and they don't picket lightly, which is why you see so few calls for boycotts in areas where union density is low. In New York, there are more union stores, and they don't want grocery workers to end up in the same shit that they're in everywhere else in the country, so they picket non-union stores when they have to.
All of this is quite apart from questions of whether the UFCW does a good job or if some of its locals are often run like a "family business." The bottom line is that workers are defending their livelihoods and their union, and you are required to support that.
You are within your rights to argue with them to the effect that a particular tactic may be counterproductive or not well-thought-out. But once they make the decision to take that tactic, you do not have the right to break solidarity with them. That's just the way it is.
And if I seem a little irritated at the fact that I have to explain this in the first place on a list like this one, well, so be it.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories