Notes on Another Defeat for Workers In The US:
The Los Angeles Supermarket Strike of 2003-2004
By Loren Goldner
Media coverage was eclipsed by Hollywood's Academy Awards, but on
Sunday, Feb. 29, Southern California supermarket workers voted 86% to
end their five-month old strike, accepting a contract that amounts to
a serious, if not total, victory for a determined employer offensive
with national implications. Thus one of the most important strikes in
the U.S. in years has ended in defeat.
In October of last year, 97% of members of the United Food and
Commercial Workers (UFCW) in southern and central California voted to
strike Von's, a supermarket chained owned by Safeway, a national
chain. The main issue was the health benefits of the workers, paid
entirely by the company; Von's wanted the workers to pay 50% of
health costs under a new contract. They also wanted to introduce a
two-tier wage system. Within hours, two other chains with contracts
pending, Albertson's and Ralphs, locked out their employees.
Beginning in early October, 70,000 members of the UFCW were on strike
in the region.
The strike began with great enthusiasm from the workers and with a
surprisingly high level of public support, as struck supermarkets
remained largely empty, including in the big end-of-the-year holiday
season. Further, mass transit workers of Los Angeles struck at the
same time, also over health benefits, creating a "strike wave"
atmosphere not seen in decades (their strike was handed over to
"arbitration" and they returned to work a short time later; at this
writing, nothing has been resolved). (Foreign readers should
understand that since the U.S. has no national health care system,
health benefits are often one of the most important parts of employee
compensation. The average wage of a southern California UFCW worker
is less than $12 per hour, and most workers are guaranteed only 24
hours of work per week. Many workers hold the job mainly for the
health benefits.) The International Longshore and Warehousemen's
Union (ILWU) the West Coast dockers' union, shut down Los Angeles
harbour in a one-day sympathy strike, and shortly thereafter did the
same at the nearby San Pedro shipyards. They also contributed
$200,000 to the Ralphs strike fund.
All three supermarkets are part of national chains as the result
of a major consolidation of retail grocery sales over the past 30
years. The supermarkets claimed they needed the givebacks because of
impending competition from Wal-Mart, the retail giant, which is
planning to open 40 new outlets in southern California in the next
few years (Wal-Mart is infamous for low wages and no employee
benefits). Everyone understood that the outcome of the strike would
set a pattern for many other unions and workers in the region, and
nationally. (Increasing numbers of labour disputes are precisely over
health care costs.) Nevertheless, in spite of all the working-class
support, the unions have been following the narrow, legalistic
strategies that have resulted in so many defeats over the past 25
years. On October 31, they pulled the pickets from Ralphs as a
gesture of "good faith" to focus them on Von's; the employers
immediately announced that they would be sharing profits and losses
during the strike. The union went so far as to urge people to shop at
Ralphs, where their own members were locked out. Even though the
chains are all national, with total sales of $30 billion a year, the
unions shied away from any national strategy, sending a few
"informational pickets" to outlets in northern California and
elsewhere. Last fall, the UFCW did manage to win a similar strike at
Kroger's (the chain owning Ralphs) in West Virginia, Ohio and
Kentucky. On November 24, the UFCW did extend the strike to the ten
southern California distribution centres supplying the supermarkets,
and the Teamsters (International Brotherhood of Teamsters-IBT) agreed
that their 7,000 members delivering to those sites would not cross
the picket lines. But the UFCW did nothing to stop thousands of scab
trucks delivering the sites, and on Dec. 19 they tried to pull the
pickets. On Dec. 22, at the El Monte Von's distribution centre, UFCW
members refused to close down their picket lines, and they stayed up.
By mid-January, picketing resumed at some Ralphs sites, but strike
pay had been cut from $240 to $100 per week.
In mid-December, John Sweeney and Rich Trumpka, the two top
leaders of the "new" AFL-CIO, came to Los Angeles to meet with the
presidents of 50 UFCW locals, putting the national prestige of the
organized labour movement on the line to win the strike. One might
well ask, beyond the usual leftist cries of "betrayal", why they took
such a risk after a long string of defeats in previous years. (Union
membership under Sweeney, since he took office in 1995, has fallen
from 14% to 9% of the U.S. work force.) My own opinion is that, in
their own narrow terms, with their timid strategies and tactics, they
underestimated the willingness and ability of the three chains to
lose millions of dollars in order to break the power of the
unions.
The unions were successful in keeping the relatively young and
inexperienced work force under control. No mass meetings were held to
discuss strike strategy, and members generally felt excluded from
influence on the direction of the strike. Ralphs was being kept open
by scabs from the notorious Personnel Support System, Inc., which
provides thuggish "replacement workers" for just these occasions. But
the UFCW seemed determined to follow the localist and legalist
strategies of so many losing strikes of previous years, not even
capable of resorting to the kinds of anti-scab tactics which created
unions in the first place. The employers said they were prepared to
take a year to defeat the UFCW, and without a change in strike
strategy by the workers, they succeeded.
59,000 UFCW members voted on the three-year contract over the
weekend of February 28-29. By any standard, the settlement must be
considered an important employer victory. While the supermarkets did
lose $2.5 billion in income during the strike, they established a
precedent for many pending contracts around the country, and not
merely for supermarkets. Wall Street greeted the settlement, and
Safeway stock prices have remained firm throughout the strike.
The new contract provides for a two-tier system. Current employees
will receive no pay increase for the first two years of the contract,
but will receive a ratification bonus. In the third year, they will
begin making monthly payments for the family health plan. New
employees will have lower wages and will receive only limited health
coverage. The two-tier contract will thus open the way for pushing
older employees out the door. Finally, the contract allows the
supermarkets to fire up to 630 UFCW members for "misconduct" on the
picket lines within 36 hours of ratification.
In the same way there were no mass meetings during the strike, the
ratification vote was rushed through on a 16-page small print
contract. The UFCW and the AFL-CIO declared victory for having saved
the health plan for current employees for two years, but no one
doubts that for a strike with very strong support from the
rank-and-file and from the "public", this was a massive defeat,
opening the way for future massive defeats. It is possible that the
UFCW leadership in Southern California thought they could win, based
on the early momentum, not realizing that the supermarkets had
national backing and a national strategy. On Feb. 16, Rick Icaza,
president of UFCW Local 770 and a major strike "leader", told the Los
Angeles Times that "I felt
we had passed the era of the need for
strikes
I thought those days were over." It seems highly
probable that at both the local and national levels, the UFCW did not
want to embarrass the Democratic Party in an election year.
But aside from the shortsightedness and top-down character of the
union strategy, the decisive factory in the defeat was the absence of
any challenge to the union strategy from the UFCW rank-and-file.
The ultimate issue in this strike was the corporate offensive
against the outmoded "private Social Democracy" for the minority of
American workers with union-contracted, and no longer affordable,
employer health plans. This offensive can only be answered by a class
offensive to make universal health care a political issue, one no
longer confined to isolated groups of workers in losing local
struggles. Don't expect such a struggle from either the UFCW or the
AFL-CIO, not to mention the Democratic Party.
Other articles on the class struggle in the U.S. and elsewhere are
available at the Break
Their Haughty Power web site
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