Here we go again with the grocery workers’ strike, Southern California.
Grocery workers are set to strike against the very places that are crazy enough to hire union workers: Albertson’s, Ralph’s and Vons. Remember how it was last time? Stater Brothers was packed, the smaller independent stores saw a great uptick in business that they are still enjoying today, and people crossing picket lines to buy food for their families with their hard-earned money, or people who were out of work who were crossing picket lines to earn some money, were being accosted by the people who just weeks earlier were thanking them for shopping at that very store and telling them to have a nice day.
This time around, with higher unemployment rates and company revenues down across the board, it could get even nastier and last even longer. The stores are offering compromises, but of course, the unions exclaim that none of the compromises are good enough for their members. The members have voted to strike and it seems like it is only a matter of time until they do.
I, too, once worked for one of these union shops and was a member of this very union. Granted, it was over two decades ago, and the most I could take working there was six months, but my very first job was working at the Lucky’s at Seacliff Village in Huntington Beach as a box boy, making minimum wage, working full-time at a part-time job without any benefits, bagging groceries, lifting boxes, sweeping and mopping floors, and shoveling broken glass to empty the recycling machines.
I had just turned 15 and needed money for a car, car insurance, not eating at home, taking girls out on dates, of course, and to put some money away to pay for college. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but when they hired me, they told me that I was going to need to join the union, but explained to me that this was a good thing. But, I didn’t think it was much of a good thing when my first paycheck of $137 was in my hand and $84 of it went to pay my initial union dues.
With that initial chunk of my money in the hands of the union bosses and with two trips to Buena Park to vote in mandatory union votes under my belt, working a very laborious job at minimum wage with no benefits, within six months, I was ready to move on. I left that union job at Lucky’s and I never looked back.
I took note when Lucky’s was bought by Albertson’s and I took note every time the grocery workers were rattling their swords at the evil bastards that employed them, but it really wasn’t until the last strike which lasted 141 days over 2003 and 2004 that I really paid close attention to what was going on.
Really, that was the first strike I had any personal involvement in, if you will. I wasn’t on the picket line, and in fact, at the time, was out on my own at an independent shop I partially owned, but I did come in contact with those picket lines and I did hear about some of the nasty stuff that was going on when people were crossing them. It is this legacy of intimidation and scare tactics laid on shoppers by the union and some of its members that I remember most about their last strike.
The six months I spent working at Lucky’s remains my one and only union job to date. So, in 2003 when the last strike began, other than having to see my grandfather who paid into a union most of his adult life have to fight that very same union for his pension money because he wanted to keep working in retirement, and the basic working knowledge of unions that I learned from unionized teachers that weren’t really all that stellar, I still had a pretty clean slate when it came to unions. Over the coming 141 days, however, that would greatly change.
I moved to Aliso Viejo in 2002, and that is when I started shopping at Ralph's. When the strike began just over a year later, we started doing more of our shopping at Wal-Mart and starting buying what we could not get there at Stater Brothers. There were a couple of times early on in the strike that I crossed the picket line to shop at Ralph's to get something in particular that I wanted that only Ralph’s had, and one time, I even drove to Ralph’s without thinking and just said screw it and went inside because I didn’t want to drive somewhere else. I also had a friend who cleaned up, making a lot of money working long hours at a Ralph's during that strike who I went to see at the store a couple of times. I even considered earning a little extra money there myself, though I never went through with it. Admittedly, though, I still felt comfortable enough crossing the picket line in those early days of the strike. Some of the people on the lines glared at you a little bit, but others were very polite.
But, as the strike lingered on and people burned through their savings instead of working, coming to the realization that the strike was going to be a lot longer than they figured when they voted for it, those picket lines started to get a little nasty.
Then, once it was reported that a woman was actually accosted at the Ralph’s I shopped at as she was walking into the store with her children, I learned my lesson - cross that picket line at your own physical risk.
But, I guess that was the point they were trying to make, wasn’t it? That lesson was solidified by a conversation I overheard while I was in line at the bank when a member of the union was asking everyone in line what they thought of the strike, and then verbally attacking anyone who did not support it.
I tried to avoid him asking me, but he finally made his way to my spot in the line. Needless to say, he and I had a little verbal exchange at the bank that I will never forget. Someone at the union should have taught him a better way to earn support for his cause.
So, looking back, while that chunk of the very first paycheck I earned put a sour taste in my mouth for the modern union, I still was very much on the fence with unions up until things started to get a little nasty with that 2003 to 2004 strike. Needless to say, at the time I set out to learn more, to form a much better-informed opinion of unions, and in the past seven years, I have concluded that while the initial intention of the union was good, and that the early unions brought us into reasonable working hours and reasonable working conditions, and took children off of assembly lines and got them into schools, I struggle to see how at the end of the day today, they are actually doing near the good that they used to. Couple that with all the classic union corruption, strong-arming and mob ties from the 1960s and 1970s that supposedly are 100% gone now, and you do not have a very rosy picture of the modern union at all.
In fact, when you look at the plight of non-union workers in America today, many of them are much better off than their union counterparts, even though their union counterparts have a union looking out for their best interest. Look at the unionized auto workers in America, for example, and how their union benefited most of them out of a job.
By the way, I did my own personal reflecting and found myself wondering how in the hell was it that I was in a union, paying union dues, yet was making minimum wage and getting no benefits? You’ll excuse me if I don’t look back fondly at all the union was doing for me at the time.
And now, as we stare down another grocery workers strike, I can’t help but have a bitter taste in my mouth from the last one. This time around, the complaint is that workers are going to have to start paying more of their healthcare costs. Oh, you mean like everyone else in America? I had to do that for a year at my current job when the economy started to turn and I didn’t take to the streets, accosting customers as they entered the building. In fact, I paid it without question, put my head down, got to work, and with the help of everyone at the company working hard together through the economic crisis, a year later, the company turned around and starting paying 100% of my health insurance premium again because it was doing so well. We supported the company and came out the other side better for it instead of attacking the company, blaming it for things that were outside of its control.
I got a job at the grocery store and I didn’t really like it, so I went out and got another job, then another job, then another job, and moved on with my life. I didn’t stay at a job I didn’t like then blame the store owner because I stayed there. By the way, grocery workers in the very worst increase percentage are being asked to pay $92 per month for family insurance; $36 per month for themselves. I had to pay $33.11 a month and I work longer hours and I am salary so I don’t get overtime or holiday pay. To top it off, I negotiate all of my benefits and perks one on one directly with the company myself because I’m not part of a union.
Everyone out there is having to make concessions, and everyone out there is having to work a little longer and a little harder. Why should that not be the case for EVERYONE? What did that last strike accomplish? To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember, but I do know that it did one thing. It completely and totally swayed my opinion in one direction when it came to unions. I am not saying that these grocery store workers don’t work hard and that they don’t deserve the same American dream that the rest of us do, I am just saying that when it comes to supporting them and their disdain for their store during the strike, then immediately transitioning back to supporting their store once the strike is over is a real struggle for me.
Why is it such a struggle? Let’s just say that I think that striking workers should be out taking some business and economic classes because obviously, they do not have a basic working knowledge of how today’s businesses work, even though they work for a business and pay union dues to another business. Striking workers need to better understand where their employer, the people crossing picket lines, and yes, even their union, all stand. I’m not saying that to be mean. I am saying that they need to become better informed on how businesses work and understand that their union is a profitable business and they are a customer that is forced to shop there, even when there are better deals in the marketplace.
Again, let’s look at what happened last time. We stopped shopping at the Ralph’s where the mother walking into the store with her children was accosted. We started shopping at the next furthest Ralph’s from home, but all the stuff we were buying at Wal-Mart and other stores during the strike, we never went back to buying again at any Ralph’s, and this has actually saved us quite a bit of money. We spend far less at Ralph’s today than we did before the last strike, quite frankly, because we were forced by union members to go out and find alternatives during the last strike, and find alternatives, we did.
So, when Ralph’s doesn’t have money to pay for all of these workers’ health insurance seven years later, how do these workers not see that the effects they created with their last strike play a large part in the financial condition of their employer today? How can they not see that this looming strike over somewhere between $36 and $93 per month is going to have any even more adverse effect on their employer this time around? All of the evidence points to the fact that shoppers in Southern California did not simply go right back to their same buying habits post-strike back in 2004, but in fact, are buying less and less at the union shops because the bad taste the last strike left in their mouth.
During the strike, we discovered Henry’s and it’s higher-quality and less-expensive produce. That taught us that we needed to do more than just shop at Ralph’s…we needed to shop around. The grocery workers’ strike and the insight it gave us last time around led us to finding Henry's, and in turn, over the years, Fresh N' Easy and Growers Direct. We have now found everything we bought at Ralph's before the last strike at other stores, and at a cheaper price. I guess I should thank the union in a way, because without the last strike, we would have just continued paying more for less quality at Ralph’s. And one last point before I wrap up…While we were buying less, we were still going to Ralph’s about once a week, but since March when the union first started sabre rattling, we are going to Ralph’s much less in preparation for not going there at all. In fact, I think I may have made my last regularly-scheduled shopping trip to Ralph’s at this point.
So, in conclusion, this time I will not be crossing the picket line – not one single time. This will not be in support of the strike, but will be because the last strike opened my eyes to the options I had at local non-union shops. This time around, I no longer need to cross the picket line. This time, I won’t simply cut back on what we buy at Ralph’s, we’ll simply just stop going there from here on out. No strike in 2004? I’d still be shopping at Ralph’s. No strike in 2011? I’d still be shopping at Ralph’s. Now? I’m done shopping at Ralph’s. Regardless of how this strike turns out, if enough people reach the same conclusion that I did, union members, how do you think that is going to affect the store’s ability to pay for your health insurance?
