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kyburgNational Labor Backs Grocery Workers
* Union presidents announce a new strike fund and take their message to Wall Street.
By Nancy Cleeland and Melinda Fulmer, Times Staff Writers
National labor leaders threw their financial and strategic muscle behind striking and locked-out supermarket workers in California and four other states Thursday, casting the dispute as a defining battle.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney announced the creation of a multi-union fund to back the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has 85,000 members on picket lines, most in Southern and Central California.
Sweeney said he was just beginning to solicit contributions and would not put a dollar amount on the fund. But UFCW President Doug Dority suggested it would be sizable.
"We fully intend to pay strike benefits as long as we have to pay them," Dority said. "We will not allow the employer to starve our members back to work."
The AFL-CIO also tried to undermine Wall Street's support for the supermarkets' hard-line position, staging a conference call with more than 150 institutional shareholders and analysts during which union officials depicted the companies' strategy as foolhardy.
Analysts met the overture with skepticism. Lisa F. Cartwright of Citigroup Smith Barney said she continued to view the strike as "a necessary expense in order to lower the cost structure in a market where Wal-Mart is moving in" to the grocery business in California.
With the strike in its 20th full day today, Cartwright estimated the dispute could shave $20 million to $40 million from each company's quarterly earnings. If the strike should exceed 40 days, the financial hit would double, she said.
However, Cartwright said the conference call did impress upon her the huge amount of union support for the strike. "It made me think we could be in for a bit longer battle," she said.
Supermarkets have said they are prepared for that. "This doesn't change anything," said Brian Dowling, a spokesman for Safeway Inc., which owns Vons and Pavilions stores and has been singled out by the unions for the most criticism. "There's no way to predict how long [the strike] will go on, but we are in it for as long as it takes."
Of the unions' conference call with analysts, Dowling said, "We would frame this as one desperate last-ditch attempt to put a little hurt on one of the companies."
The message from both the supermarkets and the UFCW on Thursday was that neither was prepared to back down in the clash involving 70,000 workers and 859 stores. Although many issues are in dispute, health-care benefits are at the heart of the conflict.
"The bottom line is we've got a massive strike, the biggest one in the history of our union," said Dority at a Washington news conference with Sweeney and other union presidents, including Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union and Thomas Buffenbarger of the International Assn. of Machinists.
Strike benefits are draining more than $10 million a week from national and local UFCW funds. As a backstop, the national union has taken out a line of credit using its Washington headquarters as collateral.
Sweeney said he would ask unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO as well as state and county labor councils around the country to contribute to the new national strike fund.
"They're taking on every one of us up here," Sweeney said. "They're taking on everybody who cares about America's families getting the health care they need at a price they can afford. These workers are not alone and have the full support of the entire union movement and our allies."
Several analysts expressed impatience with the strike.
"Has somebody on either side of the table said, 'OK, let's talk?' " wondered Jeff Tryka of Delafield Hambrecht Inc. "When are you guys going to go back to the table and try to resolve this?"
Sarah Palmer Amos, the UFCW director of collective bargaining, gave what has become a stock answer for both sides: "We are ready and willing to talk at any time. But until there's a substantial change, quite frankly, it doesn't make a lot of sense."
Stacia Levenfeld, a spokeswoman for Albertsons Inc., said that it was the union that broke off negotiations — and that the union must make the first step to reopen talks.
"Before the strike began, the companies put forth a very good offer that the union leadership rejected," Levenfeld said. "Since then, the unions have misrepresented our proposal and appear determined to continue down the strike path."
Ralphs, a unit of Kroger Co., did not return calls for comment.
The union launched the strike against Safeway stores Oct. 11 after talks on a new contract broke down. Ralphs and Albertsons locked out their union workers the next day.
The union made its appeal to industry analysts before the market close Thursday. Shares of Safeway dropped 14 cents to $21.11. Shares of Albertsons rose 20 cents to $20.08 and shares of Kroger dropped 6 cents to $17.30. All trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
At the end of trading Oct. 10, the day before the strike began, Safeway was at $23.83, Albertsons stood at $20.97 and Kroger closed at $19.22.
The conference call ended with some tough questions from analysts, some of whom portrayed union expectations as unrealistic, particularly in light of the plans by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to expand into the grocery business in California. Wal-Mart's labor costs are far lower than the supermarkets'.
The union has won premier health benefits through years of bargaining, sometimes at the expense of wage hikes or other benefits. Members currently pay no premiums for full family health coverage. Union leaders have said that they are willing to compromise but that the markets' proposals were too extreme. They have said the proposals amounted to a 50% cut in benefits over the three-year contract.
I want to keep this for posterity.
* Union presidents announce a new strike fund and take their message to Wall Street.
By Nancy Cleeland and Melinda Fulmer, Times Staff Writers
National labor leaders threw their financial and strategic muscle behind striking and locked-out supermarket workers in California and four other states Thursday, casting the dispute as a defining battle.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney announced the creation of a multi-union fund to back the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has 85,000 members on picket lines, most in Southern and Central California.
Sweeney said he was just beginning to solicit contributions and would not put a dollar amount on the fund. But UFCW President Doug Dority suggested it would be sizable.
"We fully intend to pay strike benefits as long as we have to pay them," Dority said. "We will not allow the employer to starve our members back to work."
The AFL-CIO also tried to undermine Wall Street's support for the supermarkets' hard-line position, staging a conference call with more than 150 institutional shareholders and analysts during which union officials depicted the companies' strategy as foolhardy.
Analysts met the overture with skepticism. Lisa F. Cartwright of Citigroup Smith Barney said she continued to view the strike as "a necessary expense in order to lower the cost structure in a market where Wal-Mart is moving in" to the grocery business in California.
With the strike in its 20th full day today, Cartwright estimated the dispute could shave $20 million to $40 million from each company's quarterly earnings. If the strike should exceed 40 days, the financial hit would double, she said.
However, Cartwright said the conference call did impress upon her the huge amount of union support for the strike. "It made me think we could be in for a bit longer battle," she said.
Supermarkets have said they are prepared for that. "This doesn't change anything," said Brian Dowling, a spokesman for Safeway Inc., which owns Vons and Pavilions stores and has been singled out by the unions for the most criticism. "There's no way to predict how long [the strike] will go on, but we are in it for as long as it takes."
Of the unions' conference call with analysts, Dowling said, "We would frame this as one desperate last-ditch attempt to put a little hurt on one of the companies."
The message from both the supermarkets and the UFCW on Thursday was that neither was prepared to back down in the clash involving 70,000 workers and 859 stores. Although many issues are in dispute, health-care benefits are at the heart of the conflict.
"The bottom line is we've got a massive strike, the biggest one in the history of our union," said Dority at a Washington news conference with Sweeney and other union presidents, including Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union and Thomas Buffenbarger of the International Assn. of Machinists.
Strike benefits are draining more than $10 million a week from national and local UFCW funds. As a backstop, the national union has taken out a line of credit using its Washington headquarters as collateral.
Sweeney said he would ask unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO as well as state and county labor councils around the country to contribute to the new national strike fund.
"They're taking on every one of us up here," Sweeney said. "They're taking on everybody who cares about America's families getting the health care they need at a price they can afford. These workers are not alone and have the full support of the entire union movement and our allies."
Several analysts expressed impatience with the strike.
"Has somebody on either side of the table said, 'OK, let's talk?' " wondered Jeff Tryka of Delafield Hambrecht Inc. "When are you guys going to go back to the table and try to resolve this?"
Sarah Palmer Amos, the UFCW director of collective bargaining, gave what has become a stock answer for both sides: "We are ready and willing to talk at any time. But until there's a substantial change, quite frankly, it doesn't make a lot of sense."
Stacia Levenfeld, a spokeswoman for Albertsons Inc., said that it was the union that broke off negotiations — and that the union must make the first step to reopen talks.
"Before the strike began, the companies put forth a very good offer that the union leadership rejected," Levenfeld said. "Since then, the unions have misrepresented our proposal and appear determined to continue down the strike path."
Ralphs, a unit of Kroger Co., did not return calls for comment.
The union launched the strike against Safeway stores Oct. 11 after talks on a new contract broke down. Ralphs and Albertsons locked out their union workers the next day.
The union made its appeal to industry analysts before the market close Thursday. Shares of Safeway dropped 14 cents to $21.11. Shares of Albertsons rose 20 cents to $20.08 and shares of Kroger dropped 6 cents to $17.30. All trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
At the end of trading Oct. 10, the day before the strike began, Safeway was at $23.83, Albertsons stood at $20.97 and Kroger closed at $19.22.
The conference call ended with some tough questions from analysts, some of whom portrayed union expectations as unrealistic, particularly in light of the plans by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to expand into the grocery business in California. Wal-Mart's labor costs are far lower than the supermarkets'.
The union has won premier health benefits through years of bargaining, sometimes at the expense of wage hikes or other benefits. Members currently pay no premiums for full family health coverage. Union leaders have said that they are willing to compromise but that the markets' proposals were too extreme. They have said the proposals amounted to a 50% cut in benefits over the three-year contract.
I want to keep this for posterity.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 11:28 am (UTC)The reality is Wal-Mart will CRUSH the grocery business in California with there non-union, low cost bulk advantage over them. The reality is both the Union and the Grocery stores will perish under Wal-Mart. Viva Wal-Mart!
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 12:27 pm (UTC)Sams Club is run nicely - but you'd have to pay me to go in a Wall-Mart these days.
I swear, the last four times in four different places, it stunk - and I couldn't stand the customers, let alone the staff.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 11:44 am (UTC)When I worked in a grocery store, the union was a constant thorn in my side. It channeled money away from the grocery store and dictated employment and wage terms, and the supermarket was forced to reduce my pay because the union unfalteringly decided I owed it back dues, even though I hadn't even worked for the store in months.
Examining the union's policies and practices, I discovered a broken system designed to reward time over quality, and to force any grocery workers from receiving any advancement whatsoever unless they joined the union.
I have no amiable thoughts toward the striking unions. It doesn't matter if, on paper, the unions claim to benefit the workers unilaterally - they don't. The high school kids, the college kids, the people who work there as a second job - they all pay full union dues, and they reap few of the "benefits" that the unions promise.
Unions are a huge draw on modern productivity. They may have once stood for something of pure good, and they may have once provided necessary help for people who otherwise would have been helpless, but nowadays unions provide an excuse for people to be lazy and useless - time at work provides salary and benefits, and a person can't simply be fired for being incompetent or for being lax.
I mentioned that I'd worked for the Home Energy Assistance Program - one of the biggest problems we had in processing benefits was laxness and ineptitude by union government workers who didn't want to be bothered to do their jobs.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 12:26 pm (UTC)You're also the one in New York state, if I remember right? Has all your experience with unions been there as well? It would be useful information to compare and contrast with mine out here in California.
You get out of a system what you put into it.
You want to work part-time for a union position that charges dues the same way whether you are full or part-time, that's your choice. You know what you are getting, going into it. That's the point of a contract - bitch all you like about strikes, but any employer who deals with them, deals with union employees different than any other. Why? Because you have negotiated that relationship different than any other. It's on paper and you can tie to it.
I'd disagree that unions overall cause a decline in productivity. Depends on who's doing the supervising, always - and in the case of trained professionals (teachers, doctors, etc.), their unions are often the source of a lot of information related to service quality. You want to know the source of problems in education? Want to know what services get the short end of the stick in hospitals? Ask the rank and file.
Pure good never existed. Unions formed out of desperation and if anyone tells you different, they lie. People died on strike lines during the depression - much like people died during the civil rights movement in the early 60's. You just never hear about it anymore.
And like any self-monitoring organization, corruption has been rampant. You know that.
I don't think the unions or the rank and file in the grocery strike have to be painted as white hats and black hats for either side to have a valid point. What the strike is over is health care and access to it. I'm non-union and my plan is changing carriers and costing more next year. Jim is union and has no access to a health plan at all. For the grocery strike, they are fighting to preserve what they have - and I can't fault them for it. This is a totally negotiated process - this is how it works. And if you have an employer who won't negotiate, this is how the contract runs - the ability to do so was negotiated in advance. (How ironic....)
You don't like it, stand up, plant your feet and say no. In a union, as a member, you can do that. Crap, anywhere in life.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 01:19 pm (UTC)Just throwing my two cents in... for no reason.