Strike Wave 2011: SoCal Grocery Workers Ready to Strike

As so typically happens in these situations, the negotiators for the supermarkets have stonewalled, bullied and generally blown off Southern California grocery workers during their contract negotiations. Fed up, the grocery workers have issued a 72-hour notice canceling the contract extension they had conceded to the bosses, the OB Rag reported this morning, setting the groundwork for a strike.

The contract negotiations have been going on for the past nine months. The union, by its own admission, has agreed to numerous concessions to help keep the food giants (Ralph’s, Vons and Albertson’s) highly profitable. Yet management continues to insist on a health care plan that would effectively eliminate access entirely for 62,000 workers.

Many of the workers recognize that this is no longer just about them versus their bosses, but part of the largest assault on working and living conditions for all workers. The ruling elite, including the grocery bosses, see this as an historic moment, when unions are weaker than they’ve been in generations and when the public has little sympathy for them. They believe they can successfully make whatever demands they choose on employees and that employees will graciously accept these demands rather than face unemployment.

However, you can only push people so far before they start to fight back. Apparently, completely gutting health care was that point for grocery workers.

If grocery workers do go on strike next week, it would be the largest U.S. strike in years, bigger than even the recent Verizon strike. However, a strike is not yet certain. Cancellation of the contract is a step in that direction, but negotiations could continue with a contract and a deal (or sell out) being worked out before a strike occurs.

Nevertheless, it seems that some of the union presidents have given up on a settlement. Greg Conger, president of UFCW Local 324 in Orange County, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying, "It's time to bring these negotiations to an end. . . The talks have been going at a glacial pace. . . If the employers don't snap out of it, and give our members a proposal that we can live with, the only option we have left is a strike."

Grocery workers last struck in California in 2003. The strike lasted 141 days and cost the employers an estimated $2 billion, according to the Times. However, it also cost employees a bundle since they were without work for nearly five months. The struggle ended with a sell-out contract negotiated by the union bosses after a very weak effort by the union bosses to build solidarity with other unions.

Grocery workers face many of the same difficulties today. Many of the jobs can be done by scabs with little or no experience. In today’s climate of high unemployment, it should not be difficult for the grocery bosses to find an army of eager strike breakers. Therefore, simply refusing to work and picketing the stores will be insufficient. They will have to also convince teamsters to refuse to deliver products to the stores. They will need the ILWU to refuse to unload cargo destined for the stores. They will need to convince shoppers to take their business else, which will not be easy, since everyone is struggling right now, and few have the time, money and options to shop elsewhere.

Strike Wave Continues: Nurses Announce One-Day Strike For 9/22

The recently ended Verizon strike was the largest U.S. strike in recent years, involving 45,000 union members. However, 62,000 Southern California grocery workers are on the verge of striking against Vons, Albertson’s and Ralph’s. The ILWU has been engaged in a long-standing and violent battle in Washington State for the past year, in which military force has been threatened against striking longshoremen. The UAW has recently agreed to postpone a strike against Ford pending settlements with workers at GM and Chrysler. 1,300 workers are striking against American Crystal Sugar. Hotel workers have been striking against Hyatt in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Honolulu. And 25,000 New York City carpenters were recently poised to launch the first citywide construction strike in 80 years.

Now, 23,000 registered nurses at 34 Northern and Central California hospitals are planning a one-day strike for Thursday, September 22, according to Labor Union Report. The strike will primarily affect two of California's largest hospital chains, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, and Children's Hospital Oakland.

RNs are protesting major new cuts in patient care and nursing standards. Among the changes, Sutter wants to reduce the ability of nurses to advocate for their patients, force them work when sick, raise their out-of-pocket healthcare costs, and subject them to arbitrary disciplinary policies, despite having made $3.7 billion in profits over the last six years. Kaiser and Children’s Hospital RNs are protesting cuts to their healthcare and retirement coverage, as well as unsafe staffing policies.

Nurses struck Children’s hospital for five days in May over contract disputes and attacks on their benefits. They also struck last year over wages.

Attacks on nurses’ unions and their working conditions have been increasing as large corporate hospitals attempt to increase their profit margins on the nurses’ backs. Hospitals, in general, have mostly done away with the traditional (and common sense) strategy of leaving rooms and beds unoccupied to accommodate patients during emergencies and disasters, consequently increasing the number of patients. They have cut staffing levels, placing patients at risk and increasing the workloads of nurses and other staff members.

Nurses at Washington Hospital Center (WHC) in Washington, D.C., distributed leaflets to patients earlier this year informing them of the consequences of understaffing at WHC. The fliers said that patients were significantly harmed by human errors at a rate of one injury every eight days at WHC, with a death every 45 days, according to an article in Common Dreams. The hospital’s response to the nurses’ act of free speech was to disrupt their union meeting and ban future union meetings from the site. The actions by management led to a series of short strike actions by the WHC nurses.

Nurses’ strikes have also occurred this year in Boston, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and numerous other locations, while teachers have also been protesting attacks on the nursing profession, most recently and appallingly, the new California law allowing teachers to rectally inject diastat into students who are having seizures, rather than staffing schools with trained nurses to provide the medication. National Nurses United recently sponsored a protest against Wall Street speculation, arguing that bankers’ greed was harming the health of regular Americans.