[sarasota]

Stand tough against unions.

[socal_parrot]

I'll be shopping at Ralph's tomorrow.



Actually it will be my wife. I don't want to get beat up.

[Agnes Heep]

These supermarket employees are trying to make a full-time, high-paying career of something that can be done by teenage school kids working part time for minimum wage. The only way they can do it, apparently, is by force.

[Roughneck]

-- in exchange for cheaper labor costs in the long run.

And lower prices for consumers!

I have repect for businesses that will stand their ground, it's better for us all in the long run....

Down with UNIONS!

[lady lawyer]

The regular grocery chains are getting killed by WalMart, Target, Costco, and the like. These strikers are hurrying the process along and killing the source of their own livelihoods in the process. This is especially stupid because grocery jobs have always been pretty well-paying jobs for people without education and skills. But then, I guess you expect people without education and skills to do stupid things.

[Snerfling]

I've made a point of crossing the picket lines and shopping each day of the strike so far. I've only had one instance of a worker saying anything to the effect of 'I hope you're not buying much'.

I think it's a joke that people are enduring X-mas shopping like parking situations, empty shelves and long lines at Trader Joes, Statler Bros, etc when the majors are fully stocked and ready to go. (The strikers' nightmare of the temp workers quickly learning their monkey skill jobs is also quickly becoming a reality.)

Whatever reticence shoppers may have had to avoid any confrontation seems to be dissipating. The first day I was the only person in the store; yesterday there was maybe a dozen. This weekend will be the breaker.

One Ralph's has gotten smart and put out a security guard; not to really protect anyone (the guy was 70), but to provide an independent witness in the case of assault, etc. It seems the strikers' tactics are already reflecting this reality as they move more towards cooperation (leaflets, etc) rather than beligerance.

The most inane part of this whole thing are those that support the strike as if higher wages will add more money to the local economy. If that's the case, why not treble their pay and unionize Home Depot, et al while we're at it?

We'll all be rich through the magic of economics. (/sarcasm)

[riri]

Never go there anyway.

[showme_the_Glory]

All except for the most violent of the picketers, usually all the membership is offered amnesty to return to work (no matter how much property they defaced or customers they drove away). It just makes me sick to see all the damage they cause and then to have to welcome them back with open arms when the finally get hungry enough to do what they were already overpaid to do. Unions make me want to puke.

[BurbankKarl]

Catalinans must boat to market or go past friends in picket line


By Laura Wides
Associated Press


AVALON -- Residents of tiny Santa Catalina Island have a tough choice during the ongoing grocery clerks strike: Cross a picket line staged by friends and neighbors at the only supermarket in town or cross the ocean to shop on the mainland.

The situation has strained relations in the close-knit community and forced its 3,500 residents to get creative about shopping while coping with their mixed feelings.

Some residents are scouring health food shops and convenience stores to find the items they need. Others are giving shopping lists to neighbors who aren't shy about crossing the line.

Lorrie Blakley got a frantic call before she left the mainland to visit the resort island.

"My mom called and said, 'Bring eggs and cat food,"' Blakley said, explaining that her mother would rather travel 26 miles across the sea to the mainland than cross the picket line outside Vons.

Ana Jimenez, 66, doesn't feel that way. She made no apologies for going to the supermarket to get eggs and produce. Strikers didn't give her any trouble.

"They've known me for years," she said. "And they like me well enough."

Striking clerk Carlos Cubillo said things are different on the mainland than the island, where it's hard to ask neighbors to stay away from the store.

"We love our community," said Cubillo, who is also a volunteer firefighter, church leader and radio disc jockey on the island. "We apologize for these problems."

A total of 70,000 grocery clerks from three chains -- Kroger Co.'s Ralphs, Safeway Inc.'s Vons and Albertson's Inc. -- went on strike or were locked out Saturday from San Luis Obispo to San Diego in a contract dispute involving the cost of health care coverage and other issues.

Despite the steady presence of pickets on the sidewalk, Catalina's main Vons has stayed open through problems like temporarily running out of meat Thursday.

A handful of clerks picketed outside the store a block from the ocean. Passers-by honked in support as they cruised by in golf carts used to get around the island. In recent days, local businesses have donated pizza and drinks to strikers.

Clerk Carmen Seybole, 43, said it was hard seeing people she knows shop in the store.

"It hurts a little bit," said Seybole, who was joined on the picket line by her 3-year-old son, Shane. Among the shoppers were mothers of Shane's friends.

"They apologize and say 'we don't want to do this,"' Seybole said as Shane chased pigeons with a picket sign in hand. "They are our friends. I want to say something, but I hold back."

Helen Howard, 43, a personal trainer and cross-country coach at the local high school, had refrained from shopping at the Vons market, relying on food bought on the mainland, but crumbled Thursday.

She darted into the store to buy baking supplies for her daughter's school carnival.

"I really don't want to have to run all over town" gathering ingredients, Howard said. "I have to go in because I have to get the baking stuff. ... It's awkward. I know all these families. I teach some of their kids."

City Manager Rob Clark, 50, said the town's mayor had unsuccessfully petitioned the union to exempt Avalon from the strike. Clark has avoided shopping at Vons, relying on his wife to fetch groceries from the mainland, where she works.

But he regretfully acknowledged that he might eventually have to cross the line.

"Some of them are parents of my kid's friends," he said of the striking workers.