Posted on 10/19/2003 12:18:42 PM PDT by mikenola
Roxie Bauer has raised a daughter – mostly by herself – paid a mortgage for more than 25 years and paid off her car, all on a checker's paycheck from Vons.
Bauer, after 29 years with the supermarket, earns $17.90 an hour, has good health benefits and a pension plan. But life stories like hers are rare these days, and she knows it.
"We are dinosaurs," Bauer said of herself and others in her position. "I don't have a formal education, but I've been able to eke out a decent living."
Fundamental changes in the economy over the last two decades have forced most people in jobs like Bauer's out of the middle class.
Assembly-line work, residential construction labor, work behind the counter of a bank, among many other relatively low-skill jobs, used to provide a comfortable living for millions of Americans. Now, for the most part, they don't.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Southern California, said Ruth Milkman, director of the University of California's Institute for Labor and Employment.
"In the last 20 years, there has been a polarization of jobs into low wage and high wage jobs," said Milkman. "In Southern California it has been extreme. This is an attack on the remaining middle."
A generation ago the worker was in a far better position. There was little competition from abroad, industry was just beginning to automate and unions were strong. Over time, however, globalization, advancing technology and union busting allowed companies in many industries to slash benefits and keep pay levels down, experts say.
Supermarket checkers, and in some places janitors and hotel workers, are the last remaining holdouts. But even these workers fear that their days are numbered.
"We will eventually be replaced by technology," Bauer said. "We will go the way of the bank teller and gas station attendant."
They've already lost a lot. Seventy-five percent of the membership of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135 consists of part-timers, said union president Mickey Kasparian.
Kasparian and other union members say a full-time checker making $17.90 an hour, or $37,000 a year, is the exception. Most grocery workers are not full-time and are not making the top wage. Wages for checkers start at $9.78 an hour, according to the UCFW contract that expired this month.
"This is a strike about whether supermarket workers will be part of the middle class or the working poor," said Harley Shaiken, a University of California Berkeley professor who specializes in labor issues.
The peak of union power was in the late 1940s and 1950s, said Milkman. Membership started declining during the Vietnam War years and dropped sharply in the early 1980s.
A turning point was President Reagan's decision to fire striking air traffic controllers.
"That gave businesses the green light to go after unions," Milkman said.
Then the collapse of the Soviet Union and 1994's North American Free Trade Agreement launched an era of increased globalization. Manufacturers began to have more freedom than ever before to move plants to Mexico, China and other countries where labor is far cheaper.
Grocery checkers and janitors have fared better than workers in other industries mainly because their labor can't be exported and they've had relatively good union representation.
"They can't employ a Chinese supermarket checker, but they can turn it into a low-wage job," Milkman said. "I see it as a deliberate strategy."
Deliberate or not, it is a key to survival for the supermarket chains, said Gary Wright, a Denver retail consultant.
"They either have to drive their labor costs down or go out of business," Wright said. "Wal-Mart has a 20 percent advantage in wage costs."
Whether Wal-Mart and the other "big box" retailers will be able to dominate grocery sales in Southern California like they have in other parts of the country is a bone of contention among experts.
Some say it's only a matter of time before a critical mass of San Diegans begin shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart, Costco or Target. Others argue that the supermarkets have already staked out the prime locations in a mostly built-out county.
But no one disputes the importance of unions to grocery workers.
"The unions are crucial, because there are thousands of immigrants who would love to have those jobs, and would take far less pay," said Barry Bluestone, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy in Boston. "But the unions have held the line."
Milkman said retail food is one of the few remaining industries where unions are still strong. Other industries have either busted the unions or restructured, she said.
Residential construction used to be highly unionized, but now it primarily relies on immigrant labor. Manufacturing also has changed drastically. Gone are the large, well-unionized aerospace and other manufacturing plants. Now the industry is dominated by smaller, non-union operations.
"The declining union density in key industries is extremely important," said Donald Cohen, president of the Center on Policy Initiatives. "A high (union) density creates a level playing field in an industry."
Another group that has held its own, at least in some cities, is janitors, Milkman said. Janitorial work, a well-paying job in the 1950s and 1960s, turned into a low-wage job in the late 1970s. Then janitors reorganized in the late 1980s, Milkman said.
Janitors at Harvard University made news last year when they won – with the help of students – a contract with a 16 percent wage increase.
Hotel workers in San Francisco have also done reasonably well in recent years. In 1999 they won a contract that pays room cleaners $15 an hour. The contract expires next summer.
"We anticipate the kind of war Southern California grocery workers are facing now," said union head Mike Casey.
Bauer has been on the picket line at the Midway Drive Vons in Point Loma by 6 each morning. She said she is fighting to maintain her lifestyle.
"I've been able to lead a decent and respectable life," Bauer said. "I certainly don't feel rich, but I don't feel poor either."
Sam Walton - the rapist of America's Middle Class.
One suggested we go to Stater Bros, and another chatted us up as we entered.
The store was sadly un-busy. We noticed some fabulous bargains in the prepackaged fresh meat and fish departments (due to sell by dates of tomorrow and Tuesday), so stocked up on several $2.00 and $2.50 roasts and $1.50 salmon fillets....it's nice to have freezer space.
With our receipt was a thingie for $5.00 off next trip, thanking us for our loyalty.
I'm in my fifties and have yet to let a "picket line" infringe on where I want to go.
The one here (non-grocery...regular Wally) starts 'em at $7.25 an hour. That gives them a helluva lot more than a 20 percent advantage.
It isn't just the mom & pop stores that go out of business, it is them forcing their suppliers to go overseas for labor in order to keep the contract.
Wal-Mart will tell a company that has thousands of american employees, that they can get the entire contract for an item in the thousands of wal-marts, if they sell to wal-mart at a price that can only be met with Chinese labor.
The company closes their factories here, builds in China, and sells to Wal-Mart. So those employees are gone. Then the competitors for that company have to respond in kind to stay in business, because the person distributing to Wal-Mart their chinese made stuff, is also distributing to other retailers with the benefit of Chinese labor.
Wal-Mart for example sells 39% of all diapers sold in this country. Great prices too. However, to get that low price, the companies have had to reduce labor costs.
So anybody who made diapers in the US, or still does, can forget about it. Wal-Mart's 39% share means that no diaper other than high end ones, will be made here in the USA. The local five and dime that sold diapers will not be able to compete.
Think of the math. Wal-Mart is likely selling millions of diapers a day. They are probably selling the diapers for less money that the wholesale price to an independent store who only sells 10 boxes a day. You simply can not compete. It's a spiralling cycle. If you make alot of money, or have alot of money already, this system is great. You have illegals doing the vast majority of labour in construction, you have checkers at $8 an hour, and you can get great bargains. Those who are in these businesses though, are basically moving into the lower class.
It's reality. Good, bad, or indifferent, this is what Wal-Mart is doing.
Yeah. ATCs who were breaking the law by striking.
Unions continue to fight a losing battle against technology, and the simple fact that people want the best product at the lowest cost.
Why not?
With the bar coding as good as it is, they could employ a Chinese, Mexican, Korean, etc., check out clerk - as long as they can make change.
The unions have held the line against allowing equal opportunity to non-white people?
That is what unions have done best. Where do you think the system of apartheid in South Africa came from?
From businesses who did not want to hire the cheapest labor available, so they could not be as profitable as possible.
or
From White labor unions who did not want blacks taking over "their" jobs, so they pushed for a system that legally excluded blacks from the job market.
Who says these illegal immigrants are just taking jobs that "no American" will do?
Illegal immigration is simply killing the lower-middle working class and changing the job structure of our country.
This is all just a sign of the times....
But hey, the great Wal-mart has low prices......
Walmart is the last place I would shop for food..its cheaper for a reason. When I lived in So Cal. I used to buy my Veggies from an independant "Green Grocer" and bought my meat from independant Butchers. The Quality was far superior to produce selected by Union workers or Non Union employees of Big Supermarkets. It was the same thing when I lived in Arizona. I wish I had those options where I live now.
It just knocks the cheese off my cracker to come up with another "brilliant" post only to find the thread locked...
But think of the bright side, were dumping billions into Iraq to help them. New trash trucks, burger kings, new police cars......What a country.....
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