[CounterCounterCulture]

Bust the unions!

[BunnySlippers]

This has been going on since mid-October. When do the stores get to hire other workers PERMANENTLY???

[CounterCounterCulture]

Associated Press version...

Unions Want Boycott for Grocery Clerks

Tue Dec 16,11:14 PM ET By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

LOS ANGELES - Union leaders plan to urge members to boycott North American stores owned by Safeway Inc. in support of 70,000 grocery clerks who've been on strike for two months in Southern California.

"We want to empty those stores," said Doug Dority, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, on Tuesday. "We want to make sure these cash registers are empty."

Safeway, Albertsons Inc. and Kroger Co. are locked in the dispute with their Southern California workers over the cost of health care coverage and other issues.

Union leaders have said they consider Safeway the leader of the management side.

In some cases, the UFCW also planned to extend picket lines to Safeway stores outside the region in an attempt to keep employees from reporting to work, said UFCW national spokesman Greg Denier.

He declined to say when the boycott campaign would begin.

Safeway officials said they didn't expect the tactic to influence the dispute.

The unions' strategy was announced after 500 leaders and workers met for two hours behind closed doors at a hotel and then marched with thousands of other workers to a supermarket in Beverly Hills.

Clerks went on strike or were locked out Oct. 11 at nearly 860 Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions stores from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. Safeway owns the Vons and Pavilion chains.

Negotiations were scheduled to resume Friday for the first time in 10 days.

The UFCW said the chains had shaved $1.08 an hour off their proposed contribution to health care premiums.

The grocery companies countered they were no longer willing to absorb all the costs involved in maintaining health care benefits, saying they face pressure from Wal-Mart, Costco and other supermarket operators that don't pay as much toward employee benefits.

LINK

[TheSpottedOwl]

This is getting old. Imo, the unions are being unreasonable.

[Don W]

I never shop at Safeway, but if these twits start picketing, guess where my next grocery trip is to.

[CWOJackson]

Looks like I'm going to be shopping at Safeway a lot soon.

[eleni121]

I wish the unionists would do their walking around here---that would give me an excuse to shop there.

[randog]

I live next door in Nevada and shop at Safeway. It'll be interesting to see if my store strikes....a week before Christmas.

[Tacis]

These union fat cats would happily starve millions of Americans if it allowed them to get a nickel more in union dues. And, they wonder why millions of jobs flee the country to escape their extortion.

[cake_crumb]

"Over the next few weeks, the United Food and Commercial Workers union said it would ask consumers not to shop at Safeway stores. Protests could also broaden to include acts of civil disobedience by supporting religious groups, a union spokesman said after a rally in Los Angeles."

"Religious groups" and unions. What a combinatiom. If anyone needed any more evidence that the WCC is the Enemy, this should convince them.

Up theirs. THIS consumer will shop wherever she darned well PLEASES, and is NOW more likely to stop at stores that ARE being picketed.

Unions have been ruining this country since the '70's. We NEED a national right to work law.

[mikeb704]

Others who spoke at the press conference included John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO umbrella union body; Melissa Gilbert, president of the Screen Actors Guild. . .

It appears as though half-pint has developed into a half-wit.

Michael M. Bates: My Side of the Swamp

[cake_crumb]

"We will not allow the elimination of health care benefits"

Grey signed legislation forcing companies to pay health benefits to gay partners, didn't he? Companies can't afford it.

[Beck_isright]

Not a problem down here. Good luck to the rest of you.

[caisson71]

You can bet I'll be doing ALL my shopping at Safeway!!

[Bonaparte]

"...locked out their unionized employees."

Look them all out! And don't rehire them. Let these leeches and shakedown artists go destroy some other business.

[heleny]

Striking workers, meanwhile, have been collecting strike pay of only about $200 a week from the UFCW, which has not said how much the strike has cost.

A different news article on FR recently said the San Diego county union locals of UFCW were reducing the strike pay from $300/wk to only $100/wk, with $150 for strike captains. The strikers probably won't want to keep striking with such low pay.

If all 70,000 striking grocery employees were getting $200/wk for nine weeks, the product would be $126 million. There's the additional union loss of the potential union dues during those nine weeks.

I wonder if these strikers have health coverage during the strike period. It wouldn't make sense for Ralphs/Albertsons/Vons to pay for health coverage if the strikers aren't working, but I doubt the unions would pay, either.

[Protagoras]

Unions are thugs.

[meyer]

"We want to empty the stores as well as the cash drawers. Safeway only understands money, so we will take action to cut them off from the source of their money -- workers, consumers and communities," he said.

OK. Now where do you intend to work after you "empty the cash drawers"? Safeway understands money enough to know that they won't be in business very long if they operate at a loss.

Bring in the WalMart!

[VOA]

Union leaders on Tuesday called for pickets of Safeway stores across North America
in support of 70,000 Southern California grocery workers who have been out
of work for two months in a contract dispute with Safeway and two other leading chains.

These "union leaders" must be on the payroll of Wal-Mart!

First, they enthusiatically support illegal immigration...thus ensuring a
growing supply of workers willing, ready and able to take what these same
union leaders would call "scab" jobs.

Second, they are doing all they can to weaken their employers when Wal-Mart is
just about to invade Southern California...when Wal-Mart arrives with lots of
lower prices, more than a few of the stores of these wounded chains will be shuttered.

Finally, going on strike and trying to keep the customers (who pay both the
supermarket bosses, the union leaders and the union members) out of the stores
over two major holidays when sales are HUGH...

Dumb and dumber...

[Landru]

Ummmmm, these grocery workers led by their union thug leaders?

...they're really asking for it.

[dc27]

The longer the strike lasts, the less money the UFCW has to support Howard Dean.