Posted on 12/20/2003 5:44:10 AM PST by Bug
For pickets, a growing sentiment of pessimism
Reduction in benefits takes mounting toll
By Jenifer Goodwin and Mark Sauer
STAFF WRITERS
December 20, 2003
Job-hunt front
has been grim
for many pickets
Maria Vazquez's electric bill is two weeks past due. She scraped together enough to pay her phone bill a month late. She's not sure when the cable bill is due because she stopped opening her mail.
"It's too overwhelming," said Vazquez, one of 70,000 area grocery workers who've been on strike or locked out since Oct. 11.
Strikers are trying to put on a brave face, but they're feeling increasingly glum and pessimistic about their chances of winning concessions from the grocery companies.
Thanksgiving came and went. Then the United Food and Commercial Workers Union cut strike pay from a maximum of $300 to $100 a week, making the financial strain of the strike a vise grip. In the latest blow, strikers found out yesterday the Teamsters are going back to work on Monday.
Though loath to admit it, Vazquez and others quietly hope the union will concede so they can get back to work.
"At this point, I would go back if I could," said Vazquez, who, as a Ralphs worker, was locked out until the labor dispute is resolved. "It beats standing out there in the cold for $100."
Yet another serious issue is looming for strikers: the end of their employer-sponsored medical benefits, which will likely run out by the end of the year.
John Gomez, an 18-year veteran of Ralphs, is gravely worried about the effect the loss of coverage will have on his 2-year-old daughter, Angelina. Born with a syndrome that causes speech difficulties and severe heart defects, Angelina has been at Children's Hospital for 3½ months. She had a second major heart-lung surgery after Thanksgiving.
Gomez and his fiance, Anna Rodriguez (Angelina's mother) are living at the Ronald McDonald House across the street from the hospital.
All day he sits in daughter's room, listening to the whoosh of the respirator and the beeps from the equipment that monitors her breathing and heartbeat. They've decorated their daughter's hospital room with an artificial Christmas tree, arranged the teddy bears from well-wishers and played Christmas carols on a portable CD player to keep them company.
But none of it relieves his worry.
Gomez, 40, said he lived paycheck to paycheck before the strike. Because of his daughter's illness, he hasn't picketed since shortly after the strike began. He said his fiance has worked lately at a pizzeria managed by his oldest son, "but we're basically paying the bills with help from family and donations from union members and others."
With the help of a hospital social worker, he's applied for Medi-Cal. Even if he could afford it, he doubts a private insurer would cover his daughter.
Gomez said he feels for the workers who, out of fatigue and desperation, are crossing the picket lines and going back to work. But he says he won't.
"If people could see what I'm going through, they would understand," Gomez said. "This is my child. That's what I'm fighting for."
"We voted to go on strike. We should end it by winning."
Perhaps more than any other development since the labor dispute started, the decrease in strike pay has left workers feeling they're fighting a losing battle.
As strike captain at her Allied Gardens store, Debbie Principe's job is to make sure enough strikers are available to walk the picket line throughout the day and night. She expects the lines to thin as workers scramble to find other work.
"We have enough picketers for now. But a lot of people are working part time and cutting back their hours on the line. Some of our folks are at Keils, some at Costco. I know of one who picked up a paper route," said Principe, an Albertsons checker with 25 years on the job.
"I may cut back to 30 hours of picketing myself this week to look for another job. This has gone on so long. Even though the union was strong and we've hurt them financially, we are no match for giant businesses in the long run. It makes me really sad."
Despite the somber mood on the line, Principe said the continued support of customers is helping to keep their spirits up. Earlier this week, a local businessman stopped by their store and handed $100 to each picket.
Principe, 47, said she and her husband, an assistant manager of a pharmacy, have scaled back on Christmas "and everything else," but so far they haven't had to tap into savings to pay bills.
Ben Thompson is weathering the strike better than most. The father of a 2-year-old daughter who bought his first house not long before the strike, Thompson found a job at Stater Bros. He hopes the strike ends soon so he can resume his old job in the dairy department at Vons in Normal Heights, but the Stater Bros. job is enabling him to keep up with his mortgage.
"I've quit picketing altogether so there will be more strike funds available to union members who are not working," said Thompson, 39.
The resolve of the grocery companies has surprised many workers. At the outset of the strike, Vazquez, a 31-year-old single mother of three school-aged children, thought she'd be out two weeks, max.
Now, it seems Christmas is likely to come and go. "January is our slowest time. Why would they bring us back then?" she said. "Given enough time, they can train new workers and get by without us."
About a month ago, she began looking for another job. A severe bout of bronchitis, which her doctor believes was brought on by picketing in the polluted air after the wildfires, sidelined her for a couple of weeks, but now she's back out looking.
She's finding her options limited.
She applied for several waitressing jobs, but was told she needed experience. She could start out as a hostess, but the jobs pay $6.75 an hour, less than half the more than $15 an hour she made as a grocery service manager.
Other strikers report similarly grim stories from the job-hunting front.
Before getting her grocery store job five years ago, Vazquez worked as a receptionist. She's answered several "Help Wanted" ads for "light clerical" work, but they too paid only $7.25 an hour. That's $290 a week before taxes.
With each day the strike wears on, Vazquez is feeling her tenuous hold on the middle class slipping.
Last year, she earned about $34,000 plus health benefits working at Ralphs. She's afraid that before this is over, she's going to end up among the working poor.
She told her kids, ages 9, 13 and 14, there would be no Christmas presents from her this year. "I try to make a joke of it, to tell them we'll just wait until the January sales," she said.
One thing is for sure: she'll never feel the same way about her job again.
"(Company managers) don't even look at us as people," she said. "They don't get to see who we are and the families we have. To them we're just a bunch of numbers."
Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
They're done. You can see it in their faces and body language on the lines. I wonder if these poor folks will blindly follow their union over the cliff again?
These folks are getting a tough lesson in economics. When you're unskilled and earning $15+/hour plus health benefits that the most workers, skilled and unskilled don't receive, it's not a smart idea to attempt to force a settlement through union solidarity. I wonder if the lesson will penetrate through the union propaganda? I doubt it.
They're likely to blame the greedy companies that make their middle class lifestyles for unskilled labor possible and look to Howard Dean to make everything right for them in 2004. Find someone else to blame rather than take matters into their own hands and acquire marketable skills that don't rely upon a labor cartel to earn higher than market rates.
All she had to do was cancel the cable service. What they heck did she leave it on for if she knew she was going out on strike? Not too bright. She's gotta be the one that packs the milk on top of the eggs.
And the really amazing thing is -she had a job.
Some people are just too stupid.
They do look at you as people, Ms. Vasquez-people who are trying to destroy what it took them years to build, while denying inocent bystanders access to fresh and affordable food.
*L* Thanks for the clarification. So, lesson learned, in hard times, don't reduce your consumption, steal!
That's what unions were, in the beginning.
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