Giant and Safeway grocery stores throughout the Baltimore-Washington metro area face a strike as early as next Wednesday, the Baltimore Sun reports today. A couple of grocer's unions will vote on Tuesday to decide whether to strike. All Giant and Safeway stores will be closed from 7 am to 3 pm on Tuesday to allow for the vote. If the unions vote to strike we'll likely see picket lines Wednesday morning; lines which Teamster unions, which represent delivery truck drivers, have also agreed not to cross. The issue in the middle of this controversy, as it was in California, where a grocery clerk strike recently lasted for months, is health care.As a former retail wage-slave, I'd love to support my under-paid, over-worked fellow-travelers. But I'm afraid it's not that easy. There are a number of things that seperate me from the grocery clerks.
For starters, when I worked at Waldenbooks I made, as the Assistant Manager, $9.87 an hour (that's including a $0.12 raise after my first year) and a dollar more an hour during Christmas season (Sorry ladies, I'm taken). That was as Assistant Manager. Wages for part and even full-time workers are much lower.
In contrast, read what both sides are saying about this debate:
The grocery stores:
Giant and Safeway officials counter that they are trying to structure wages and benefits to compete with nonunion stores, which pay their workers considerably less. The average hourly wage of a clerk at Safeway or Giant is $13.19, compared with $7.68 for a nonunion clerk, according to Safeway.
And the union...
The union argues that Giant and Safeway have a marketplace advantage over stores such as Wal-Mart because of the quality customer service its workers provide.
Now I'm not, as a hard and fast rule, oppossed to unions. However, their role in our economy must be re-examined as the forces of global capitalism make American businesses compete with the rest of the world in almost every single industry.
You and I go to grocery stores. Does the quality of service at Giant and Safeway make you think it's workers deserve more than $13 an hour?
Unlike some of my more conservative friends, I don't believe that this situation is proof positive that unions have outlived their usefulness. What is evident is the need for American workers to place events in context. Your current struggles are not akin to the struggles of unionized workers 70 years ago. Those workers were struggling for basic safety standars, a livable wage and a reasonable work schedule. Your efforts for a couple extra dollars an hour and expanded health-care coverage are not quite as noble. And remember, you are not working in a dangerous, often times deadly, factory. You, as a (statistically) un-educated grocery clerk, are doing pretty well for yourself, all things considered. So maybe, just this time, we can chalk all this up to whining, and just go back to work.
Tony
