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UNI Commerce UFCW supermarket strike page
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UFCW
members are fighting for all commercial workers: We should make no mistake about it. The US supermarket strike and lockout is not a local issue only. These 70,000 American commercial workers - supermarket cashiers, sales clerks and others - are now at the frontline where future trends for working life in the worldwide retail industry are being set. Will it be corporate greed that dictates wages and employment conditions, or will UFCW and its members succeed in defending the social dimension. This conflict is an all out attack on workers' rights and trade unions by some of the world's largest and most profitable retailers. They want to use the social dumping and union busting of Wal-Mart as an excuse to 'wal-martize' the conditions for all American commercial workers. If they succeed in this, then pressures will fast grow also in other parts of the world. Therefore, UFCW's fight concerns all of us, directly. Traditionally, organised retail workers in the United States have enjoyed proper wages and good employment conditions. Their collective agreements have given them and their families social protection, particularly through an employer-financed health insurance. Without health insurance, in the United States, you have a serious problem. This health insurance is what the huge retail chains want to take away now. Denying their workers and their families affordable health care and paying new workers Wal-Mart wages would effectively push them into the growing ranks of America's working poor. The workers at Safeway, Albertsons and Kroger - and their trade union UFCW - do not accept this. Therefore they are holding the line for affordable health care and dignified living conditions. This is what the struggle is about. This is why thousands of these workers spend their days at the picket lines. Today, on this very day, the labour conflict in Southern California and in other parts of the United States enters its third month. Some local agreements have been reached, most recently a tentative agreement for some 3000 Kroger workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. But the major struggle is still on, and the 70,000 UFCW workers continue to hold out.
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