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Shoppers unite at Shaw's  With
signs reading "Shoppers Unite for Workers Rights and Safe
Food" more than 100 people marched to the British Consulate in
Boston, Mass. calling for corporate accountability from Shaw's
Supermarket's parent company Sainsbury Corporation, headquartered in the
United Kingdom.
"We're concerned about the lack of respect that Shaw's Supermarkets are showing to their workers and their customers. Their workers are being systematically deprived of opportunities to organize for better pay and working conditions, and their customers are consuming products that contain genetically modified foods, without being given any warning. We're going to the British Consulate to remind Sainsbury that American citizens expect better treatment," said Cassie Watters of the Massachusetts Jobs With Justice. Other groups participating in the march including, Boston Global Action, Clean Water Action, and Greenpeace, are calling on Sainsbury to eliminate genetically engineered ingredients from their store brand products. Over the past year, Shaw's has aggressively set out to destroy support for the workers' union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1445. They threatened to triple workers' cost for health insurance from about $25 to $77 a week. On February 28, they announced that they would no longer recognize the workers' contract. Just recently, they charged workers retroactively for previous time-off that was guaranteed by the union contract. The UFCW is committed to helping restore the workers' full rights and benefits of the union contract. On May 28, 2002, the UFCW filed a class action grievance against Shaw's demanding that all vacation and other time off be returned to workers. The UFCW represents more than 1600 Shaws employees at 11 stores in Central Massachusetts.
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