More post-mortem on SoCal grocery strike
James F. Peltz, LA Times Staff Writer reports in the LA Times [free regist. required]:“How the Supermarket Strike Was Settled,” an interesting inside look at the negotiations.
While most of California slept, the longest supermarket strike in U.S. history was settled in Steve Stemerman’s hotel room.
It was 3 a.m. Feb. 23 when Stemerman, the United Food and Commercial Workers union’s lead negotiator, and one of his colleagues huddled at the Hyatt Newporter with representatives of the three national supermarket companies whose insistence on slashing their labor costs had persuaded the union to strike.
The five men had been bargaining in various locales at the Newporter for 13 straight days, on this day alone for more than 13 hours. They were haggard, fed up with room service coffee and casually dressed; any need for ties had long since passed.
Good description of atmosphere, procedure, history of this hard-fought negotiation.
Next, here’s an analysis of the strike and its implications from the TomPaine.com website by Ruth Milkman, who directs the UC Institute for Labor and Employment and is a professor of sociology at UCLA: “Striking Out”
Once upon a time, strikes were a tool used by labor unions . . . . In recent decades, however, with unions on the defensive against increasingly aggressive corporations, strikes have morphed into an employer weapon. The massive four-and-a-half month labor dispute that just ended this week . . . must be understood in this context.
Southern California’s supermarkets have been unionized for more than half a century. Until last year, they were a poster child for “high road” management. Labor-management relations were cordial, and the industry had an unbroken record of labor peace going back 25 years. With all the major grocery chains under the same union contract, paying the same wages and benefits, competition was based on service and quality; not on squeezing labor. The happy result was that supermarkets were one of the region’s few remaining sources of middle-class jobs with decent wages and benefits for workers without a college degree.
One can describe this situation as “happy”; but one can also observe that perhaps the passivity of the employers all these years lead to an untenable divergence between contract wages and benefits and the labor market. Perhaps finally something had to give.
Last summer, however, . . . the industry’s Big Three made a calculated decision to radically restructure their wages and benefits and, in effect, abandoned the high road. They demanded major concessions . . . . As the companies knew perfectly well, no union worthy of the name could have accepted these concessions without a fight . . . .
The employers claimed they needed concessions from the UFCW because of competition from Wal-Mart . . . . But the Wal-Mart argument is less than compelling for the case of Southern California, since Wal-Mart has yet to open a single store selling groceries in this region. At best this was a threat on the distant horizon.
Why, then, did the grocery chains choose southern California as the battleground for their assault on the UFCW’s long-established wage and benefits? Perhaps it was simply a matter of timing . . . . Or perhaps it was the fact that the southern California UFCW contracts were the best (from the union’s perspective) in the nation, and covering the largest number of workers. If the union could be forced into a strike here, not only would the results set the pattern for the rest of the nation, but the union’s treasury might be depleted in the process. . . .
Yet the Big Three didn’t hold all the cards. No one anticipated the huge public support the picketers garnered. . . .
When the parties finally reached a settlement last week, the union publicly declared victory. . . . The union pointed to the fact that the settlement succeeded in preserving the established health insurance system for current workers for two more years, which was one of the central issues that led to the strike and lockout. But in every other respect, the employers were the real winners here.
But according to Findlaw (AP)(Alex Veiga): “Grocery Union Ready for More Disputes”
As Southern California grocery workers return to work after their long strike-lockout, union leaders are already discussing how to tackle negotiations for more than a dozen other contracts expiring over the next several months. . . .
[R]egardless of any mutual understanding that might have developed by the time the 4 1/2-month-long Southern California strike was settled, union officials warn it’s not going to make much difference in future negotiations and say they are gearing their members up for other strikes, if needed.
“You cannot say that the settlement in Southern California sets the stage for settlements everywhere. … What it did do is mobilize our local unions for a potential fight,” said Greg Denier, national spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers. ”
“If the employers continue to pursue an aggressive strategy and present unreasonable demands as they did in Southern California, they’re inviting labor disputes across the country.” . .
In a message posted on a Web site for San Francisco-area grocery employees, the union advises its members that the Southern California strike was “just the first battle in a much larger war,” and that their contract will soon become the next front. . . .
The UFCW will be able to back up threats of a strike in upcoming negotiations by pointing to how it kept Southern California members out of the stores until a compromise was reached. But labor experts say the financial hit absorbed by the workers might make employees elsewhere think twice about supporting a walkout. . . .
The supermarket chains will also have to consider whether they can endure the losses of another large strike. . . .
Union officials won’t give specifics, but concede they learned hard lessons during the strike and plan to do some things differently next time, starting with winning the battle for the hearts and mind of the public.
My prediction: both sides will indeed have learned some lessons and depleted various resources, including public good will. They have also learned what kind of contract provisions to realistically expect. Both sides will be making comparisons to the terms reached in SoCal. Therefore, these upcoming grocery negotiations, while not easy, will be resolved more peacefully.
