VAN NUYS, Calif. – Daniel Lucra, 19, just wants to keep his health care in case he gets sick or hurt on his job behind the deli counter at Albertson’s, where slippery floors and sharp blades can cause injuries. Cashier Linda Young, who has worked 10 years for Albertson’s, has two kids, 8 and 10, and will have to pay $40 for every doctor visit if the company succeeds in cutting health benefits. “I work for my benefits, that’s it,” says Lupe Ascencion, 21, who bags groceries for $7 an hour.

Lucra, Young and Ascencion are three of the 70,000 Southern California retail food workers forced on the picket lines this week. Workers at Von’s, which is operated by Safeway Inc., walked out last week, rejecting management’s demands for deep cuts to health care and pension benefits, a wage freeze and a scheme to pay new hires $2 hour less. United Food and Commercial Workers had limited the strike to one chain “to minimize inconvenience to customers.” But, Von’s biggest competitors, Albertson’s and Ralph’s, locked out UFCW members as part of a joint negotiating strategy. All workers are covered by the same contract.

Seven UFCW locals filed a lawsuit against Albertson’s and Ralph’s Oct. 14, charging that the lockout amounts to a mass layoff, requiring 60 days notice under a 2002 California law. The suit seeks back pay, health care and pension benefits.

The UFCW workers are feeling the corporate squeeze. According to the union, the giant supermarket corporations which control 60 percent of the Southern California retail food market are using the real challenge of nonunion Wal-Mart as an excuse to gut their union contracts and weaken the union’s strength. Each worker earned 39 percent more profit for the three companies in 2002 compared to 1998, adding a total of $2.7 billion in operating profits, says a UFCW statement.

At the Van Nuys store, with 160 workers locked out, customers were few and far between. The seafood section and Starbucks were closed, fall produce boxes sat in empty aisles, and only three cashiers were on duty – with not much to do.

Shopper Shelly Cosby, accompanied by her young daughter, Joy, said it’s a matter of integrity not to cross a picket line. Another customer, Kay M. Lewis, brought bottles of water to the union workers. “I know them. They’re my friends standing behind the counter. Management could certainly afford to pay for the current health care and pension benefits,” she said.

On the picket line, the young union members talked about going the extra mile to maintain a clean store and help customers. “They come in tired, so you try to present a happy face to try to make their day better,“ said deli worker Lucra. “You give the customers ‘quality’ service,” meat department worker Thomas Powers chimed in.

The youthful work force at the store is also concerned about the older workers’ pensions. Lucra said one of his co-workers is two years away from retirement. “And now they are talking about taking away pensions? That’s not right.”

Across town, bus and train mechanics at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority were forced out on strike Oct. 14, also over issues of health care costs. The nation’s third largest mass transit system is shut down as union workers honor the mechanics’ picket line.

And the struggle over who pays ballooning health care costs is also at the heart of the L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies’ contract battles.

“It’s at the core of every major contract struggle,“ Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University’s labor education research director, told the Los Angeles Times, “And it’s going to be an issue until we see some national solutions.”

The author can be reached at talbano@pww.org.
Jarvis Tyner and Roberta Wood contributed to this story.

(See related story below)


* * * * * *


‘We’re fighting for everyone’

VAN NUYS, Calif. – Determined, united, militant and optimistic are words that describe the UFCW members locked-out at the Albertson’s supermarket here.

Demonstrating solidarity, Teamsters have refused to cross the picket lines, parking their trucks on the street far from the store. Scabs have to manually unload and move stock from the trucks.

In a dramatic show of militancy, ten workers ran after a truck driven by a scab and surrounded it – virtually stopping it in back of the store. The driver, who refused to give this reporter his name, called for help on his cell phone. During the standoff, the picketers waved their signs and placed them on the truck’s mirrors.

Within minutes a corporate big shot came out, accompanied by the store manager, to announce that the police had been called. The workers returned to the picket line. The big shot flipped over her nametag and refused to talk to a reporter, but the store manager admitted there was nothing illegal about surrounding a truck

These workers – young and old, men and women, Latino, white, Black, Asian and American Indian – are on a righteous mission to save their jobs, health care and pensions, and their families’ well-being.

“This is about democracy,” Daniel Lucra shouted to passing drivers, many honking in solidarity. When one lady yelled, “You’re lucky to even have a job,” he replied, “This is a democracy. I can stand up for my benefits. This isn’t about selfish motives – we’re fighting for everyone.”

The UFCW issued a list of union stores, encouraging shoppers to honor their picket lines. Support actions can be found on www.saveourhealthcare.org.

– Terrie Albano


Originally published by the People’s Weekly World
www.pww.org

It is interesting that the right wingers who want the US to remain the only industrialized country in the world without a national healthcare system use as one of their arguments the supposed fact that it is not needed because people here get health insurance from their employers or can afford to buy their own. Pure hypocrisy - these same reactionaries are all in favor of employers taking away healthcare benefits and paying the lowest possible wages, which make employees unable to purchase private insurance. What they really mean is that healthcare should be a right only for the well-to-do.

When I was vacationing in London, England two years ago, my wife had to be checked into the hospital. It only took an hour in one of the hospitals before I demanded she be transfered. The hospitals over there that are part of socialized medicine are the most filthy, unsanatized rat-holes I've ever been in. A short time later, we were transfered to a private hospital. The difference was astounding! After viewing how dirty and unclean socialized medicine has caused the hospitals to be, and upon hearing even more horror stories from some of the local people who were also at the private hospital, I could never be convinced we as Americans would be better off.

In case you have not heard, all hospitals are centers of disease and infection, which is why so many people die there of infections not directly related to the condition that brought them to the hospital.
Your charge that public hospitals in Britain are unsanitary is unsubstantiated and flies in the face of reports by other people that they are fine. Perhaps the private hospital looked more attractive because fewer people can afford to use it and it experiences less wear and tear. Please remember also that public hospitals have been ravaged by years of neglect under the reactionary regimes of Thatcher, Major and Blair.
The British people don't seem to agree with your views; Thatcher didn't dare try to abolish the National Health Service because she knew it would bring an end to her political career. Remember also that before it existed even such a simple health need as basic dentistry was regarded as a privelege for the well-to-do; the masses were not to expect such a utopian service and were expected to accept the fact that they would lose all their teeth in their thirties.
In any event, your vacationing in Britain and ability to pay for a private hospital there seems to place you among the economically priveleged; my guess is that you have never had to worry about whether to go to a doctor or buy groceries. No wonder you are not too concerned about people who do have to worry about such things; you might not even be aware that they exist.

I appreciate your posting. I, too, had similar experiences in England and your use of the word "unsanitary" was polite when describing the broken and disease ridden hospitals and underqualified doctors and nurses. I place the blame squarely at the feet of socialized medicine and the bureaucracy of mixing government with health care. Hopefully, our country will be spared the nightmare of the living hell known as marxism.

Please tell us how you know that the physicians and nurses were underqualified and that the hospitals were any more broken and disease-ridden than hospitals in the United States. Also, please explain to us how you can be against "bureaucracy" and in favor of a for-profit medical system when health care in the United States spends more money on administration and red tape than do countries with public health systems? You don't think that insurance companies and for profit hospital administrations are the epitome of bureaucracy run wild? What planet have you been living on?

Your complaints about socialized medicine, based as they are on first-hand onservation, simply are not legitmate, according to Meyer London.

After all, ML says that if it's socialized, it's automatically superior to non-socialized medicine.

Sorry, guys...your obserations don't match the theory, and so, sadly, must be discarded.

No thanks necessary, Meyer. Just defending your ideals from pesky ol' reality.

I asked the last fellow how he knew that the physicians and nurses were unqualified and on what he based his claim that hospitals in the UK are worse than those in the US. I guess that in your eyes no one is allowed to question the assertions of free market enthusiasts - we are just supposed to embrace them the way religious fundamentalists embrace the story of Noah's Ark. And, of course, we are not allowed to ask why more money is spent in the US system on administration and red tape when one of its claims to superiority is its alleged lack of bureaucracy. That would be a no-no, like pointing out that the emperor has no clothes or that Bush has not brains.
Left unexplained by the free market theorists as they bask in the latest ideas from 1829 is why even the most right-wing political leaders don't dare to abolish the National Health. It couldn't be that they fear the wrath of the British people, could it?

FUCK OFF!! I believe anyone other than you you socialist pig. I'd love to kill you. When can we arrange your death?

Since this is one of the few internet forums where posters can get away with death threats, it might be useful to point out what this reveals about the fascists who apparantly have nothing better to do than peddle their right-wing filth on a leftist website. It reveals (1) that they themselves have no confidence in the bs they are spewing . (2) They have no confidence in their own abilities to defend it. (3) It reveals the underlying hatred and violence that motivates their reactionary diatribes. In the last resort, how much difference is their between making cowardly death threats on the internet and defending the Israelis' high tech massacres of Palestinians, and glofifying the US crimes against humanity in Iraq? There is, in fact, none.
As these individuals' lives wander towards whatever pathetic and self-destructive end they are headed for, we might reflect on what kind of society produces personality structures like these. What kind of society producers losers who feel compelled to make daily fools out of themselves in order to convice themselves and others, vainly, that they are really not losers but some kind of powerful force? Sad.

My guess is that the death threat post was either done by ML or some other left-wing looney. When I was at SF-IMC, nessie was constantly saying he was getting death threats and I read one posted while I was there, but everyone pretty much thought that nessie was doing it to attract attention to himself. It wouldn't surpise me that he was doing it, nor would it if ML did the same thing.

On the other hand, I'm quite confident that if ML could snap his fingers and the whole world would be socialist heaven exactly as he imagines, he'd still find something to complain about. Another reason why people are just standing in line to form a beautiful socialist world for all us us to live in and to share. Love and Peace and Flowers to all.

Seenitallbefore is another example.
Have pity on his pathetic existence.

So, if the world were socialism as you envision, are you to tell us you *wouldn't* find something to complain about?

No, you'd find something.

I'd complain if you were not getting free psychiatric treatment.
To which everyone who needs it will be entitled.
And you need it.
So does the guy who made the death threat - if you are not he.

You'd complain anyway. It's what you do. Be thankful things are like they are. You have more to complain about. It seemingly gives your life purpose. In fact, if you *weren't* complaining, I'd worry. As long as your bitching and moaning, everything must be OK.

"He'd kick if he were hung with a new rope!"

On the basis of what, meyer, is anyone "entitled" to anything much less health care.

How are these universal "entitlements" decided upon?

Am I entitled to free World Series tickets?

Please explain.

"To which everyone who needs it WILL BE [emphasis added] entitled."

Hee hee!

As if it's actually going to happen...

Oh, well...a man can dream, can't he?

The same way any civilized society decides that everyone is entitled to be rescued from a fire or from a homicidal maniac. Medical care for everyone is just as necessary - except in the eyes of right wing fanatics.

Who pays for it?

Suppose I'm as healthy as a horse. Never been sick a day in my life.

Then you look at Larry Hagman. Ruined his natural-born liver. Got another. Ruined it. Got another.

Seems to me like there's some small disparity there. Here I am, a healthy guy, paying for Larry's alcohol-ruined livers. What's up with THAT? I didn't make him drink. HE did. Make HIM pay for his own stinkin' livers.

Same with smokers. There they are, knowingly, willingly, ruining their health and costing billions of dollars. Should the non-smokers be forced to pay for the smoker's folly?

Could you please hook me up with some more Oxycontin?

You are paying for them anyway, unless you never buy products advertised on television. The producers finance television shows like the ones he was on, then pass the costs on to the consumer. Free enterprise in action.

That is so stupid. In that case, Larry Hagman paid for my car because he bought food at the restaurant that pays the cook that bought the lawn mower from the guy whose house I painted. DUH!!

Say something worth while or just go back to bitching and moaning, one or the other.

What I think..

If that's a self image, it is quite interesting. But I don't think that you will be starring in any 60's nostalgia films with Beyonce Knowles any time soon.
Maybe a remake of Animal House, wtith you as a passed-out drunk or one of the spoiled brats from the rich fraternity.

Say something worth while or just go back to bitching and moaning, one or the other.

Could you please hook me up with some more Oxycontin?

Already been done. No EV points.

But the constest doesn't end till Saturday, so there's still time.

Good luck!

Is that anything like IQ points?

If so, I have none.

nonanarchist is not a liberal, therefore is not eligible for EV points. Only left-wing and anarchist whackos (pardon the redundancy) are eligible, of which, you faker, are numbered among them

Good Luck!

Warren's back!

You mean

Warren V. Palin
19575 River Road
Gladstone, Or 97027-2229

503.742.0953

is Back!!

Hey Warren!!

I see Agent B is on the job tonight! How you doin' brother?

Doing fine, Agent A.

I see Warren's back. Good to see ya, Warren.

Agent A, did I tell you I found someone named "diogenes2" on democraticunderground.com?

You didn't tell me that..

Hey Warren, you posting your crap on the DU?

Wouldn't put it past the little reprobate.

(Warren taught me that word, "reprobate")

"diogenes2"

There it was, in big black letters.

Good 'ole dingo!

Got to be Warren V. Palin of Gladstone, OR.

Well, Agent B, I'm still trying to set us up a tee time for around Thanksgiving. Been a bit swamped at the office this week (the subversives need much tending to) and I'm out for the rest of the week, so I'll shoot you an email when I get back and let you know what's up.

Headed out right now. Smack Warren one more time for me though.

Later!