UFCW Union Members are defending the benefits and wages of all working people

Honor the Picket Lines! Don't shop at Vons/Pavillions, Ralphs, or Albertsons!

The supermarkets have declared war on working people. Now it's time to fight back!

As their profits rise, Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons are demanding that hard-working employees pay over $1 billion in health care costs and take severe wage cuts.

Profits for the greedy "Big Three" have skyrocketed over the past five years. Their sales have increased 32%, 84%, & 123%. Also, compensation for the grocery executives has risen 260% over the same period. On average, they each make $2.6 million every year. Plus, the top 15 executives own over $70 million in stock options!

When Vons workers went on strike, Ralphs and Albertsons locked out their employees who now cannot return to work. More than 70,000 UFCW workers are currently out on picket lines fighting for union and workers' rights. These workers are defending the benefits and wages of all working people. The supermarket bosses are heartless and cruel. They care more about profits than people. If the bosses succeed, it will be a setback for every working person.

UFCW workers represent all of us. Support the striking and locked out workers. Together we will win!

Come to Tuesday's ANSWER meeting to find out how you can support the strikers.

Every Tuesday, 7pm
422 S. Western Ave., #114
Los Angeles.
(213) 487-2368

Get a grip, will ya? They want to keep free medical insurance.

I am tired of hearing unions using the phrase "the working people" anyone who makes on honest living is part of the working class. Just besause someone does not perform "manual" does not mean they do not work just as hard as someone who does.

So give me a break if you want a better job do something about it instead of bitching about the one you have.

They are not bitching about wanting a better job. They are bitching about the companies that they work for trying to take away what they've worked many year for/earned. It has nothing to do with wanting a better job.

If the companies are so concerned about cutting costs, why do they always have to take it from those at the bottom of the company? If they stopped paying the CEO, President, VP, etc. those ridiculous pay packages plus huge bonuses because the company lost only 4 cents per share instead of the Wall Street consensus of 12 cents, then they wouldn't have to worry so much.

It is these striking workers who are the ones who deal with the customers on a daily basis, and it is on their backs that the companies were built.

Not about bitching

All companies were built on as you say "the backs of the employees" But you forget someone started the business with his/her own sweat and blood and probably their families as well. I am not saying employees are not important but they do not own the company and are owed NOTHING but a paycheck. So you say employees earned their health care yeah right. How by showing up to work everyday.

CEOs and management deserve good pay for the decisions they must make and the demands of their work. It is so easy for people to sit back and critize them, you think you could do any better, yeah right. People like you could not even last one day in a decesions making position that effects others.

The wealth of the owners is dependent on the employees.

Think of the best paid non-managerial jobs that can sometimes be practiced alone. Doctors, engineers, lawyers. They can make between 100k and 200k, in private practice with minimal admin support.

This is like a ceiling on the market value of wage labor. For someone to earn more, they must control other workers. If you own a business doing a task, say, cleaning a house, the most you can make is the market rate for cleaning a house. Let's say that's $20 an hour before taxes. I'm being extremely generous, I think.

In order to make more than $40k a year in the housecleaning business, you must start hiring people, expanding the business, and increasing revenue. At the same time, you must hire people and pay them less than $40k, and pocket the difference. How else can you get rich?

So, you keep charging the customer $20 an hour, but pay your workers 14k a year. 16k is available for reinvestment and/or profit to spend as the owner. Realistically, though, the boss might keep only a third of that, as there are a lot of taxes and expenses. So, let's say 6k goes to the boss.

That means the boss needs to have 10 workers to maintain a comfortable middle class income of 60k a year. Of course, by this time, it's obvious what the next step is.

Hire four managers to manage forty cleaners, pay the managers 30k a year, and pocket around 20k of the profit each of them generates. (You need to save some for bonuses and perks!) The owner now makes 80k a year income, and does no work at all!

Now... who really deserves that 80k? Some would say it really belongs to the people who are actually doing some work.

"Now... who really deserves that 80k? Some would say it really belongs to the people who are actually doing some work."

First of all, the workers are getting a the same wage whether there are 10 of them or 100 of them (and hence more profit for the owner). If I agree to take a job for x dollars and my work allows employer to pay me x dollars and keep y dollars what concern is it of mine and he hires 10 more like me and starts making 10 times y dollars. As long as I get what I agreed on that's all that concerns me.

That's the whole issue with profit sharing. It's fine when someone has given time and energy to a company for a substandard wage with the agreement of a share in the company to come later (much like stock options). But to suggest that at a certain point of growth that the owners profits (which represents his wage for all the work that went into developing and growing and risking for the company) should be shared by his employees , over and above whatever they are getting paid is illogical. Immediately upon doing that, the owner has no income and therfore stops the company and everyone is unemployed.

There is nothing inherently wrong with profits, eben massive ones, as long as the workers are getting whatever they agreed would be required for them to accept employment to begin with.

Go Back to work so i dont have to write paper on stuupid things. We are a capitalist society get over it get an education so you can be something other that a checker.
gneaf message

It's the difference between what one "must" do and what one "should" do. The boss should pay more, but there's nobody saying he must pay more. He "must" pay the agreed-upon amount.

One position is moral, and the other is what is called "business ethics". There's a bit of leeway in business ethics.

I love watching this strike. It's really fun.

On the one hand you have big grocery chains- some of which have absorbed smaller chains and all of which have used their size and buying power to push smaller competitors out of business. Now that Wal-Mart theatens to come to town, these companies are attempting to tighten their financial belts and gird themselves for the coming struggle. Wal Mart is attempting to do to them what they did to countless others.

But, now that the hour of their destruction is upon them, now that the barbarians are at the gate, they discover that one of the weapons they used to destroy their smaller adversaries in the past (higher wages and free benefits for employees) now comes back to fatally wound them. The workers don't want to give up what they have been given for free.

On the other side of the (grocery) aisle, you have the workers. Several thousand people attracted to no-to-low skill work because of surprisingly high wages and excellent benefits. Many of them plan on working in the same grocery store for the balance of their working lives.

Unfortunately for these people, the world is growing increasingly efficient and modernized. Shipping and receiving is now effortlessly done with scanners and barcodes. Self check-out is available in many locations. The tide of technology and progress cannot be resisted long. The industry is changing, and a career as a grocery clerk (outside of management) will no longer be a vialble career path.

These two groups, management and labor, Patrician and Plebean, should be working together if they want to delay the date of Wal-Mart's ultimate victory. But the short-sighted desire to protect unpaid perks and benefits have turned labor against management, and thus the walls are unmanned as the enemy charges into view.

Wal-Mart will be victorious, and all these people currently sitting around on picket lines will have gotten valuable experience for their next venture - standing in line for unemployment benefits.

Or perhaps as greeters at Wal-Mart.

Like I said, I love this strike. It really showcases the greed and short-sightedness of those involved. The grocery chains are about to reap what they have sown, and the strikers are only hastening their own demise. And I get to laugh at all of it, because I am in no way hurt by it, and in many ways helped by it.

I now shop at Trader Joe's and get better quality food for lower prices. When Wal-Mart opens, I might shop there for paper towels or toilet paper. Prices are going down, and things are looking up.