Somehow surviving on $20 per day strike pay, the United Food and Commercial Workers continue to maintain a picket line outside Vons and Albertsons grocery stores in Southern California. Seventy thousand workers are on strike against Safeway/Vons in Southern California -- and locked out by Albertsons and Kroger/Ralphs. Despite a 91% profit growth over the last five years, the grocery chain owners are demanding wholesale cuts in employee health care benefits. Workers from seven locals voted over 90% to reject the offer by three of the largest supermarket operators in the country, Vons (Safeway-owned), Ralphs (Kroger-owned) and Albertsons and set up picket lines October 11, 2003.

The stakes in this conflict are high: a victory for management will give the green light to owners across the grocery store sector and beyond that it is possible to leave their workers without healthcare coverage. On the other hand, a worker victory will maintain standards for those under contract and indicate that other chains, including Wal-Mart, must take seriously employee determination to win fair treatment on this issue. It is understandable why both sides have been willing to hold out for so long.

Read the full story @ http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/02_ufcw.html

This is a great point that isn't stressed much, even here on Indymedia:

"This job action is also about three competing visions of how health care should be dispensed in California. The informal, individual system means that workers ought to buy their own health plans rather than negotiate for them collectively. In such an arrangement, younger and healthier workers will most likely simply not purchase coverage, leading to spiraling rates for those who most need it. Alternatively, large companies such as Albertsons and Wal-Mart would ensure health plans for those who do the actual work in these stores. A third vision would see a single payer system where everyone has access to collectively purchased health care. This is the “Canadian” system currently under attack in Canada by Gordon Campbell and his neoliberal counterparts."