This week marks the one-year anniversary of the end of the Southern California grocery strike. I thought this might be a good time to look back and evaluate on where we stand after the longest labor strike in US history.

While the strike, on the surface, was about health care and a new second tier pay scale, that was only the shiny coating that the corporations and unions applied to win support for their side. The real issue behind the strike was survival.

The real reason for the strike, indeed for any strike, is because the society that we live in does not provide its citizens with the things that we need to live happy productive lives. While things like food, clothing, and health care are made available, they are available only at a price, and for most, never at the same time. If you do not have the resource to acquire these needs, you are simply out of luck.

The problem is that unionism is dependent on the working class never having enough. Unions, like most political parties themselves, need capitalism for its survival, and while capitalism is around, the problems the unions “face” will stick around as well.

The unions will never come out and say what I think we all should say, that capitalism will never provide us with the things we need. Through its wage labor, artificial scarcity and profit motive, capitalism will never be made to work for the working class. Why? Because it was never intended to. Capitalism works for the capitalist.

I picketed in front of my store for four and a half months, a period in which people sold their homes, held off needed surgeries, and cancelled Christmas. It is nothing that I wish to go through again, nor for anyone to go through. The reality however is that while capitalism exists, the strike will persist, but more importantly, the issues the people strike over will exist.

While the issues of health care, safe working conditions, and minimum wages will persist through out capitalism, only in a socialist based society will the issue of survival be addressed. Only in socialism will health care be made readily available. Only in socialism will there be no need for minimum wage because work will be voluntary and the needs of life will be freely accessible to all. Only in socialism can we achieve these things, and only the working class can bring it about.

Matthew Emmons,

World Socialist Party

Just a few ideas off the top of my head...

I think the strike was about two larger trends. First is globalization, and the second is health care.

Wal-Mart is the leading company that's exploited globalization. The basic pattern is use telecommunications to contract with factories in poorer countries (China is usually cited, but you can work with Jamaica, India, or Mexico too) where there are fewer regulations and labor is cheap, and using advanced logistics to move product from the factory to the store. Without tariffs, there's no way a domestic or other first-world, or even Mexican, factory can compete. However, it's not just Wal-Mart. Dollar stores are also doing the exact same thing. Home Depot does it. The shoe business does it too. Wal-Mart just has bigger profit margins.

Wal-Mart's capital accumulation allows it to sustain losses in the grocery business to improve its general merchandise business (where the real profits are). Wal-Mart can use the entire supermarket as a "loss leader" low cost groceries to get you to buy their full-price non-perishables.

By being able to hammer on the grocery stores with loss leaders, to sell near cost with no profit margin, they could erode the grocery stores. By doing it with workers who are paid half of what people are paid at the union stores, they virtually guarantee that the big shops will go under. (I did a little back-of-envelope math, and I think the crap wages amount to a small discount, maybe 2-3%.)

But, my argument doesn't explain why Wal-Mart's a threat. Globalization can benefit grocery workers, if it means bigger margins for the grocery stores. Wal-Mart's fight against unions is ideological. The cost savings from paying lower wages, while substantial, don't translate into huge savings. What it does is protect Wal-Mart's profits in the general merchandise business, which has yet to be totally maxed out, and it not unionized. There are only three big discounters (in LA): Target, Wal-Mart, and Kohl's.

These profit margins and profit growth also help capitalize Wal-Mart's growth, by creating incredible stock valuations. They make money by selling stock that may not ever pan out for people buying it today.

The best solution to this problem (other than lowering wages all around) is to organize Wal-Mart, and raise wages there. Another option, though a temporary one, is to restrict the ability of Wal-Mart to enter the market.

Ultimately, though, the issue of tariffs and globalization must be addressed.

The other issue the strike hit was rising health care costs.

Right now, there's a severe health care shortage. There are not enough doctors and nurses. Facilities are being closed. There are more consumers (patients) than providers. Thus, the insurance companies will tend to raise prices. They do negotiate lower prices with providers, but, until there's a surplus of providers, prices cannot come down, and insurance companies will actually milk the insured more and more.

The best solution is to subsidize medical schools, and put the public schools on a mission to create more doctors. Cuba did this, and they have a surplus of health care. They're a poor country with less than 1/10th the GDP of the US, but roughly the same infant mortality and longevity rates.

Under socialism, "work will be voluntary". So, who will work? What if no one wants to? Who will provide the goods and services that everyone needs? The "state"? What state? Who will work for it? Where will the money come from when no one is allowed to make a profit? Slave labor? Who will you enslave? I think the answer the the last two questions was answered last century. Your "socialist" experiment was tried. It failed, and has been discarded except in those bastions of productivity such as North Korea and Cuba. China is fascist, not socialist. You really need to put down the bong and get out more. Try reading something other than Socialist Worker.