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VOL. 24. NO.4 OCTOBER 21, 2003

Outcome of labor strikes affects all

BY RUTH MILKMAN AND KENT WONG

What’s at stake in the current strikes of supermarket workers and Metropolitan Transportation Authority mechanics here in Los Angeles is nothing less than the future of the middle class.

In recent years, economic inequality has grown dramatically throughout the nation. Los Angeles has the dubious distinction of being on the leading edge of that trend, with one of the largest gaps between rich and poor of any city in the country. Job growth has been concentrated at the bottom and the top of the labor market, while stagnation prevails in the middle.

Supermarkets and transportation are among the few remaining sources of middle-class jobs for non-college-educated workers. Thanks to unionization, workers in those industries enjoy good wages and benefits. Most have ready access to health care, can afford to send their kids to college, take vacations and look forward to retirement with a pension.

But over the past few decades, as unionization rates have fallen, such jobs — once commonplace — have become an anomaly. Private sector employers constantly seek to increase profits at workers’ expense, while public sector agencies facing budget cuts — like the MTA — often pressure workers to absorb rising health insurance premiums.

The strike of 70,000 supermarket workers in Southern California was thrust upon the union by aggressive corporations intent on slashing their labor costs. When the union contract expired, management demanded that workers accept a huge increase in health-care premiums, cuts in pension benefits, a wage freeze and a lower pay scale for new hires.

Unlike public sector agencies facing budget constraints, these employers are not short of money. Kroger, Ralphs’ parent corporation, posted $1.2 billion in profits for 2002. In addition, worker productivity in the industry has increased.

These corporations can afford to maintain existing wages and medical benefits. But management is determined to undercut union power. Employers, not the workers or the union, are responsible for this strike. Indeed, after the workers at Vons walked off the job, their counterparts at Albertsons and Ralphs were locked out.

The supermarkets argue that they face competition from nonunion firms like Wal-Mart that are notorious for poverty-level wages and substandard fringe benefits. While this may be true in some parts of the United States, supermarkets dominate the retail-food sector in Southern California, and Wal-Mart and its ilk have a very limited presence.

In a nation where 43.6 million people lack access to health care, including 6 million Californians, unionized workers with full family medical benefits are an endangered species. More and more people find themselves at the mercy of companies like Wal-Mart — now the biggest employer in the country — that refuse to provide decent health benefits and instead rely on taxpayer-funded health-care programs to subsidize their labor costs. If the supermarkets succeed in their efforts to impose a similar regime on their workers, who will be next?

We urge the UCLA community not to cross the supermarket picket lines, and to support the transit workers. The outcome of these strikes will affect all of us: It will help to determine whether or not Los Angeles will become a city of haves and have-nots, where decent health care is a luxury enjoyed by a chosen few.

Milkman is director of the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations and Wong is director of the UCLA Labor Center.