I think the Unions will lose this one. The WalMart/Costco pressure on prices is really hurting the Grocery Chains.
Slowly but surely, union leaders acknowledge, the number of shoppers crossing the picket lines is growing.
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2 Sides Seem Entrenched in Supermarket Dispute
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE - NEW YORK TIMES
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 8 — As 80 picketing workers bellowed chants outside the supermarket Thursday evening, Rosalyn Colvard, a grocery stocker, said she would need help from welfare to make ends meet if Southern California's three largest grocery chains won their four-week-old battle with 70,000 workers.
For the cashiers and stockers on the picket lines, the fight to fend off large-scale concessions is a struggle to avoid being thrown into one of America's lowest castes, the working poor. But for the supermarkets, the confrontation, the biggest labor dispute in the nation in recent years, is a painful investment to ensure that they can survive against Wal-Mart and other low-cost rivals.
"The stakes are enormous," said Ruth Milkman, chairwoman of the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment. "If the employers succeed in their effort to extract large concessions, they will turn these into low-wage jobs, and other employers across the nation will see this as a green light to try to do the same thing."
REST AT nytimes.com |
