Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
The Grocery Store Strike
By Tom Smith

In the unfashionable part of San Diego country in which I live, the grocery store clerk's strike is a big deal. Some 7000 or so clerks are striking throughout southern California. The union decided to strike Von's, then Albertson's and Ralph's locked out union workers pursuant to a previous agreement. The main issue seems to be a surcharge the stores want to impose on workers to help cover health care costs. The charge proposed is small, something like $5 per week (I heard), but the union sees this as the thin edge of the wedge.

What is really driving the stores is the plan by Walmart to open a series of stores in Southern California selling both groceries and other goods. Walmart is a ferocious competitor. It pays something like $10 per hour to its workers, versus $15 to $17 for unionized stores. Walmart also offers little to nothing in the way of health benefits. How this will square with the new legislation Davis just signed required employers to offer health care, I don't know. Perhaps as part time employees, most won't be covered. The unionized stores are trying to position themselves for the arrival of the big retail gorilla in town. Walmart sells an astonishing 7 percent of all goods sold retail in the U.S. I read in the WSJ years ago that every cash register in every Walmart can be monitored centrally in the head office in Arkansas, and management can pick up very quickly on anomalies that suggest employee theft (a very big problem at these establishments) or other problems, such as the thermostat being set too high or low for maximizing sales. Walmart is scary efficient.

My wife is not crossing the picket lines because she knows all the checkers and wants to be friends afterwards. I'm more the sort just to cross the lines, but at a store I don't usually go to. It's important to be principled about these things. The stores are a mess inside now. Produce rotting. Shelves getting empty. The replacement workers are pretty clueless. There seems to be quite a lot of sympathy around here with the strikers. La Jolla is probably a different story. We're not planning any fish dinners.

I feel sorry for the workers at the unionized stores, but it seems to me they're on the wrong side of history. There seems to be a cheaper more efficient way to get food to people, and charging a tax on everybody who eats hardly seems like the best way to finance the health care of grocery store workers. To the extent the health care charges are structured to provide incentives to use health care rationally, I would even be in favor of them. In any event, it doesn't look like it will settle soon.
posted by thomas at 10/15/2003 09:19:00 PM