|
© 1997 - 2005 Terry Bailey all rights reserved
contact: terry@mediabench.com
Supermarket Strike
by Terry Bailey
published in Glendale News Press and Burbank Leader
March 1, 2004
Over the last months, I have been thinking a great deal about the grocery strike in Southern California. The strike has been settled in what, to my mind, is a totally illogical manner. Considering the social implications and ramifications, I must share some of my thoughts about it with my neighbors here in Glendale and Burbank.
The grocery strike settlement is being referred to as a “two-tier system” because workers already employed by the markets will have a different (better) pay and benefits package than will new hires. My aunt, a retired English teacher, tells me that a similar two-tier system is being considered by the government and unions for school teachers. If supermarket and school management pull off this new inequitable two-tier pay system, who knows where it will pop up next. What should be called a “two-class” system threatens not only the economic security of millions of people, but our democracy itself.
Ironically, a few months before the supermarket strike, I was pondering the idea of a two tier system for school teachers. The difference in my plan, however, was that I was thinking it should work in near reverse of the systems being initiated and planned today. Older workers and teachers would continue with the pay they already have, and new workers would be paid higher salaries.
There was a strong basis for my logic. It was based on a discussion with a fifty-something lifetime school teacher. Kay told me she didn't know why all the young teachers were complaining so much about their salaries, because she thought her salary was just fine.
Kay had not considered the fact that she bought a home twenty or thirty years ago, when a school teacher's salary afforded her a comfortable middle class home. Today the highest paid high school teacher's salary will not qualify her for even the least expensive home in Los Angeles County. Nor had Kay considered that she had already raised her children and put them through college, at tuition and living costs far less than the skyrocketing ones of today. Kay has her china and a piano, and most the household necessities of life. She is pretty well set. But a new teacher, paid the same or a lesser salary than Kay, given today's cost of living, has no chance of living the same comfortable middle class life.
I knew when I conceived the idea of a two tier pay system for school teachers - with new and younger teachers paid more than older teachers - it would be a difficult concept to sell to today's teachers, due to its apparent inequity. I knew it would be difficult in this sound bite society to get people to listen long enough to understand that the system, based on the current cost of living discrepancies in our society, was actually quite egalitarian. Higher pay for younger workers means they could participate more equally in a democratic middle class society. Today, a two tier system that pays younger employees the same or less money, relegates them to a lower class and is inherently very unequal and very undemocratic.
Sadly, an unequal two-tier system is what the grocery store employees have now approved. While many surely would have balked at my plan to pay new hires more money, supermarket union members did not hesitate to ratify the reverse and pay themselves more. Older workers will be able to continue their middle class lifestyles, with some discomforts; new workers will be shut out of the middle class before they even have a chance to experience it.
Store owners and union leaders have forced their grocery employees to follow a very undemocratic selfish, and morally questionable path of the Me Generation: “Now that I've got mine . . ..” the adage goes. “Every man for himself . . .” another. But, these are not the values a democracy is supposed to uphold. A democracy ought to move in the direction of more equality and opportunity for its citizens, not less.
When this strike began, Safeway CEO, Steve Burd, stated out front that he could afford to lose California in order to break the union throughout the rest of the US He stated out front that he could afford to hold out as long as possible with California strike. Does divide and conquer ring a bell with anyone here?
Why didn't the union leaders take out their workers across the country in support of the California strike, knowing Steve Burd’s strategy from the outset as they did? Why didn't the union leaders ask union members nationwide to financially support the southern California strike for as long as was necessary in order to prevent Mr. Burd and his colleagues from breaking the union, as they essentially did? Mr. Burd's strategy was brilliant. The union's strategy - well, did they even have a strategy?
Citizens in our society really must fight our “I've got mine” mentality if we are to preserve what we have of a democracy and move this country forward to be more democratic, more equal, in the future. Our founding fathers and mothers envisioned a society of equal opportunity for all. Multitiered pay and benefit systems move our society away from that positive direction, not toward it. Low pay and benefit rates will never raise the huddled masses to lives of freedom and opportunity.
Shame on the people who crossed those picket lines with no regard to the sacrifice for the sake of the middle class and democracy that the striking workers were making. Shame on the union leaders for selling out the next generation of workers. Shame on those who blamed the strikers rather than the store owners for this strike. Shame on those who whined about the inconvenience to their shopping lifestyles while thousands of courageous union members sacrificed their security and savings for nearly five months in order to stand up for what is fair. And shame on me for not thinking about and writing this sooner!
The implications of this supermarket strike outcome, and what we all must do to support democracy and the middle class are subjects that we ALL need to spend time thinking about. And while we are at it, I would like to leave one more brain exercising question for my fellow citizens: Why have we as a democratic society accepted the notion that the foremost purpose of business is to make a profit? Why do we not, instead, consider that the foremost purpose of business is to provide jobs and an income for our society's citizens?
|
|
|
