BY JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER May 20, 2004
Joseph Hansen rose to union leadership the old-fashioned way. Starting out as a meat cutter in Milwaukee 40 years ago, he began organizing fellow meat cutters on his lunch hour. He rose through union ranks and took over earlier this year as international president of the United Food & Commercial Workers union.
As head of the 1.4-million-member organization of retail and grocery workers, Hansen has been a leader, if a somewhat frustrated one, in labor's long and so-far unsuccessful battle to organize Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's biggest corporation.
Hansen also was among the leaders involved in the recent, bitterly contested five-month strike against major grocery stores in southern California.
Hansen came to Detroit to receive a Person of the Year Award, along with Gov. Jennifer Granholm, at a political fund-raiser the Mid-America Political Action Committee will hold tonight.
The Free Press spoke to Hansen after he arrived Wednesday.
QUESTION: I get the impression that your battle with Wal-Mart is not just about wages and benefits, but it's more of a cultural war. It's two different visions of America. Can you talk about that?
ANSWER: Sure. The UFCW sees Wal-Mart as not just a problem for the UFCW. We see it as a problem for all the workers in America. Wal-Mart claims to be about low prices, but when you look hard at what the company is, it's low wages, no benefits, high turnover. It's turning our economy into a Wal-Mart economy. We're going to have a low-wage, no-benefit economy, and we're slowly but surely, and in some cases not so slow, we're being driven down toward the bottom. It's not good for our country.
Q: But consumers do love the low prices, don't they?
A: They have low prices. We think the regular grocery stores can match them in prices, can match them in efficiency, maybe not in everything. But people have to look at what those low costs bring. They bring lower wages and a lower tax base to the community. Wal-Mart shoves some of the services that other employers provide, particular health care, off onto the community. That's what you get with the low prices. You might save a dollar, but you're threatening your own job and you're certainly creating a worse situation for your own community.
Q: So far, unions have yet to make any inroads into organizing Wal-Mart workers, correct?
A: We've had a couple of organizing campaigns in the United States. We won an election in Texas a couple of years ago, just the meat department; that has been stalled in the process. The way the labor regulations in this country are set up, they just don't work for workers anywhere right now. In Canada we have three petitions pending that we have organized. We do not have any other Wal-Mart workers organized at this time. It's an ongoing problem.
Q: Wal-Mart is the biggest company in terms of revenues. How do you fight them?
A: We need allies. And we have allies in the trade union movement. The rest of the unions, SEIU, the Teamsters, the hotel and restaurant workers and the AFL-CIO, are all coming on board as allies. There are an awful lot of community groups and other people that are interested and concerned about what Wal-Mart is doing to their community and to the middle class in the United States. And they're going to be our allies. America cannot live on a Wal-Mart paycheck.
Q: Let's talk about the grocery strike in southern California. It was long and bitter, and the settlement included a two-tier wage system. This was widely perceived to be not what the union wanted. Was the strike a win, lose, or draw for the union?
A: It's too early to tell about the southern California strike. I don't think it was a loss. The problem is that the strike really is not over. There was so much consumer support for what we were fighting for, and what we were fighting for basically was affordable health care and we think we won that fight. But the end result of that is that those companies still have not recovered. That hurts them and it also hurts our workers. So the end result of the strike is possibly a draw, but it's too early to tell. We ended up with a new wage structure for new employees that is less than the current employees. What it really does is build in another problem for the next contract three years from now.
Q: Will there be other grocery strikes around the country?
A: The attitude from the employers since that has seemed to be, "Let's not do that again." They've modified this take-it-or-leave-it position that they put on the table in California. We have reached settlement in New England, Baltimore-Washington, Houston, Indianapolis and we're in major negotiations right now in Seattle. And the latest report I had is that employers are taking small steps toward a settlement. There is more of a willingness as I see it on the part of employers to compromise on some of these tough issues.
Q: What's next in Detroit?
A: Kroger is up this year in Detroit. UFCW leaders here are prepared for a fight, but they are also prepared to negotiate in good faith. I think there'll be some tough bargaining. Retail bargaining right now is tough. The overriding problem, and it's not just our industry, is health care.
Q: You came up through the ranks as a meat cutter. Traditionally, union leaders came up from the shop floor, but today's new workers are often highly educated with technical degrees. Does the union movement have anything to say to those new workers?
A: I think union movements always change. I think the union movement's changing right before our eyes. We certainly have an interest in representing those people. That's where the workforce of today is, and they need union representation just like the grocery store workers do now and the factory workers did in the past.
Q: When you get together with your fellow union leaders, is there more optimism or pessimism?
A: I don't see any pessimism. I think there's a determination. They are determined to prevail.