Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on House of Representatives' Leadership Maneuver to Stop Vote on Amendment to Block Bush's Overtime Pay Cuts
The U.S. House of Representatives Republican leadership tried to pull the wool over America’s workers’ eyes when it stopped the House from even debating or holding an up-or-down vote on a nonbinding motion to block any portion of the Bush Administration’s final overtime regulation that would strip workers of overtime pay.
The last thing America ’s workers need right now is a major pay cut. The House leadership passed up an opportunity to allow the Bush Administration to make any needed updates to the rules governing overtime pay, while stopping them from taking away overtime pay from even a single worker. Representative George Miller’s motion would have put the House on record in support of the Harkin amendment, which was approved by a bipartisan majority in the Senate last week.
Instead, many middle-income workers including registered nurses, “team leaders,” chefs, working supervisors and others earning between $23,660 and $100,000 will lose their right to overtime pay when the Bush overtime pay cut goes into effect on August 23, 2004.
America ’s workers deserve to at least have a vote on this matter in the House so that they can see where their leaders stand on Bush’s efforts to slash their overtime pay.
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.
WILLISTON, Vt., May 24 - The Wal-Mart here, like thousands of others across the country, sells everything at a steal: jeans for $10.77, gold earrings for $9.97, a three-piece set of luggage for $29.64.
But to some Vermonters, the cavernous store in this Burlington suburb symbolizes something else: the big-box-ification of a largely unspoiled part of the country.
With that in mind, a national historic preservation group said Monday that it was placing on its annual list of endangered sites an unusual entry: the state of Vermont.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation said it was calling Vermont endangered because of the threat of "behemoth stores," specifically Wal-Mart's. The trust believes Wal-Mart, the nation's largest company, plans a big expansion in the state with Williston-size stores. Trust officials contend that big-box stores threaten Vermont's picturesque villages, lush countryside and closeknit communities.
"We know the effects that these superstores have," said Richard Moe, president of the trust. "They tend to suck the economic and social life out of these downtowns, many of which wither and die as a result. I think it will drastically affect the character of Vermont, which I think is unique."
Vermont is the only state to have ever made the endangered list; indeed, the trust is invoking a strategy it believes worked before. Vermont was also listed in 1993, when it was the only state without a Wal-Mart.
Mr. Moe and other preservationists believe that the 1993 listing helped persuade communities in Vermont and elsewhere to take a tougher stance in negotiating with Wal-Mart and other big chains. After that listing, Vermont communities rejected at least one proposed Wal-Mart and steered three others - in Bennington, Berlin and Rutland - toward the kinds of sites preservationists like: moderate-sized existing buildings of 75,000 to 80,000 square feet in the heart of a downtown.
Williston broke that pattern, following the model of most Wal-Marts, with an outsized building of 150,000 square feet. Soon, other box stores, including Home Depot, Toys "R" Us and Bed Bath and Beyond, opened in the suburb.
"Vermont could be a poster child for how to do it right," with the three smaller stores, said Peter Brink, a senior vice president at the trust. But, Mr. Brink added, the Williston store, twice the size of the others, is "an example of how to do it wrong."
Mr. Moe said, "Wal-Mart should change to accommodate Vermont, not the other way around," and he added that he hoped to stimulate awareness of the issue across the country.
Mia Masten, community affairs manager for Wal-Mart's eastern region, said the company would take the trust's listing "into consideration, but this is only one side of the story."
Wal-Mart, with more than 2,900 stores and 91 distribution centers, tries to work with communities, Ms. Masten said, and is not "just coming in and bulldozing our way in."
Vermont's four outlets are the fewest that Wal-Mart Stores, based in Bentonville, Ark., has in any state, she said. Trust officials say Wal-Mart is looking in seven Vermont towns for more locations, but Ms. Masten said only one formal proposal had been made, in St. Albans.
But, she said, "we are always looking for opportunities to expand in existing markets," and most new stores are 150,000 square feet or bigger.
"We've also heard from a lot of Vermonters who want a Wal-Mart closer to their communities," Ms. Masten said. "And customers have told us they like a larger store. It enhances their shopping experience that there's a wider selection and the aisles are larger."
The trust's listing comes as Wal-Mart has become an increasingly polarizing symbol. Some economists and shoppers embrace it for its low prices and efficiencies, and some religious-right groups cheers its refusal to carry music and magazines they find morally offensive.
But the company has also been criticized by union leaders, who believe Wal-Mart pushes down wages, and by academics, town planners and others who worry that Wal-Mart fosters suburban sprawl. Wal-Mart is even an issue on the national political scene this year, with Senator John Kerry calling the company's health care benefits "disgraceful," and Vice President Dick Cheney praising Wal-Mart at a visit to its headquarters this month.
James Hoopes, a professor of business and ethics at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., called the trust's listing "one more statement that Wal-Mart is perceived as not only a very well-performing business, but also as a threat to a sort of quintessential Americana.''
The split is clear as St. Albans considers a proposal by Wal-Mart to build a 146,000-square-foot store two miles north of town. The project was announced in December by Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, who said then that he had urged Wal-Mart to come.
The St. Albans city manager, Brian Searles, said, "We'd like to have a store that serves the needs of our community and doesn't have a negative impact on our downtown businesses." He added that the entire county only had 47,000 people, and that a 146,000-square-foot store was "really big for that demographic."
Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, said his group was seeking a site in downtown St. Albans to offer as an alternative. "We're not against Wal-Mart," Mr. Bruhn said. "We feel we've been very reasonable in trying to find compromises.''
Some in St. Albans consider the Williston Wal-Mart a lesson. It drew most retail business away from downtown Burlington, said Mayor Peter Clavelle, who said his city was able to compensate with restaurants, cultural activities and boutiques.
"I appreciate that people want a place to shop,'' said Mr. Clavelle, a Democrat challenging Mr. Douglas for governor. "But I also think that Wal-Mart would not be the big bogeyman if they were a bit more sensitive to issues of scale and location."
In Williston, shoppers also split.
"Some people that move to Vermont, they just want to leave it just the way it is," said Irene Johnson, who with her husband, Jere, travels 30 miles once a week from St. Albans to buy a large variety of items. "I hate to be the one to go against the grain but I think we need more Wal-Marts in Vermont."
But Diane Longley, who was buying a fan, said she would prefer smaller downtown Wal-Marts. "I do feel that the big stores are detrimental to the community," she said.
By Stephen Franklin Tribune staff reporter Published May 23, 2004
The Battle of Wal-Mart is more than a squabble over proposed stores on Chicago's West and South Sides. It is a front in a sprawling North American struggle between a behemoth company and a union fearful for its future.
From Chicago to Los Angeles to Saskatchewan, the 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers union is battling the world's biggest company, which has succeeded in preventing unions from organizing its workers.
The most immediate concern is that the presence of the giant retailer will drive down wages and benefits for the core of the union's membership: workers in other grocery stores.
But the union also has larger fears: that the retailer's low-wage ways will encourage other businesses to follow suit, to the detriment of millions of workers, both union and non-union.
That is why, in Chicago, the union's 40,000-member local has been calling up all available manpower to make its case before the City Council's expected decision Wednesday on whether to grant zoning approvals to Wal-Mart for the stores.
"We're in street-to-street fighting. They talk to somebody; we talk to them too. Anyone who will give us an ear, we'll talk to them," said Tim Drea, an official with UFCW Local 881.
The union stirs community opposition by challenging the alleged poor quality of Wal-Mart jobs, questioning the environmental impact of its mammoth stores and accusing it of exerting a "downward" force on the economy.
The UFCW began looking for new ways to pressure Wal-Mart once it realized its organizing efforts were stalled. Despite a costly, decade-long investment in time and manpower, not a single Wal-Mart in North America has been organized.
Organized labor has joined UFCW's battle. But union leaders also have been talking about how they can do more, say officials with the AFL-CIO, labor's umbrella organization.
"It is a very difficult process, but we are not going to give up," said Joe Hansen, a one-time Milwaukee butcher, who now heads the UFCW. He was talking from a Washington meeting called recently by a handful of union leaders and community activists to plan a campaign to deal with Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart officials shrug off the accusations, saying the unions, community groups and lawyers fighting them have their own agendas.
"We understand that we have a target on our back because of the size of our business," said company spokeswoman Sarah Clark at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
Wal-Mart is without a doubt a giant. It has 3,586 stores in the U.S. and another 1,499 around the world. With 1.2 million workers in the U.S. alone (42,000 in Illinois), it is the nation's single biggest employer of senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, Hispanics and African-Americans.
The average Wal-Mart worker earns $9.64 per hour and works 36 hours per week, the company said. This compares to $8.98 an hour for its non-union competitors, according to Wal-Mart figures.
With a 2 percent bonus and another 2 percent put in their 401(k) plan, the average full-time Wal-Mart worker earns $18,750 per year, according to the company. A family of four needs to earn at least $18,725 a year to escape poverty, government statistics show.
Wal-Mart boasts that more than 50 percent of its workers use its health insurance plan, while another 40 percent rely on plans from the government or through their spouses.
Union officials point out that two-thirds of the nation's workers at large companies get their insurance from their own employers.
For family health-care coverage with a $350 deductible, full-time Wal-Mart workers pay $264 monthly as well as one-fifth of the costs of their health-care visits.
Nationally, workers paid an average $201 per month for family health-care coverage last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research organization.
Unions point to the higher wages at Costco Wholesale Corp., where 15,000 workers, or about 13 percent of its workforce, are Teamsters.
The salaries for union members at Costco start at $10.50 per hour and go up to $19.80, according to Teamsters officials. The workers are eligible for bonuses of as much as $7,000 per year, more than 90 percent of their health-care costs are company paid and they have 401(k) pension plans.
The same pay and benefits extend to non-union Costco workers, said Costco CEO James D. Sinegal, who acknowledged that his firm may have the industry's highest paid workers. But, he added, it pays to pay workers well.
"How can you afford not to?" he said, explaining that motivated workers are often also highly productive.
The bottom line for the UFCW in salaries and benefits is not the retail industry, however, but in grocery stores, where it represents an overwhelming majority of workers at the major supermarkets.
That is where the UFCW fears Wal-Mart will have the strongest effect, driving down wages amid competitive supermarket chains.
At Chicago-area Dominick's stores, for example, store clerks' pay runs from $6.80 per hour to $13.80 per hour. Its members pay nothing for their health-care--a bone of contention between the union and company.
The real showdown between Wal-Mart and the union began when seven out of 10 butchers in a store in Jacksonville, Texas, voted in February 2000 to join the union. Within a month, Wal-Mart began shifting to pre-packaged meats, wiping out butchers' job nationally.
Such a decision had been in the works before the union vote, company spokeswoman Clark said.
Encouraged by the breakthrough in workers' interest, the union quickly stepped up its organizing.
"Why Wal-Mart? It's because Wal-Mart sets the rate. They sink the standard," said Greg Denier, a UFCW spokesman in Washington.
Target Corp. wasn't much of a concern, he explained, because its grocery sales are limited. And the union didn't go after Kmart Corp. because it was in financial troubles, he added.
At one point the union launched a citywide campaign in Las Vegas to organize all of the Wal-Marts there. It set up a 12-person team and poured in support. Several years later, however, there is no union representation.
The union and company have fought a cat-and-mouse game across the United States: the UFCW charging Wal-Mart with labor law violations and the company rebutting them.
The union also has urged people to take Wal-Mart to court, creating another hectic battleground for the company.
Among dozens of suits against the company, Wal-Mart now faces a class-action suit in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of female workers, who say they were discriminated against in terms of raises and promotions. Another 20 lawsuits alleging wage and hour abuses also are percolating through state courts.
Faced with deep financial problems after a four-and-a-half month grocery strike earlier this year that wiped out the UFCW's strike fund, the union is redirecting its forces in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
Nowadays, the only hopeful prospects the union can point to are two Wal-Mart stores in Saskatchewan, where workers recently applied to join the union. UFCW officials in Canada, where Wal-Mart has about 62,000 workers, are pinning their hopes on winning at least one of the elections.
The union has an uphill battle in winning over consumers, experts say.
"The UFCW isn't going to be able to do it alone. It will really take significant community support," predicted John Budd, a labor expert at the University of Minnesota.
The union's problem, as Budd sees it, is that "most people see themselves more as consumers than workers, and so they look at Wal-Mart as a bargain and don't see that behind the bargain is a low-paid worker without health insurance."
In Chicago, Local 881 hopes that such views will change and that pressure on Wal-Mart will lead it to sign a so-called community benefits agreement that it put together with local community, jobs and religious activists. The 12-point agreement should lead to the kind of jobs that the union seeks, Local 881 officials say.
Yet Local 881 official Drea doubts that Wal-Mart will do so. That is why, he said, the union is urging the City Council to keep Wal-Mart out of Chicago. But if the council disagrees, the union has a strategy.
"The day that store opens," he said, "we'll have organizers at the front doors, saying, `Here is a better way.'"
In today's cutthroat job market, the bottom rung is as high as most workers will ever get. But the political will to help them seems a long way off. (This article is very long but accurately describes what is happening to us as workers)
Katrina Gill, a 36-year-old certified nursing aide, worked in one of the premiere long-term care facilities near Portland, Ore. From 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m., she was on duty alone, performing three rounds on the dementia ward, where she took care of up to 28 patients a night for $9.32 an hour. She monitored vitals, turned for bedsores, and changed adult diapers. There were the constant vigils over patients like the one who would sneak into other rooms, mistaking female patients for his deceased wife. Worse was the resident she called "the hitter" who once lunged at her, ripping a muscle in her back and laying her flat for four days.
Last month, Gill quit and took another job for 68 cents an hour more, bringing her salary to $14,400 a year. But like so many health-care workers, she has no health-care benefits from her job. So she and her garage mechanic husband pay $640 monthly for a policy and have racked up $160,000 in medical debts from their youngest son Brandyn's cancer care.
In New York City, Joseph Schiraldi, 41, guards one of the biggest terrorist targets in the world: the Empire State Building. For eight hours a day, he X-rays packages, checks visitors' IDs, and patrols the concourse. But on $7.50 an hour in the priciest city in the U.S., he's a security officer without security -- no pension, no health care, and no paid sick days, typical for a nonunion guard.
Bellingham (Wash.) day-care teacher Mandy Smith can't afford child care for her 6-year-old son, Jordan, on her take-home pay of $60 a day. Neither can commercial cleaner Theresa Fabre on her $8.50 an hour job. So her son, Christian, 9, waits for her after school in a crumbling upper Manhattan library where the kids line up five-deep to use one of two computers. The librarian doubles as a de facto babysitter for 40 or so other kids of the working poor.
Over the past year, the loss of lucrative white-collar work offshore has dominated news headlines, provoking economic anxiety among middle-class families who fear they may be next. But there's an equally troubling yet more often overlooked problem among the nation's working poor -- for whom the raises come in dimes, the sick days go unpaid, and the benefits are out of reach.
Today more than 28 million people, about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64, earn less than $9.04 an hour, which translates into a full-time salary of $18,800 a year -- the income that marks the federal poverty line for a family of four (table). Any definition of the working poor, of course, involves some blurry lines. Some, like Gill, who make just above the $9.04 wage, often bounce around the threshold with their chaotic hours, slippery job security, and tumultuous lives.
There's also the fact that about one-third work only part-time, and more than a third are 18- to 25-year-olds, who may still live at home but may eventually work their way up the ladder. Some perhaps moonlight with a second job. And others may have spouses whose incomes lift their families up. But most poor workers tend to marry people with similar backgrounds, leaving both to juggle jobs as janitors, health aides, and retail workers that don't raise them into the middle class.
Overall, 63% of U.S. families below the federal poverty line have one or more workers, according to the Census Bureau. They're not just minorities, either; nearly 60% are white. About a fifth of the working poor are foreign-born, mostly from Mexico. And the majority possess high school diplomas and even some college -- which 30 years ago would virtually have assured them a shot at the middle class.
TOIL AND TROUBLE
Now, though, most labor in a netherworld of maximum insecurity, where one missed bus, one stalled engine, one sick kid means the difference between keeping a job and getting fired, between subsistence and setting off the financial tremors of turned-off telephones and $1,000 emergency-room bills that can bury them in a mountain of subprime debt.
At any moment, a boss pressured to pump profits can slash hours, shortchanging a family's grocery budget -- or conversely, force employees to work off the clock, wreaking havoc on child-care plans. Often, as they get close to putting in enough time to qualify for benefits, many see their schedules cut back. The time it takes to don uniforms, go to the bathroom, or take breaks routinely goes unpaid. Complain, and there is always someone younger, cheaper, and newer to the U.S. willing to do the work for less. Pittsburgh native Edward Plesniak, 36, lost his $10.68-an-hour union job as a janitor when the contractor fired all the union workers to make way for cheaper, nonunion labor. So far, Plesniak has been able to dredge up work only as a part-time floor waxer. The pay: $6.00 an hour, with no benefits. "I feel like I'm in a nightmare," says the married father of three. "And I can't wake up."
What's happening in the world's richest, most powerful country when so many families seem to be struggling? And what can be done? There's no question that robust growth is a potent remedy: Recall that the full-employment economy of the late 1990s reduced the ranks of the working poor. Five years of a 4% jobless rate bid up wages across the board. That brought a healthy cumulative 14% pay hike, after inflation, to those in the bottom fifth between 1995 and 2003, when they averaged $8.46 an hour, according to an analysis of Census data by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal Washington research group. The share of the workforce earning subpoverty pay actually shrank eight percentage points, to 24% last year, or 5 million fewer than in 1995.
That's real progress, certainly. But it still leaves many workers earning less than what it takes to lift a family above the poverty line. In other words, the boom didn't last long enough to bring more people into better circumstances. Now, in the current recovery, there has been brisk growth again, as well as high productivity and job creation. But so far, wages at the low end haven't budged much. Many of today's economic gains are flowing to profits and efficiency improvements, and the job market isn't tight enough yet to lift pay for average workers, much less for those on the bottom. Of course, if the recovery continues apace, a strong labor market could bump wages up.
Perplexing, too, are signs that many jobs the working poor hold won't, over time, lead them out of their straits. Five of the 10 fastest-growing occupations over the next decade will be of the menial, dead-end variety, including retail clerks, janitors, and cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What's more, while full employment in the 1990s may have brought higher pay for people like health aides and maids, the ladder up into the middle class has gotten longer, and they are more likely than in other periods to remain a health aide or a maid.
A 2003 study of 1990s mobility by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that the chances that poor Americans would stay stuck in their strata had increased vs. the 1970s. Given the economy's strong showing in the '90s, that's a concern. "If current trends persist, a greater and greater share of wealth will keep going into the hands of the few, which will destroy initiative," worries James D. Sinegal, CEO of Costco Wholesale Corp., which offers above-average pay and benefits in the retail sector. "We'll no longer have a motivated working class."
So although a fast-growing economy and full employment are necessary for powering wages at the bottom, they may not be enough in today's economy. To survive in waves of increasing global competition, U.S. companies have relentlessly cut costs and sought maximum productivity. That has put steady downward pressure particularly on the lowest rungs of the labor force, while rewarding the growing ranks of educated knowledge workers. In this increasingly bifurcated job market, workers who lack skills and training have seen their bargaining power crumble relative to those higher up the scale.
For one thing, globalization has thrown the least-skilled into head-on competition with people willing to work for pennies on the dollar. And a torrent of immigration, mainly poor rural Mexicans, has further swelled the low-end labor pool. Together, these trends have shoved many hourly wage occupations into a worldwide, discount labor store stocked with cheap temps, hungry part-timers, and dollar-a-day labor in India, Mexico, and China, all willing to sell their services to the lowest bidder. Against such headwinds, full employment offers only partial protection.
What's more, other traditional buffers don't help low-end workers as much anymore. While labor unions were largely responsible for creating the broad middle class after World War II, bringing decent wages and benefits to even low-skilled employees such as hotel and garment workers, that's not the case today. Most U.S. employers fiercely resist unionization, which, along with other factors, has helped slash union membership to just 13% of the workforce, vs. a midcentury peak of more than 35%.
GRAVITATIONAL PRESSURE
The federal minimum wage, too, long served as a bulwark against low pay by putting a floor under the bottom as the rest of the workforce gained ground. At $5.15 an hour, it remains 30% less than it was in 1968, after inflation adjustments. It hasn't moved in nearly seven years, victim of a divided political Establishment in which programs for a relatively powerless group often get jammed up in bipartisan gridlock.
Add to all this the fact that a college degree, the time-tested passport to success, is today less available to those without family resources. The cost of college has exploded, leaving fewer than 5% of students from bottom-earning families able to get that all-important diploma. The result: The pattern of low skills crosses the generations. Columbus Harris, 50, a $6.75-an-hour driver for the elderly in Pine Bluff, Ark., couldn't help his kids with college. So his middle son Christopher joined the Army to get an education. "I worry about the fact that a lot of the gains in educational attainment are concentrated among the youngsters from rich and upper-middle-class families," says Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
There are no easy policy prescriptions for improving the working poor's prospects. Measures with any real impact are almost always costly and ignite political fights over priorities. Lifting the minimum wage by $1.50 an hour, for example, would boost the incomes of more than 10 million workers. A majority of the gains would flow to adult women over age 20, mostly nonunionized workers in retail, according to an analysis by the EPI. To support the wage floor over the long term, the minimum would need to be linked to some measure of national living standards, such as inflation or average wages, to keep many families from simply slipping back into working poverty after a few years. Yet trying to hike the minimum wage always sparks a monumental battle in Washington. That's just what's happening now, after Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) proposed to lift it to $7.00 an hour.
Writing some new rules for globalization would shore up low-end workers, too. Some Democrats advocate linking trade pacts to labor rights, by, for example, requiring countries that want favored trade status to allow workers to form unions. The idea isn't to eliminate low-wage competition -- an impossibility, in any case -- but simply to blunt its sharpest blows, particularly on less-skilled, predominantly male factory workers. Many economists calculate that globalization has been responsible for about one-fifth of the decline in blue-collar pay since 1973. But just think back to the fight over NAFTA a decade ago to see how far such proposals might go in Congress.
Curbing the flood of unskilled immigrants, assuming it could even be done, also would ease some of the gravitational pressure on low-end pay. Slowing the pace of entry, or shifting the flow toward higher-skilled workers, would mitigate the stiff wage competition among everyone from janitors to sales clerks. Yet if anything, political momentum seems to be moving in the opposite direction, such as President Bush's proposals earlier this year to set up a temporary worker program.
A hike in unionization would also give the working poor some leverage over wages. The rule of thumb used to be that union workers earn about one-third more than nonunion ones. But the differential has ballooned with the collapse of pay scales at the bottom. Today, blue-collar workers in a union make 54% more than unorganized ones and are more than twice as likely to have health insurance and pensions, according to an EPI analysis. Because unions boost workers' bargaining power and help them win a greater share of productivity gains, any resurgence would give low-wage workers more clout to deal with the effects of factors such as globalization, immigration, and technology. Still, the U.S. isn't likely to alter the laws governing unionization any time soon. Employers have body-blocked such attempts since the late 1970s, arguing that profits and economic growth would suffer. Today, labor law reform still goes nowhere, snagged in the broader political deadlock that grips the U.S.
America's divisions surface only sporadically as a pressing issue. Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) put them at the core of his Presidential campaign, castigating the "two Americas" divided into rich and poor. This prompted John Kerry to adopt a populist tone for a while. Some Democrats urged him to target policies perceived as unfair to both low- and middle-income workers, from trade pacts to tax cuts for the wealthy. Kerry still mentions these issues, but they're hardly a central plank of his platform. Of course, that could change if Edwards ends up joining the ticket. A recent poll found that 78% of voters care more about fighting poverty than they do about gay marriage. "The issue is sitting out there for a candidate to seize on, but voters want to hear new solutions," says Democratic political consultant Tom Freedman.
WHERE HOPE LIES
Still, historically, class-based appeals have had scant resonance in U.S. politics. In addition, there's little sustained outcry from the working poor themselves, who often are overwhelmed by their personal difficulties and politically disengaged. Only about 40% of them vote, vs. 74% of the investor class, according to the Russell Sage Foundation. "If you look at families in the bottom 20%, they are dropping out of the political system like flies," says foundation President Eric Wanner.
A few initiatives, though, have broad enough appeal to win support from both sides of the divide. Lawmakers from both political parties are struggling to devise ways to help the uninsured get health coverage. While they're split on this subject, too, nearly everyone agrees that something should be done. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers poor kids, was established by Democrats and Republicans alike, though a lot of children remain uncovered. Any expansion, or a broader solution that involves expanding Medicaid, would help many working poor adults, among the most likely to need coverage.
Similarly, the 1996 welfare reform effort has brought a rough consensus today that Congress should help welfare moms with child care so they can work. Washington could broaden eligibility for child-care help to include more working-poor families, too. Richer educational loan programs would also help. Given the country's soaring deficits, though, Congress isn't inclined to devote big resources to such projects. One place to look for money might be in the tax code, but in an election year, the high-profile investor class and the organized elderly are likelier to get any new largesse than the working poor.
Government may be stalled, but some employers are stepping up, at least in small ways. A number of leading companies, including Bank of America Corp. and Marriott International Inc., have programs to aid their low-wage workers -- they offer small emergency loans or grants to employees who face sudden crises, help them with child care, or find creative ways to make their workdays more flexible. "Assuming employers have answered the question as to whether they're paying market-based wages and benefits, there are still a lot of other things they can do, some of them relatively low cost," says Donna Klein, president of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a business group in Washington that sponsored a recent study on programs for low-wage workers.
Still, even those who push above a poverty-level wage can fall into a trap. Between $7 to $10 an hour, they make just enough to start losing what little safety net there is, says Ron Haskins, a former Republican staffer who helped spearhead the 1996 welfare reform, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. They often become ineligible for food stamps or child-care assistance, and the earned income tax credit starts phasing out for a single parent at $13,730. "For them, Horatio Alger does not apply," says Haskins.
Women, especially single ones, have the most difficulty. Often, their wages barely cover the cost of child care. Low-income women's pay is actually up since 1973, but they still average just $7.94 an hour, much less than their male counterparts. That's one reason the U.S. has the highest child-poverty rate in the industrialized world. "Our low-income mothers work twice as hard as those in any other industrial country -- but their kids are the worst off," says Syracuse University public policy professor Timothy M. Smeeding.
THE WAL-MART EFFECT
Lately, there's a new name for the downward pressure on wages: the so-called Wal-Martization of the economy. Most recently, the dynamic played out starkly in the five-month Southern California supermarket strike that ended in February. The three chains involved, Safeway (SWY ), Albertson's (ABS ), and Kroger (KR ), said they had no choice but to cut pay and benefits drastically now that 40 Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ) supercenters would be opening up in the area. The reason: Wal-Mart pays its full-time hourly workers an average of $9.64, about a third of the level of the union chains. It also shoulders much less of its workers' annual health insurance costs than rivals, leaving 53% of its 1.2 million employees uncovered by the company plan.
Now, after the strike, new hires will have lower wages and bear a much higher share of health costs than current union members, making health insurance too pricey for many of them, too. Eventually, many grocery jobs could wind up paying poverty-level wages, just like Wal-Mart's. "I used to load workers into my truck to take them down to United Way," says Jon Lehman, a former manager of a Louisville Wal-Mart who now works for the United Food & Commercial Workers Union. In his 17 years with Wal-Mart, he kept a Rolodex with numbers for homeless shelters, food banks, and soup kitchens. "They couldn't make it on their paychecks."
It's a prospect that deeply worries workers like Sherry Kovas. Over 26 years, she worked her way up to $17.90 an hour as a cashier at Ralph's Grocery Co. (KR ) store in the posh California enclave of Indian Wells. To Kovas, the Medici-like lifestyles of her customers -- the personal chefs, the necklaces that would pay her yearly salary -- never seemed so much an emblem of inequality as a symbol of what was possible. Now, though, after the banks foreclosed on some strikers' homes and the repo men hauled away their cars, there's already talk of grocery store closings in the area because of the new Wal-Mart supercenter up the road. "They say Wal-Mart's going to kill us," says Kovas, who fears losing the three-bedroom modular home that she, her five-year-old son, husband, and mother-in-law share. "But I'm 44 years old. I'm too old to start over."
The U.S. has long tolerated wider disparities in income than other industrialized countries, mostly out of a belief that anyone with enough moxie and hustle could lift themselves up in America's vibrant economy. Sadly, it seems that path is becoming an ever steeper climb. Strong recovery and vigorous growth will again get wages growing. But as a new phase of prosperity begins, it may be time for some added advantages for those struggling in a brutal global economy. Otherwise, the outcome could be more polarization and inequality. The farther down that road the country goes, the harder it will be to change course.
By Michelle Conlin and Aaron Bernstein
by Adewale Troutman
The writer is the director of the Metro Louisville Health Department.
THE PROBLEM of families, adults and children with no health insurance has grown considerably worse across America in recent years. According to figures released in September 2003, almost 44 million people — 15.2 percent of the total U.S. population — were uninsured in 2002, up from 14.6 percent in the previous year. This was the largest single-year increase in both the number and rate of uninsured people in a decade.
The growing number of uninsured is having serious consequences for the health of the nation. Despite having the highest health care spending per capita, the United States consistently scores at or near the bottom in comparisons with other developed, high-income countries on such public health indicators as infant mortality, life expectancy, and the proportion of the population with health insurance coverage. Almost everyone in these countries has health coverage. In the U.S., by contrast, 15.2 percent of the population — or 43.6 million people — were uninsured in 2003. We now have 35.1 million adults and 8.5 million children living without health insurance coverage. In addition, inadequate health insurance is recognized as a significant contributing cause to the health inequities experienced by African Americans, Hispanics and other groups, including the poor. Although African Americans constitute only 12 percent of the population, they account for 26 percent of uninsured adults. Although Hispanics comprise 38 percent of the overall population, they make up 38 percent of uninsured adults.
Who are the new uninsured? Many of them are working poor people who either can't afford to pay for their own health insurance or who work for companies that don't provide health insurance to their employees. Many of the uninsured are forced by necessity to wait until they face a medical crisis to seek care. Uninsured people are more than three times as likely to die when they are hospitalized as people who have insurance, according to the American College of Physicians. Without access to primary care and preventive health services, those with no health insurance are often forced to rely on hospital emergency rooms for their medical care.
This can be a very expensive option for the community.
In a sweeping six-volume series on the consequences of uninsurance, the Institute of Medicine reported the following conclusions:
Compared to people with insurance, uninsured children and adults experience worse health and die sooner.
Families can suffer emotionally and financially when even a single member is uninsured.
"Uninsurance at the community level is associated with financial instability for health care providers and institutions, reduced hospital services and capacity, and significant cuts in public health programs, which may diminish access to certain types of care for all residents, even those who have coverage."
The nation as a whole is economically disadvantaged as a result of the poorer health and premature death of uninsured Americans. The Institute of Medicine estimated that the lost economic value of uninsurance is between $65 billion and $130 billion annually.
Here in Louisville, there are more than 46,000 uninsured adults, and the number is growing every day. The state budget deficit has forced a situation where thousands of uninsured children have only limited access to the Kentucky Children's Health Program (KCHIP). Our safety net providers, Family Health Centers, the Park DuValle Community Health Center and the University of Louisville are bursting at the seams and are finding it impossible to meet the health care needs of the growing ranks of the uninsured.
While recent new initiatives, such as getCare, which seeks to coordinate care among existing safety net providers, and the Take Ten Initiative of the Jefferson County Medical Society, which encourages each private practice physician to provide care for 10 uninsured people, are valiant efforts, at best they only provide temporary relief to our growing health care crisis here in Louisville.
Certainly, health and unabridged equal access to a single standard of quality health care is the birthright of all citizens of Louisville, of all Americans and of all human beings. We can no longer afford the status quo that allows millions of Americans to go without health coverage. Too many people are uninsured. Too many families are being damaged, and too many lives lost. The human, economic and societal costs of nearly 44 million uninsured Americans are just too great for the country to bear any longer. Recent studies from the GAO have indicated that there is enough money in the system today to provide universal coverage to all Americans without additional expenditure of funds. It's past time that we had a national commitment through sound sweeping comprehensive policy change, to create a national health program that would guarantee every person universal health insurance coverage.
Special to The Courier-Journal
(WASHINGTON, May 18th, 2004, 12:30 p.m.) -- For the second time in a week, House Republicans have blocked a Democratic attempt to force an election-year vote on the Bush administration's new overtime pay rules.
Tuesday's vote, 216-199, barred an effort by Democratic Rep. George Miller of California to get a vote on the new rules, which take effect in August. Miller's provision would require the Labor Department to retain the eligibility of all workers who currently qualify for overtime pay. The House had also rebuffed Miller's effort last week.
The GOP-controlled Senate approved a similar measure earlier this month.
Had Miller succeeded in the House, the overtime vote would have been largely symbolic, and would not have changed the new regulations. But it would have forced members of Congress to take a stand in an election year on a pocketbook issue important to many voters and labor unions, a key Democratic constituency.
If House Democrats could get the measure to a vote, "we think it would prevail," said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic whip.
Labor Department officials say the changes will clarify the complex overtime rules and reduce the increasing number of lawsuits against employers by workers challenging their status.
The new regulation will exempt about 100,000 workers now eligible for overtime pay, department officials said. But Democrats and labor unions claim the number will be much higher.
Organized labor has lobbied furiously to kill the regulation.
On Wednesday, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives refused to allow a debate or vote on a measure to stop President Bush's overtime pay take-away. They knew that if they allowed a vote, they would lose. A group of 19 Republican representatives, who had previously voted right on this issue, flipped sides and joined GOP leaders--blocking overtime pay protections, for now.
Unless representatives demand another vote, the Bush overtime pay take-away will go into effect Aug. 23—and many people will lose their right to overtime pay.
You can make a difference. Please take one minute right now to send a fax to your U.S. representative by copying and pasting the link below. Tell your representative to demand a vote on the overtime pay guarantee already passed in the U.S. Senate.
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/votenow4otpay/g3xeg4q8w8ti
For more information see Senate Votes to Support Overtime on our Home Page.
By PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Washington grocery chains are not completely unified in how to tackle the current round of labor negotiations, with Brown & Cole Stores suggesting a more cooperative approach yesterday.
Three years ago, the Bellingham-based grocer joined forces with Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer, QFC and others to hammer out a labor contract for roughly 20,000 Western Washington employees.
This round, Brown & Cole is staying on the sidelines, saying it is not interested in a protracted labor dispute. Safeway, Albertsons and Kroger Co. endured a five-month strike in Southern California that ended in late February.
"We just don't have the stomach to be at war with our own employees," Brown & Cole Chief Executive Craig Cole told the state Senate Democratic Caucus yesterday at a hearing in Seattle.
The large chains counter that they are simply trying to balance the competitive pressures and employee needs that many local grocers face.
"We are not trying to go to war with our employees. We are trying to provide them with quality benefits, while remaining competitive," said Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for the grocery chains.
Cole agrees that his chain, which has 32 stores around Washington state, has plenty of financial challenges.
Cole suggested that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has faced criticism over its treatment of workers and suppliers, is imposing its low-wage model on the rest of the industry.
"It's a race to the bottom," Cole said.
In 2001, a larger group of grocery chains banded together to negotiate with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in Western Washington. This year, Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer and QFC are the only members.
But, other chains will benefit from those talks, as Metropolitan Markets, Thriftway, Red Apple and other chains signed an agreement to offer whatever eventually comes out of the collective bargaining.
Cole & Brown has not signed one of the "me-to" agreements, although it could in the future.
Under the system, the big stores will take the heat at the bargaining table and during any lockouts or strike.
At the table, the four negotiating chains are trying to contain and cut costs, saying they face growing competition from Wal-Mart and other low-cost stores. Health care costs, for example, are soaring. Employer health care costs have risen 77 percent over the last three years, according to Allied Employers.
So, the stores proposed that new employees should pay 20 percent of their health care costs, according to the union. Union officials, however, have yet to receive the entire health care proposal.
Companies also proposed a three-year wage freeze, according to the union.
The chains instead proposed a bonus, worth 25 cents for every hour a journeyman employee worked in the previous year. Journeyman would receive a bonus in all three years of the contract.
Of course, contract provisions are not set until the entire contract is agreed to. And the two sides likely have at least until May 21, the date of the final bargaining session.
With just a week to go, Cole & Brown said it was looking for a cooperative approach with the union.
"I just can't see solving it by trying to do it completely on the backs of my employees," Cole said.
Grocery workers gather at Safeway store to protest contract proposals
Thursday, May 13, 2004
By PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The public campaign over a new contract for local grocery workers took a detour yesterday when police officers arrested a labor official during a rally, sparking a second protest at a nearby police station.
Union members and leaders gathered outside a Safeway store on Capitol Hill yesterday to protest proposed changes in health care benefits. As the event wound down, police officers arrested Robby Stern, legislative director of the Washington State Labor Council, after he declined to move at their request.
Many participants then left the crowded sidewalk on East John Street and moved a few blocks away to picket in front of 18 baton-wielding officers at the Seattle Police Department's East Precinct. Police locked down the station, a standard procedure during protests.
The drama likely will have little, if any, effect on the collective bargaining, according to sources on both sides. That's because Safeway didn't complain about the rally or seek any arrests, according to union and company officials. In fact, the store discussed the Capitol Hill location with organizers, Jobs with Justice and Washington Citizen Action, in advance.
But the disturbance is further proof that the latest grocery negotiations hold one of the highest public profiles of any collective bargaining in recent years. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is trying to reach an agreement with Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer and QFC stores for 16,000 workers.
Since opening talks April 2, the union publicly has blasted the companies for allegedly proposing cuts in health care benefits, lower wages for new workers and work rule changes.
The talks are garnering plenty of public attention, in part, because the same stores and union only recently resolved a bitter, five-month strike and lockout in Southern California.
While the stores may have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in that dispute, union members had to swallow a two-tiered system, which promises to pay the next generation of grocery workers less. Several labor experts view that final contract as a victory for the grocery chains.
"We need the companies to realize this isn't Southern California," Robin Olson, a clerk at the QFC store in University Village, said as he picketed outside the police station. "This is the toughest contract I can remember in my 27 years."
The initial noontime rally was orderly, although grocery workers, members of other unions and regional labor and religious leaders crowded the sidewalk, while a handful of police officers and store managers watched from across the street.
A police officer intervened toward the end, as Stern prepared to lead a final song, and asked him to move to a park 30 feet away, apparently over concerns that the rally was blocking the sidewalk.
"It's going to be three minutes and we will be gone," Stern recalled telling the officer. "It makes no sense."
Stern remained on the sidewalk during the song and was arrested after he finished. He was released less than three hours later. He was arrested on a charge of obstruction, a misdemeanor, Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb said.
The initial event came as no surprise to Safeway.
"The rally was what we expected, and it was peaceful. And it's unfortunate it ended" that way, said Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for the stores. "We hope it doesn't take the focus away from the bargaining table."
Negotiations resume tomorrow, with the last scheduled meeting a week later.
May 12—Despite reports that the economy is recovering, evidence continues to mount that newly created jobs are less likely to offer health insurance and they pay less than jobs America has lost in recent years.
In all but five states, the percentage of workers with health insurance coverage is significantly less in industries that have gained jobs in the past three years than in industries that have lost jobs, according to Jobs Shift Away from Industries that Provide Health Insurance to Their Workers, a new study released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Workers in growing industries also are paid less, the EPI reports. Over the past three years, jobs have been shifting from well-paying manufacturing industries to lower paying service sectors. Nationwide, industries that are gaining jobs pay 21 percent less on average than industries that are losing jobs: In 29 of the 30 states that have lost jobs since November 2001, the losses have been concentrated in higher paying sectors, according to the EPI.
EPI’s new health insurance report finds that industries in which the share of total jobs has declined insure 68 percent of their workers, while 55 percent of workers are insured in industries in which the share of jobs has increased.
“To have these [health coverage] numbers going down is a sign the economy is not doing so well,” says EPI economist Elise Gould, who co-authored the report with Jeff Chapman, an EPI economic analyst. “Many jobs that have been lost since the recession have not been made up and this shows that, in addition, the jobs that are being created do not offer health insurance.”
In 2002, some 3.7 million more Americans had no health insurance than two years earlier, bringing the total uninsured to 43.3 million. Of these uninsured, 26 million were workers, more than half of whom worked full-time for the entire year, EPI says.
A recent study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that in six states, one in five working adults is not insured. In 38 other states, one in 10 is not insured. The report was released as part of Cover the Uninsured Week, May 10–16, an effort by a diverse group of organizations, including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, health and insurance industry groups and community and health advocacy organizations, to focus attention on the plight of those without coverage.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
By PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Houston grocery workers accepted contracts from Kroger Co. this week, the latest union members to reach agreements without a walkout since the five-month lockout and strike in Southern California.
In Seattle, negotiators are trying to agree on a new pact for 2,400 employees at Kroger's Fred Meyer and QFC stores in the Puget Sound region. Overall, the Seattle talks cover 16,000 workers at Safeway, QFC, Fred Meyer and Albertsons stores.
Only six weeks ago, grocery workers agreed on a new pact for nearly 30,000 workers in the Washington, D.C., area.
Seattle officials may be interested in details of the Houston contract, though the information was not available yesterday.
The Houston bargaining, though, was different in several key respects. Texas is a right-to-work state, which means workers cannot be forced to join a union, and only one store was engaged in the talks, a union official pointed out.
"The dynamics are just different than they are up here," Sharon McCann, president of Local 1105 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and a lead negotiator, said yesterday.
In Seattle, union officials are resisting company efforts to create a two-tiered system, where new workers receive different pay and benefits.
In Washington, D.C., negotiators agreed to different health care programs for new workers during their first six years on the job.
Health care is perhaps the top issue for both sides in Western Washington.
Local negotiators return to the bargaining table Friday, and the last scheduled bargaining session is a week later.
Houston is "another example that this union and these employers can sit down and come to agreement without any work stoppages," said Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for the grocery chains.
This Friday, May 14th the sounds of Gospel Music will be heard at Central High School. This year Dawn Gee , news anchor from Channel 3 will share the emcee's duties with Alma Randolph from Owensboro . Gospel music groups from around the country will participate.
Jessie Harris , Local 227 organizer is again expecting a large turnout. Last year 1100 people attended. "This is billed as the second largest gospel music concert in the city", said Jessie who has organized the event. "It's more than music," Jessie said "it's about the Faces of Our Children", it's about helping the 72,000 children who suffer with Sickle-Cell Anemia". The UFCW Minority Coalition of which Jessie is a board member founded Faces of Our Children a few years ago.
Tickets are $13.00 in advance. Proceeds from the event go to Faces of Our Children. Call Jesse for tickets and more information Ext. 608.
Investment advisors and pensions funds want to dump Safeway's Steve Burd
Two leading investment advisors suggest that Safeway should get rid of its CEO Steve Burd. In a recommendation to their clients they say that these should not vote a continuation for Burd at the shareholders' meeting, which is scheduled for 20 May.
Both Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass, Lewis & Co. advise institutional shareholders and are considered highly influential. Their recommendation supports the view of leading pension funds, who last week demanded the resignation of Steve Burd. The pensions funds say that poor acquisitions and labour disputes are hurting the company's stock.
Among those calling for Burd's resignation was New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who represents 2.4 million shares of Safeway stock, owned by state and local pension funds. He was joined by state pension funds in California, Connecticut and Illinois.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), which holds 2.7 million shares in Safeway, has demanded that buy-out firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) cut its ties with Safeway. KKR has been closely connected with Safeway, since it bought the company in 1986, took it through a draconian cost cutting process, and went public with it in 1990. Investors have criticized the strong presence of KKR on the Safeway board, saying that it raises concerns about the board's ability to perform its control functions.
Steve Burd became infamous as the ringleader of the attempt by three supermarket giants Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons to take away affordable health care from shop workers and their families in California. For four months, UFCW members were on strike or locked out, before they finally hindered their employers from taking away their health benefits and pushing them into the growing ranks of America's working poor.
Recently, shareholders of Safeway competitor Kroger reacted strongly when they were informed that the company had paid 116 million dollars to rivals Safeway and Albertsons. This was done on the basis of a highly questionable agreement between the three retailers to share the costs of their fight for cutting workers health benefits.
Don't underestimate workers' resolve to fight for affordable health care, union tells Kroger
North American UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW continues its fight for affordable health care for its members and their families. The four month long supermarket strike in California showed that workers are prepared to make big sacrifices to defend this important collective agreement benefit. Now, the union warns U.S. supermarket giant Kroger not to estimate their resolve to hold the line for health care also in the forthcoming collective agreement negotiations.
In the Southern California labour struggle, Kroger entered into an alliance with two other retail giants, Safeway and Albertsons. When the Safeway workers went on strike, Kroger and Albertsons locked out their unionised staff. The three supermarket operators also agreed to share any losses between themselves.
But waging war on workers' health benefits doesn't come cheaply. Now, when Kroger had to pay more than 100 million dollars to its competitors as a participation towards their losses, shareholders have begun to ask questions.
Kroger did not limit its revenue loss to California. It also sent workers into the streets and its customers off to its competitors when it forced a strike over health benefits in West Virginia last year. Now, Kroger is risking a revenue haemorrhage as its short-sighted, benefit-busting demands could send tens of thousands of the company's workers into the streets from Houston to Seattle, and from Cincinnati to Denver. The majority of Kroger's revenue stream could dry up if the company fails to reach agreements that maintain affordable health care.
"For workers health care benefits are a matter of life and death"
"Kroger has consistently underestimated workers' resolve in the fight for affordable health care. For the company health care benefits are a matter of dollars and cents, for workers health care benefits are a matter of life and death," said UFCW International Collective Bargaining Director Pat O'Neill.
In a nationwide effort, the UFCW International is systematically laying the groundwork in preparation for the possibility of multi-city strikes. From picket signs to community outreach, coordinated programs are being planned to mobilize support for affordable health care, as well as to assist the workers forced to strike to keep their health care.
While the details vary from city to city, the thrust of the company's attack is to effectively eliminate affordable health care in the future. Houston is currently the hot spot for a potential strike. Company demands there would impose costs that would push health care out of reach for many workers, and could leave substantial number of workers without any coverage at all.
"Kroger needs to make a commitment to maintaining affordable benefits. The workers have made record profits for the company. Some of those profits now should be used to maintain the workers' benefits. Attempts to eliminate affordable health care will only lead to the elimination of profits, customers and market share. Workers will negotiate in good faith to keep the stores open and the customers served, but workers will fight for health care," stated O'Neill.
Supermarket News
SANGER, Texas (May 4, 2004) - In its test of RFID (radio frequency identification) tags announced last Friday, Wal-Mart said the tags would be placed on pallets and cases of shipments for 18 products — and directly on packaging of three electronics products from Hewlett-Packard. The tagged shipments will be tracked by readers at a DC here and seven stores in the Dallas-Forth Worth area. The three products — two HP Photosmart photo printers and an HP ScanJet scanner — may feature RFID tags on the outer packaging. The chain said outer packaging will be marked with an EPCglobal symbol indicating it contains RFID tags with EPC (electronic product code) chips. Also, Wal-Mart pilot stores will feature supplemental signs to help customers further identify the tagged HP products, as well as EPC education pamphlets. Consumers may choose to retain or remove RFID tags after purchasing the HP product, Wal-Mart said. "We can certainly understand and appreciate consumer concern about privacy," said Linda Dillman, CIO. "That is why we want our customers to know that RFID tags will not contain nor collect any additional data about consumers. In fact, in the foreseeable future, there won't even be any RFID readers on our stores' main sales floors." In the future, however, Wal-Mart hopes to place tags on items to improve the customer experience, she said.