Attention Southern California grocery shoppers
It is a 100% certainty there will be a grocery store strike at Ralph’s, Von’s, and Albertson’s starting this Saturday.
The Teamsters will honor it and will refuse to cross the picket lines which menas they will park on the street and management and scabs will unload the trucks..
The exact tactics aren’t worked out yet, maybe just one chain will be targetted, not all three. However the other two will then lockout their employees, so all three in effect will be on strike.
Wage levels would be frozen for existing employees, while new hires would take a lower rate, with a top wage of $14.90 after eight years of employment. <The top wage now is $17.90>. Employees currently reach top scale in two years.
Proposals on the table call for employees to pay $1,300 a year for family insurance premiums, and to accept large increases in deductibles and co-pays for doctor visits and prescription drugs, the union said.
The markets want to slash premium pay for Sunday and night shifts and reintroduce split shifts. They also want the ability to move any jobs outside “core” areas of produce, meat and groceries to nonunion subcontractors, union negotiators said.
In other words the companies want new employees to take big pay cuts, have current employees forgo any raise, and everyone needs to pay more for medicals.
Why the pressing need to screw the employees?
Stacia Levenfeld, spokeswoman for Albertsons, said she couldn’t comment on any proposals that were on the egotiating table but did say it is time to review employees’ four-year contract.
“During those four years, health-care costs have skyrocketed, which has affected our stock,” she explained. “So wages and benefits have to reflect the current marketplace.”
Goodness Stacia, we certainly can’t have sliding stock prices can we? And I will make the wild and crazy speculation that Albertson’s management isn’t freezing their own salaries.