[dc-zaps] D.C.-Area Safeway Picketing

Dear Activists, Friends and Supporters:

UFCW strikers from California and West Virginia are walking picket lines at 18 Safeway stores in the Washington, D.C. area to let the shopping public know about Safeway's attempt to destroy health benefits for 75,000 UFCW members.  The lines are operating at the locations listed below daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

If you can, please join these courageous activists on the picket line to show your support.  Please shop at other UFCW-represented stores in the D.C. area, including Giant, Shoppers Food Warehouse, Super Fresh, and Magruders ... NOT Safeway ... and urge friends, coworkers, and family members to do the same.

What's at stake is nothing less than the future of employer-provided health benefits.  Also included in this message is an excellent New York Times editorial that discusses the strike issues.

Please note that the picketing locations will change every few days. We'll keep updating everyone as new information arrives.  Thanks for your support!

Safeway Store #1804
Bowie Town Center
Northview Drive
Bowie, Md.

Safeway Store #1443
8785 Branch Avenue
Clinton, Md.

Safeway Store #964
11201 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, Md.

Safeway Store #1369
909 Thayer Avenue
Silver Spring, Md.

Safeway Store #923
1701 Corcoran Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Safeway Store #1882
990 East Swan Road
Fort Washington, Md.

Safeway Store #1410
3511 Hamilton Street
Hyattsville, Md.

Safeway Store #895
3838 Howard Ave. (near Connecticut Ave.)
Kensington, Md.

Safeway Store #868
14100 Baltimore Avenue
Laurel, Md.

Safeway Store #855
Annapolis Road
New Carrollton, Md.

Safeway Store #1276
6500 Piney Branch Road
Washington, D.C.

Safeway Store #124
6300 Central Avenue
Seat Pleasant, Md.

Safeway Store #1956
Shady Grove Road
Rockville, Md.

Safeway Store #1715
403 Redland Boulevard
Rockville, Md.

Safeway Store #1342
3333 Spartan Road
Olney, Md.

Safeway Store #837
5800 Silver Hill Road
District Heights, Md.

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New York Times

The Wal-Martization of America

November 15, 2003
 
The 70,000 grocery workers on strike in Southern California are the front line in a battle to prevent middle-class service jobs from turning into poverty-level ones. The supermarkets say they are forced to lower their labor costs to compete with Wal-Mart, a nonunion, low-wage employer aggressively moving into the grocery business. Everyone should be concerned about this fight. It is, at bottom, about the ability of retail workers to earn wages that keep their families out of poverty. 

Grocery stores in Southern California are bracing for the arrival, in February, of the first of 40 Wal-Mart grocery supercenters. Wal-Mart's prices are about 14 percent lower than other groceries' because the company is aggressive about squeezing costs, including labor costs. Its workers earn a third less than unionized grocery workers, and pay for much of their health insurance. Wal-Mart uses hardball tactics to ward off unions. Since 1995, the government has issued at least 60 complaints alleging illegal anti-union activities. 

Southern California's supermarket chains have reacted by demanding a two-year freeze on current workers' salaries and lower pay for newly hired workers, and they want employees to pay more for health insurance. The union counters that if the supermarkets match Wal-Mart, their workers will be pushed out of the middle class. Those workers are already only a step - or a second family income - from poverty, with wages of roughly $18,000 a year. Wal-Mart sales clerks make about $14,000 a year, below the $15,060 poverty line for a family of three. 

Wal-Mart may also be driving down costs by using undocumented immigrants. Last month, federal agents raided Wal-Marts in 21 states. Wal-Mart is facing a grand jury investigation, and a civil racketeering class-action filed by cleaners who say they were underpaid when working for contractors hired by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart insists that it was unaware of its contractors' practices. But aware or not, it may have helped to deprive legally employable janitors of jobs and adequate pay. 

This Wal-Martization of the work force, to which other low-cost, low-pay stores also contribute, threatens to push many Americans into poverty. The first step in countering it is to enforce the law. The government must act more vigorously, and more quickly, when Wal-Mart uses illegal tactics to block union organizing. And Wal-Mart must be made to pay if it exploits undocumented workers. 

Unions understand that the quickest way to win this war is to organize Wal-Mart workers. And Wal-Mart's competitors have to strive for Wal-Mart's efficiency without making workers bear the brunt. Consumers can also play a part. Wal-Mart likes to wrap itself in American values. It should be reminded that one of those is paying workers enough to give their families a decent life. 

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