Several
thousand striking and locked-out supermarket workers and their
supporters marched to a Pavilions store in Beverly Hills on Tuesday in
the largest demonstration since the regional walkout began Oct. 11.
The
march followed a meeting of United Food and Commercial Workers
presidents from about 150 union locals nationwide, who pledged several
million dollars for the dwindling supermarket strike funds here.
The union also sought to portray its fight with Safeway
Inc., Albertsons Inc. and Kroger
Co. — parent of Ralphs — as a pivotal moment for American labor. "If we
lose here," said national UFCW President Doug Dority, "it will set off
a corporate tidal wave that will sweep away benefits in contracts in
all industries."
Dority
also announced there would be a national campaign to boycott
Safeway, the parent company of Vons and Pavilions and the union's top
public target. "We want to empty those stores," he said.
"This
is an old tactic that won't impact what's going on in Southern
California," Safeway spokesman Brian Dowling told Associated Press.
Federally
mediated contract negotiations are set to resume Friday. The
chains are seeking cuts in health benefits and a lower pay scale for
new hires, which they say are needed to help them compete with
discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
On
Tuesday, Dority asked officers to assess their members across the
country a $10-a-week surcharge for strike support to raise more funds.
"We will not allow our members to be starved into submission," he said.
The
union is spending about $15 million in strike benefits each week, said
UFCW Communications Director Greg Denier. Each of the seven union
locals involved in the dispute administers its own fund. At least one
local, in San Diego, announced that it would reduce strike benefits
from $300 to $100 a week. And Local 1442 in Santa Monica said it had
taken out loans on its buildings to keep the strike fund afloat.
Some
speakers, including the Rev. James Lawson, a longtime civil rights
activist who worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s,
nudged the union to use more militant tactics.
"I've
been arrested many times, and if this moves to civil
disobedience, I will be there," Lawson said, to an explosion of cheers
from pickets.
But
there were no arrests during the short march from Century City to
Beverly Hills, where the Pavilions parking lot was overrun with
sign-toting union members. Many were clearly energized by the event.
"Today
was the best day yet," said Goldsborough Purnell, 45, a
general-merchandise department head at an Albertsons in Hermosa Beach
for three years. Purnell, who earned $9.78 an hour, said he lost his
home last month because he wasn't able to pay rent. He now lives in his
car.
"We're making a statement here, and I'm willing to do whatever it
takes," he said.
Jose
Sanchez, a clerk at a Ralphs in Burbank, said his father and
grandfather were migrant farmworkers who marched with Cesar Chavez. "My
dad picked strawberries," Sanchez said. "Now look at me. I've got a
family, a house, picket fence and all, the American dream. That's what
my dad and grandfather fought for. I'm not going to give up on it now."
Copyright 2003 Los
Angeles Times
|