Big battle breaks out in L.A. grocery strike

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is no second-rate opponent. L.A. striker arrested by police 4 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1985 LOS ANGELES—A major class battle is shaping up in Southern California as 12,000 Teamsters, representing drivers, warehouse and office workers, and 10,000 meatcutters, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, are on strike against the multi-billion dollar food industry in California.

What began as a selective strike against a relatively small supermarket chain, Vons, with 164 stores, immediately escalated into a major confrontation with national implications, as the Food Employers Council (FEC), representing the collective power of the California food industry, locked out union workers at eight major chains covering 1125 stores which serve nearly 12 million consumers.

Workers at Safeway, Lucky, Albertson's, Ralphs, Alpha Beta, and Hughes stores were sent packing by the bosses of an industry whose tentacles control virtually every aspect of food production in this state-from ownership of the land and food producing machinery to the trucks, ware -houses, granaries, and stores.

"When you strike one of us, you strike all of us," said Bob Voigt, a representative of the strike-busting Food Employers Council.

The FEC is not new to labor battles. In past battles in this industry, strikers have been beaten and killed as they sought to defend their basic rights. The FEC, a bitter example of the organized strikebreaking will of California capitalists, has used scabs and paid thugs, cops, court injunc -tions, and every other means at their disposal to impose a defeat on the union workforce.

The FEC Armed with virtually unlimited financial resources, the FEC made it clear from day one of the strike, Nov. 5, 1985, that they were prepared to challenge the union on all fronts.

When union members assembled at the major food distribution centers to set up initial picket lines, they were challenged by scab drivers who drove through the lines as if there were no strikers present. In one in -stance, a striker was pinned to the grill of a scab-driven truck and dumped onto the loading dock.

When the strikers indicated their dis pleas -ure at such treatment, teaching a few scab drivers that union members know how to defend their lines, they were met by cordons of police-50 or more in one inci -dent—who escorted the scab trucks through the lines. In the course of the battle a number of strikers were sent to the hospital. The scabs and cops have also suffered a few injuries.

While the FEC organizes to hire strikebreaking thugs and scabs who are eager to attack union pickets, they seek the aid of friendly publishers who control the local press. They run full-page advertisements seeking to blame the bosses' violence on the workers. The FEC is offering $100,000 rewards for those who turn in allegedly violent strikers.

No ordinary strike This is no ordinary strike. The employ -ers, in what has been a profitable industry for decades, are seeking to force major concessions from both the Teamsters and UFCW. In addition to a two-tier wage system, the right to sub-contract work to non-unionized companies, and the right to establish new non-union warehouses, the FEC is demanding a three-year wage freeze.

The FEC is demanding that the guaran -teed 40-hour week be cut to 20 for the meatcutters. At the same time, they want to introduce a new category of worker, a "meat clerk," into the industry who would presumably perform some 70 percent of the tasks currently done by journeymen at almost half the current hourly wage of $13.48.

Daniel Mitchell, director of the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations, an employer-oriented state agency, comment -ed, "You're seeing an intent to change the relationship and the balance of power. It's not business as usual."

According to Joe McLaughlin, FEC president, "It isn't poverty" that is motivating the employers. Last year every chain involved in the strike/lockout showed a hefty profit. Vons posted profits of $26.3 million; Safeway $185 million; Lucky Stores $94.6 million; and American Stores, the parent company of Alpha Beta, $185.5 million. The supermarkets' return on their net worth was 14.88 percent last year, according to UFCW officials, up from 13.65 percent a year earlier.

"In business today we can't be complacent," says union buster McLaugh -lin. "That's really what's behind this," he said, referring to the string of union-gutting demands the FEC is pressing.

Following an initial show of union power on the picket line, the bosses secured court orders drastically reducing the number of pickets at the distribution centers, the key points of employer power. To date, the union has declined to challenge these injunctions, leaving the scabs relatively free to make their deliveries.

Fighting resolve

The strikers have opened one effective new front in their battle. They sent squads of strikers into a number of supermarkets to "encourage" union clerks to respect their picket lines.

While there are varying estimates as to how many of the 16,000 non-striking clerks, who also belong to the UFCW, are currently honoring the picket lines, it is clear that the strikers hope to clear the supermarkets of all union workers.

UFCW officials, who have generally not taken a clear position calling the clerks out of the struck stores, estimate that nearly one-third are respecting union lines.

This would bring the total number of striking food workers in Southern California to some 27,000.

In an initial show of solidarity, the Harbor Coalition, a group of 19 Los Angeles unions that has mobilized to support striking workers in the past, held a demonstration of 500 on Nov. 15 at two struck supermarkets.

On Nov. 22, about 300 people picketed Vons support in Harbor City in a solidarity action sponsored by the Coalition. David Arian, president of ILWU Local 13, told the pickets that the militant tactics used by labor in the 1930s and '40s would be needed now to defend workers' standards of living.

The quick victory the employers expected has not come to pass. But to ward off the kind of blow the food magnates seek to deliver, the full power of the labor movement will be required. The striking workers have demonstrated they are up to the fight. It remains to be seen whether the broad labor movement will be mobilized to win this fight.