EAST LOS ANGELES, September 2 — Recently a group of workers and students marched through a supermarket here to support workers fighting company demands to pay for healthcare costs by cutting wages. Nearly 90% of workers voting rejected the latest contract offered by three supermarkets: Ralphs (Kroger), Albertsons (SuperValu) and Vons (Safeway). For the second time in the last six months, workers authorized the union, the United Food Service Workers (UFCW), to strike.
Over the last six weeks, PLP members, working with friends who participate in Community Education for Social Action (CESA) have “adopted” a supermarket here. They’ve built relationships with workers and members of the surrounding community, including students from the nearby Cal State Los Angeles University and East LA community college. We’re aiming to build revolutionary class-consciousness among workers and community residents, as well as among students participating in these actions.
Last Friday, a delegation of 20 students, workers, and community residents entered the store with picket signs and chants, calling for an end to spending on imperialist war instead of on healthcare and jobs, and encouraging worker-student solidarity in the struggle against the supermarkets.
We wanted to disrupt the store’s regular operation, to call customers’ attention to the supermarket workers’ struggle and to show how we’re organizing support for their fight. Delegates brought signed petitions from the Cal State LA campus and CESA to present to the store manager.
The delegation had marched halfway through the store when the manager asked us to stop chanting and leave the store or he’d call the cops. A group leader accused the supermarkets of exploiting their workers and asked the manager what he was doing to stop it. He said we should do what the union leaders did a few weeks ago: contact our local council member and organize a “peaceful” press conference for the media.
During this confrontation, store workers thanked us for our support, giving signs of approval. The delegation finished marching across the store and continued to distribute flyers outside.
Twice authorizing a strike, the workers have sent a clear message that they’re ready to act. However, the UFCW’s leadership has offered no real plan on confronting the supermarkets, only agreeing to once again “sit down with a federal mediator to continue negotiations.”
Amid the current crisis of world capitalism, U.S. bosses are attempting to “resolve” it by attacking the working class with continued mass racist unemployment and wage cuts. The UFCW leadership’s business-as-usual attitude has proven disastrous for workers (see Verizon strike, CHALLENGE, 9/7), yet another example of union leaders’ complicity with the U.S. ruling class.
The rulers’ racism is evident in the fact that large numbers of supermarket workers are exploited immigrants. Furthermore, the attack on the workers’ healthcare is part of a broad ruling-class assault on healthcare workers (see Peninsula Hospital, page 3; Chicago’s Cook County hospital system, this page).
Prior to our march through the store, we had visited it several times, making contacts with workers who now recognize and welcome us. They tell us the union leadership fails to keep them informed. In fact, a few times they have asked if we knew the status of union-company negotiations.
We’ve also had a positive response from neighborhood customers. A retired meatpacking worker said he was glad to see us because he remembers when he had dealt with his company’s attacks. He learned then the importance of building working-class solidarity in these struggles.
In addition to these actions, we’ve tried to combine theory and practice by organizing a study group on communist political economy (see article this page) and a forum on the global crisis of capitalism. We invited some of the workers we met who showed interest in participating to attend this forum.
We plan to return to this store, even if a strike does not occur, as well as organize walks in the surrounding community to talk with residents about this struggle. PLP will continue to organize regular forums and study groups. Our goal is to win supermarket workers to participate, developing deeper conversations on the nature of capitalism and the need for revolutionary communism.