(The AFL-CIO circulated the following on January 29.)
Dear Working Families e-Activist:
On Tuesday we sent you a note asking you to support more than 70,000 striking and locked-out grocery workers with your shopping choice. We’re e-mailing today to let you know that it’s okay to shop at the Kroger grocery store in your community for now. Kroger stores in several states recently settled a good union contract with the United Food and Commercial Workers. The UFCW contract protects these workers and makes what could be poverty-wage retail jobs with no health care into good jobs with benefits and decent wages.
The 70,000 striking and locked-out grocery workers in California are facing down stubborn employer greed that starts with grocery mega-corporation Safeway. Led by Safeway CEO Steve Burd, the grocers are demanding a two-year wage freeze and health care coverage cutbacks that would mean an employee making an average $19,176 per year would pay $4,944 a year to maintain current health benefits.
Kroger-owned Ralphs supermarkets locked out their Southern California workers in retaliation for the strike called at Safeway. Because Kroger has agreed to contracts with UFCW workers near you, we’re not asking people in Indiana not to shop at Kroger. Kroger is still one of the preferred union grocery stores in your state.
Because Safeway is leading the assault on these workers, we’re asking you to not shop at Safeway during the strike. This will send a message to Safeway, but also to Kroger and the other companies involved in the strike, that we won’t let them destroy affordable health care.
This strike is really tough on the workers who are on the picket line. Determined to hold the line for health care, many of the strikers have exhausted savings and lost cars and even homes. Many no longer have health coverage. One of the best ways you can help these workers is by donating to the Hold the Line for Health Care Strike Fund. These monies are being used to assist workers in dire straits directly. Please take one minute to donate by clicking on the link below.
https://secure.ga3.org/08/holdtheline/nqdqfqv1167ba
Look for more information on how you can support these grocery workers who are making a stand against employer efforts to take away health care benefits. In this fight, we all have a stake.
Thanks for all you do.
In Solidarity,
Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO
January 29, 2004