(The Associated Press circulated the following story on October 21.)
LOS ANGELES — The Rev. Jesse Jackson rallied picketing grocery clerks Monday, saying their strike was part of a wider struggle by workers across the country to fight employers’ efforts to shrink wages and benefits.
“This is a profound, national, political, ideological struggle to dumb-down workers’ wages,” Jackson told a crowd outside a Ralphs supermarket in Los Angeles. “The trend is profits up, wages down, workers busted.”
More than 70,000 Southern California grocery workers from three supermarket chains — Kroger Co.’s Ralphs, Safeway Inc.’s Vons and Albertsons Inc. — went on strike or were locked out Oct. 11 after contract talks stalled over the proposed cost of health care benefits.
Nine days after the Southern California clerks walked out, negotiations remained suspended, and there was no indication that talks would resume between the chains and the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
“Unless the union makes the decision to come back to the bargaining table and does that in a way in which they will begin to negotiate meaningfully, it looks like this labor dispute may go on for quite a while,” said Terry O’Neil, a spokesman for Ralphs.
Union officials said they were ready to return to the negotiating table but vowed to remain on strike until the chains came back with a contract their members could approve.
Meanwhile, a separate strike by bus and train mechanics entered its second week, continuing to strand users of the nation’s third-largest transit system.
Added traffic was adding 30 minutes to an hour to many rush hour commutes, said Officer Armando Clemente, a California Highway Patrol spokesman.
“We are telling people to leave earlier and make time for the extended traffic commute, or if they can, change hours to go in one hour earlier and one hour later,” Clemente said.
Some 2,000 bus mechanics went on strike Oct. 14 and about 6,000 bus and train operators walked off the job in support.
Negotiators for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents the mechanics, were scheduled to meet today, either face-to-face or through a mediator.