(The following story by Repps Hudson appeared on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on October 25.)
ST. LOUIS — With the work stoppage at the St. Louis area’s three leading grocery chains in its third week, some striking or locked out union workers are running out of money. Many know they can’t make up the money they’ve lost, even if they were to return to work this week.
“My husband is on disability, and we really need that $350 take-home each week,” said Veronica Rosenkranz, who was picketing Friday at the Schnucks at South Grand Boulevard and Gravois. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”
Some of the 10,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655 have scrambled for other jobs, applied for government aid or fallen back on second jobs and their spouses’ or partners’ paychecks to help pay the bills.
The strike and lockout began Oct. 7, when the grocery workers voted to strike against Shop ‘n Save Warehouse Foods Inc. Schnucks and Dierbergs Markets Inc. locked out their union employees shortly after the strike vote.
Random interviews of those on the picket lines last week turned up few who have enough money put away to hold out for long. Like most Americans, many live paycheck to paycheck.
Even if negotiations get employees back to work soon, union members will have made the right stand on principle, said Karl Steenberg, 54, a produce clerk at the Schnucks store at South Grand Boulevard and Gravois.
He has not taken as big a hit as some other striking workers, he said, because he has another job at Meramec Community College as a teacher and administrator. His wife also has a job.
“If we go back, for the same contract, I’d be disappointed,” said Steenberg, who’s worked for Schnucks 37 years and voted against the contract and for the strike.
“We’re on a spiral that’s going downward, that’s unabated. There’s no end to it, OK?” he said. “If we go back and obtain nothing, at least we went out with a bang, not a whimper. T.S. Eliot.”
Even some who have been hurt financially said they made the right stand on principle.
“It’s the principle that I want a living wage and the health insurance. There are people coming up behind us,” said a 43-year-old checker who has worked for Schnuck Markets Inc. for 16 years. She voted against the contract and against the strike, but said she is solidly behind the union.
The woman – a single mother with two children at home, one in college, and a mortgage payment – earned $15.65 an hour, and had been taking home $460 a week after taxes.
The strike turned her life upside down, she said.
“I had to go this morning (Wednesday) and apply for food stamps,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name used. “I got off food stamps eight years ago. I’m glad the woman who took my application didn’t make me feel bad about it.”
The long-term damage of the work shutdown can be catastrophic for many workers, said Gladys Gruenberg, a retired economics professor at St. Louis University and labor arbitrator.
“They will begin to miss their monthly payments,” said Gruenberg. “There will be lots of repossessions. They can lose their cars, even their homes.”
They’re also unlikely to make up what they lost when the labor dispute ends, said Larry Stueve, a Schnucks employee who voted not to strike. But he was on the picket line Friday doing his part, he said.
“My problem is that I am a member of middle management and understand the business side,” he said. “I know the numbers.
“I also know that people that work for me need more money and benefits. We will never get back the money we have lost during the strike.”
This unprecedented labor dispute for St. Louis has affected 97 stores on the Missouri side of the metro area. Steenberg, like many union members, said they want to thank the shopping public for not crossing picket lines at those stores.
Picketing employees said they have been encouraged by the public support they’ve got, whether it was motorists honking their horns or people they know walking up to them and apologizing for crossing the picket line to pick up prescriptions.
One woman on the picket line is Julie Propst, a customer service representative and checker at the Richmond Heights store, who would have eight years with Schnucks next month.
She voted against the contract and the strike and was earning $9.78 an hour for working between 25 and 32 hours a week.
She’s spent 20 hours a week on the picket line and got her first $100 weekly strike fund check Wednesday.
She’s upset about being locked out.
“It’s an ugly feeling to feel unwanted,” Propst said. “I’m loyal to that company.”
So why did so many local members vote to reject the contract and strike, even though they knew the pain could be severe?
Steenberg said the long-term trend of union members giving up pay and benefits was the deciding factor.
As a worker with seniority, he was making $16.40 an hour until the lockout.
Under the proposed contract, he said, most workers hired in the future would have a dimmer financial future than workers of his generation.
He said union workers are tired of giving things up.
“I was sitting next to a woman when we were taking the strike vote. She probably was in her 50s, like a lot of the older workers. There was a large group of middle-age women, responsible women. They were mad,” Steenberg said. “When they announced the results, I heard her say under her breath, ‘It’s about time.’
“It’s one giveback after another giveback after another giveback after giveback,” he said. “People have gotten progressively sick and tired of giving things up, for themselves and future generations.”
Yet he says he’s worried about where the strike and lockout may take the grocery employees.
“It’s very scary to me,” Steenberg said. “I don’t know if this was a great strategy or not. Were we supposed to continue down the road when quality jobs decline?”
The attitude of the striking union members is not surprising, said Gruenberg, the retired St. Louis University economics professor.
“The money isn’t the reason they strike,” she said. “They strike over principle. As far as the union is concerned, it’s all about giveback. The fact that they’ve had (pay and benefits) all these years doesn’t make any difference.”
Don Phares, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, said the union may not have properly prepared its members on the health-care issue.
“Unions have tried to isolate their workers,” Phares said. “Now reality has come crashing through the front window. …
“The profit margin in grocery stores is getting to be very low. It’s very competitive, and the health-care costs are rising,” he said.
Until the proposed contract, the grocery companies covered virtually all health-care costs through their insurance plans.
“It’s a rare company these days that provides 100 percent coverage,” he said. “If the employees were to get that some other place, it would cost them $6,000 to $8,000 a year.
“Health is not free any more. Maybe that’s one of the vestiges of a lost era, and it’s hitting them in the face.”
Still, the Schnucks employee who applied for food stamps last week said she understands the positions of people on all sides of the labor dispute, including replacement workers and shoppers crossing the picket lines.
“They do what they have to do,” she said. “I respect that.”