Publication Date: Friday, February 13, 2004
Safeway strike stirs local concerns
Safeway strike stirs local concerns
(February 13, 2004) Union holds rally in Palo Alto
by Bill D'Agostino
Mhe picketing and protests over a labor dispute affecting Southern California's grocery stores is making its way to Palo Alto.
That fact was clearly evident on Wednesday afternoon, when dozens of city employees demonstrated in front of the Safeway in Midtown, encouraging shoppers to avoid the store to support the 70,000 striking workers in Southern California.
What may have seemed like one union showing solidarity for another in fact had a deeper meaning -- city employees worry they face the same benefit reductions as the grocery store workers.
"If they lose, we lose," said Lynn Krug, an inspector in the city's utility department, who also serves as vice chair of the city's largest collective bargaining union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
To get other union members to attend the late afternoon rally, Krug printed and distributed valentines with the words "Maintain Health Care" in a pink heart. Employees from librarians to maintenance workers chanted "City employees are ready to fight; make the bosses do what's right," during the two-hour demonstration.
When a few workers from Southern California, who have been on strike since October, joined the group, the city employees howled in appreciation.
The issue affecting those grocery store workers -- managers' desire to have unionized employees share in the cost for the company's increasing health care expenses -- is also a big issue for city employees.
The city's SEIU chapter has approximately 600 members, the lowest paid workers in the city. Their current contract ends May 1, and union representatives say keeping health care benefits intact will be the vital issue during negotiations beginning next month.
"We may be in for a fight, but we won't know until we get to the table," said Maya Spector, a senior librarian at the children's library and the chair of the union.
"This could be a volatile issue ... but we're definitely looking at ways to curb the growth in health care costs and benefits costs over time," said Joe Saccio, deputy director of the administrative services department, which handles the budget.
Over the last few years, the cost to the city for health care has risen from 18 to 22 percent, according to the city's long-range financial plan. That is expected to taper off to around 8 to 12 percent in coming years.
"Our revenues just aren't growing at that pace," Saccio said.
In 2002-2003, the city paid $5 million in health care costs for all employees. The city, working with their employees and unions, has already made some changes in its heath care coverage, including offering an incentive to take lower cost plans.
"There's been continued pressure to reduce our health care benefits over the past year and a half," Krug said.
The Southern California workers are being asked to pay health care premiums for the first time. The city's SEIU employees also pay no premiums, although it's unknown if city officials will ask them to do so during the upcoming negotiations.
The strike down south will also have ramifications for the Safeway employees in Northern California. So far, Bay Area grocery store clerks have not gone on strike, since their contract ends in September. (Since the strike began in October, workers from Southern California have occasionally come up north to try to crimp sales, although never before Thursday to Palo Alto.)
Bay Area union leaders are watching the dispute closely, since they expect managers up here to try to make their employees swallow whatever pill the southern workers digest.
"Our members have their own expectations," said Ron Lind, the secretary-treasurer of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union in San Jose.
Alexander Winslow, the director of public affairs for Safeway in Northern California, said the grocery store workers in Southern California don't understand that their grocery stores (Albertsons, Vons and Ralph's stores are also affected) are facing increased competition from non-unionized shops like Wal-Mart.
"These non-unionized low cost grocery companies -- they have changed the competitive landscape in the grocery business," Winslow said.
Mike DiLeo, one of the striking Southern California workers who demonstrated with the Palo Alto workers this week, said the company was using Wal-Mart as a "scapegoat."
The company should "go after Wal-Mart" and not their own workers, he said. DiLeo has seen four strikes during his 32 years as a meat cutter. The longest one prior to this one lasted eight weeks in 1985.
"I never thought this would go beyond eight weeks," DiLeo said. "They don't understand that we're fighting for everyone."
Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com
E-mail a friend a link to this story. | 
