Grocery workers take the struggle to CEO's home
By Bill Hackwell
Alamo, Calif.
With police helicopters hovering overhead, 250
striking Southern California grocery-store workers and their
families marched on the luxurious, gated Alamo home of Safeway
CEO Steve Burd on Jan. 28.
The strike by 70,000 Vons, Ralphs and Albertson workers for
affordable health care has now passed its 100th day. If the
giant food chain bosses get their way, health costs for these
workers will rise 50 percent--putting it out of reach for many
who make an average of $20,000 a year.
The contract for Northern California grocery-store workers
expires this summer. The struggle being waged in the southern
part of the state will have a big impact on this contract, as
well as on the entire labor movement.
The Pilgrimage for Justice brought the strikers from
Southern California to Burd's house in buses and vans to
deliver over 10,000 postcards urging the CEO to negotiate in
good faith. Progressive clergy members from throughout Calif
ornia organized the march. Burd, a devout member of a
conservative Chris tian church in Walnut Creek, donated $80,000
to save the lives of puppies in animal shelters last year.
The marchers traveled from the Alamo Safeway to Burd's home.
At the front of the march was longtime civil-rights minister
the Rev. James Lawson, and the Rev. William Jarvis Johnson of
Pasadena.
Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California
Labor Federation, criticized police treatment of the
Pilgrimage. He accused the Homeland Security section of the San
Francisco Sheriff's Department of tailing strikers' vehicles
when they arrived in Northern California. Pulaski said it was a
waste of money to attempt to somehow link workers striking for
health care with "terrorist activity."
Reprinted from the Feb. 12, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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