WORKERS WORLD 1972

Women United for Action launch price rollback campaign

Editor’s note: Workers World is in its 50th year of publication. Throughout the year, we will share with our readers some of the paper’s content over the past half century. The following article was written in 1972 by Fran Meyers on conditions that led to the founding of Women United for Action—high food prices in light of a wage freeze and high unemployment. Today, food prices in the U.S. have risen over 5 percent over the past year and are expected to rise 4 percent annually according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

New York, July 8—As unemployment lines are getting longer, and wages being virtually frozen, prices continue to soar with no end in sight. While the corporation-controlled Pay Board has actually ordered some workers to pay back raises termed “excessive,” the Price Commission, also serving big business, has done nothing to roll back outrageous prices. Why don’t they pay back the consumers for having been cheated at stores for years? Day after day, shopping for food is becoming more and more of a struggle for millions of people trying to stretch the dollar to nourish their families.

Graphic by Meira Pomeranz

In the face of this increasingly desperate situation, Women United for Action, a recently formed organization, has launched a campaign—Operation Food Price Rollback—against the rising food prices, calling for price rollbacks on all items.

As a first step in this campaign Women United began distributing leaflets in English and Spanish here today in front of a Key Food supermarket located in the Lower East Side. The headline of the leaflet read: “Sale! 25% Off—If We Fight For It!” The leaflet points out that the owners of the food chains have been raking in more profits than ever. Last year alone, “Agribusiness’s after-tax profits rose 15 percent as food prices jumped 12 percent. ... Since 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam, food prices have skyrocketed by more than 25 percent.” The leaflet also states, “The food chains blame ‘increasing production and labor costs’ for the outrageous prices they charge, although today’s mass production and mechanization in the food industry should bring the prices down instead of up.”

While almost every neighborhood is affected by the rising prices, supermarkets in poor neighborhoods charge higher prices for inferior quality foods than those located in the richer neighborhoods. Women on welfare are forced to pay even higher prices due to price markups on days when they receive welfare checks. Women United for Action is also fighting against these injustices. The demands listed on their leaflet are:

We demand an immediate 25 percent rollback on food prices.

We want chain stores to charge the same prices in all neighborhoods.

We want sanitary conditions—no roaches and rats in the stores.

We want an end to food packaging that just adds to bulk and cost and hides faults in substandard food.

We want stores to hire enough checkers and packers from the community at decent wages.

Stop markups of prices on welfare check days on the 1st and 16th when welfare recipients are forced to shop.

Women United received a friendly response from shoppers as well as some Key Food workers, with some women adding their particular grievances against the store. While Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, arrogantly blames the inflated prices on “Mrs. Housewife who is willing to pay the price for good beef,” Women United for Action hopes to offer a vehicle for millions of women and men shoppers to tell Mr. Butz, as well as the owners of these multimillion dollar food chains, what prices we are willing to pay.

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