[USA] The Southern California Grocery Strike: Portrait of a Regime Union in Action

When it was happening, not many workers heard much about the Southern California grocery strike of 2003-2004, the largest grocery strike in US history thus far. Fewer still remember it even now. And that’s because the AFL-CIO, together with the bosses’ media, collaborated in obscuring this event. They buried it, like so many events are buried, in the constant suppression of our class memory. It is the duty of the International Communist Party to constantly exhume such events, not to dwell morbidly on the bitter defeats of the past, but to draw their balance sheet and delineate the necessary steps towards bringing new life to the class struggle. To the grocery workers in California who struggled so courageously and received nothing in return, to grocery workers throughout the rest of the US who were never informed of this crucial struggle, and finally to proletarians in every trade, everywhere, this work is dedicated.

The four-month old strike of the grocery workers in Southern California ended predictably in a defeat. Of course, the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers union) declared victory when, on February 26th, the new contract was ratified with the Safeway, Kroger, and Albertson’s companies. The terms of the contract, as the union bureaucrats eagerly point out, are not quite as harsh as the contract originally proposed by the companies – but the difference is miniscule, and they are a further erosion of the precarious living conditions of the grocery workers, who were already struggling before the strike began. Nevertheless, then UFCW President Doug Dority declared this to be “one of the most successful strikes in history”. If this heroic labor leader (whose salary is over $300,000) is to be believed, then the history of strikes must indeed be a depressing one. Certainly, though, the UFCW’s own history is not exactly inspiring.

The UFCW international union, organizing both US and Canadian workers, was founded in 1979 but did not take long to show which side of the class battle lines it stood on. A well-known event involving the UFCW was the Hormel strike of 1985. The 1980’s had generally been a year of increasing privations for workers. At the Hormel food plant in Austin, Minnesota, dangerous working conditions, wage cuts, and reductions in health care premiums compelled the workers of UFCW Local P-9 to strike.

The international union had sought to isolate P-9 even before the strike began, condemning its decision to break ranks from the other UFCW locals who were caving in to Hormel’s demands. The UFCW bureaucracy officially sanctioned P-9’s strike, but refused any extension of the picket lines, and rejected boycotts, lifting not a finger when Hormel compensated for the strike by shifting production to other plants where UFCW members worked. Strikers were given a mere $65 per week strike benefit, and this would be cut to $40 all too soon.

It’s also worth noting that the so-called Communist Party, USA, in one of the few instances where they held any influence over events, called on UFCW workers in other areas not to support the P-9 strike, claiming that the P-9 Local was breaking “solidarity” by striking while the rest of the union was prostrating itself before the bosses.

However, the P-9 strikers were able to organize significant support from the working class community, despite the opposition of churches, schools, and the press. They erected their own support committees, conducted outreach to other factories nation-wide, fought back scabs, waged secondary boycotts, and conducted their strike independently of the UFCW leadership. When the UFCW president insisted that P-9 accept a “new” proposal by Hormel, which was essentially the same as the proposed contract that incited the strike, P-9’s militant workers refused.

However, the valiance and militancy of the P-9 workers could only take them so far when they were isolated by their own union. There certainly was support among the rank and file, scattered throughout the union, but there was not enough organized support to give the badly needed oxygen to the strike by extending it to other plants. In 1986, Hormel began hiring scabs who were eventually escorted into the plant by the National Guard, as ordered by the supposedly labor-friendly Democratic governor of Minnesota. The strike was thus dragooned into submission. A few strikers gave in and worked alongside the scabs. Many others were fired, forced to retire, or placed on a recall list, hoping they would soon get their jobs back. The militant organizers of the strike were not only excluded from the Hormel plants, but also from the mainstream “labor movement”, which blamed them for the defeat because they dared to do what a workers’ union is supposed to do – fight the bosses.

The 1985 Hormel strike presents perhaps the most notorious union betrayal in US history, and also an important example of workers beginning to organize a class structure that is capable of combating both the bosses and the union bureaucrats who serve them. Of course, the UFCW has betrayed its workers in ways big and small many times since then, but the Hormel strike is the most dramatic example. It is well-known and often discussed, and it has contributed to a cynicism among many UFCW members regarding their leadership. Even members not familiar with the Hormel strike events often are vaguely mistrustful of their union; it is not their union, but the union, which they join so that they can work in a certain place, but which does little else for them aside from collect dues which provide the six-figure salaries of the UFCW leadership. A term frequently employed by American workers to describe the UFCW, and unions like it, is “business union”, because they are run like corporations and are ever eager to cater to corporate interests. Such a term is not far off from our own phrasing – “regime union”.

Under the UFCW, the retail industry passed from one where most workers held full-time jobs to an industry largely based on part-time work.

The recent strike defeat in Southern California is therefore emblematic of the general trend of the UFCW. As with the Hormel strike, wages and health care benefits were key issues here.

The grocery corporations – Safeway, Albertson’s, and Kroger’s – offered a joint proposal to their workers in October 2003, which significantly slashed the already meager benefits afforded them by the previous contract. At that time, the average grocery worker at these chains received $12.50 an hour and worked around 30 hours a week. Many workers received much less than that. The baggers generally made $6.75 per hour, a starvation wage that is usually insufficient to maintain minimal living standards. The new proposal would strain these already tenuous conditions.

To begin with, the proposal included a “two-tier” system. While it eroded the living standards of current workers, new employees would face a new plan that was even worse. New hires would never make more than $14.90 per hour (assuming they worked long enough for their wages to be increased to this point), and their pensions would be significantly lowered. Furthermore, all workers would be required to contribute $1,300 each year for health costs, with a limit imposed on the number of hospital stays and treatments they could undergo. This was enough to deprive many grocery workers of their ability to sustain even basic needs, such as paying the rent for a modest apartment or feeding a family.

The proposed contract was clearly unacceptable. When the UFCW called the vote, 70,000 workers voted overwhelmingly to reject the contract, and begin a strike on October 11.

The UFCW’s handling of the strike began with a false step. In their October 10 press release, the UFCW declared that, “Workers have also announced that they will only target one supermarket chain in order to avoid inconveniencing their customers”. Therefore, the plan was for the strike to be at only those stores owned by Safeway (Pavilions and Vons) while workers at Kroger’s and Albertson’s owned stores were expected to plead with their bosses not to lock them out.

Above all else, the UFCW leaders were intent on portraying themselves as business partners who wanted commerce to continue, and if these greedy corporate executives could only contain their appetite for wealth a little bit, the beautiful partnership between employer and employee could continue and take this great nation to the future. A key argument by the UFCW was that the chains were making soaring profits – why couldn’t they afford then to subsidize their employees’ health care? Such an argument put the UFCW clearly on the terrain of class collaboration – the strike was a question of sharing profits and not of defending the needs of workers, which persist no matter how the economy fluctuates. Of course, while the regime unions, the business unions, will always be class-collaborationist, the bosses will freely sever their “partnership” with workers when it suits them. And so workers at the Albertson’s and Kroger’s chains were locked out. Over 70,000 grocery workers were therefore effectively on strike, making this the largest grocery strike in US history.

Another mistake by the UFCW (and we use the term “mistake” here loosely, for such concessions are so frequent they must be deliberate) was the failure to establish effective picket lines. The entire strike depended on the hope that customers could be convinced not to cross the picket lines, the notion that an amorphous “community” would support the strike. No attempt was made therefore to actually shut the stores down. Worst of all, nothing was done to keep scabs out, who came from near and far, some of whom were hired for $19 an hour. It is true that many would-be customers refused to shop at the stores; some of them even brought food to the strikers and organized support for them in other ways. However, the stores continued to run with scab labor, and some customers, for whatever their reasons, would cross the picket lines. This would continue to be the case until the end of the strike, despite protests from the workers to union representatives.

On October 13th, a UFCW strike began against Kroger’s by workers in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. Instead of coordinating this strike in a national strategy with the struggle in California, the UFCW negotiated it separately and the strike would be resolved in December, with essentially the same contract that had precipitated the strike.

Back in Southern California, the UFCW’s impotence was further unveiled on October 31st, when pickets were withdrawn from the Kroger-owned Ralph’s stores, which were still being run with scab labor. The official reasoning of the union leadership was two-fold-first, that, by removing picket lines from the Ralph’s stores, business would be diverted from the other stores and therefore more pressure would fall on Albertson’s and Safeway. In fact, the three corporations declared that they were pooling their profits, making an already questionable tactic completely useless. The second rationale was, as the UFCW’s official statement declared, “We’ve taken down our picket lines at Ralphs for our customers’ convenience”. What this really means is the bosses’ convenience – the union (a business partner, remember?) wants business to resume as soon as possible, but at the same time appear to be representing workers, so it makes a “good faith” gesture to squeeze some minor concessions from the bosses and bring the strike to a swift and painless end (painless for capital, that is).

The three grocery chains weren’t impressed and no concessions were given. Picket lines would eventually resume at some Ralph’s stores in mid-January but by then it didn’t matter.

Workers in LA and throughout the Southern California area were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the grocery strike, and through the unions of their various professions they organized support of varying degrees, such as donations to the strike fund. When, on November 24th, the UFCW finally extended the strike to ten local distribution centers for the supermarkets, 7,000 distribution workers, members of the Teamsters union, honored the picket lines and refused to load goods or drive them to stores. Scabs accomplished these tasks instead, and, because neither the UFCW nor the Teamsters did anything to stop scabs, the solidarity effort hurt the companies but was not nearly as effective as it could have been.

Still, the solidarity effort seemed a welcome morale booster for the grocery workers. Much bombastic talk was made by union leaders, who described a “rebirth of labor solidarity”, and resurrected traditional labor slogans such as “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Jim Santangelo, president of Teamsters Joint Council 42 in El Monte, described the Teamster solidarity as a “silver bullet” that would swiftly end the strike. However, in mid-December the UFCW moved to end its picket lines at the distribution centers. The reasons for this move are unclear (officially, yet another “good faith” effort for negotiations), though it is speculated that the Teamster leadership was not willing to persist in supporting a strike that was lasting longer than expected, even if by all indications the Teamster rank-and-file were enthusiastic supporters of the strike – they knew well that they themselves may soon have to fight a similar battle.

Seven of the pickets at the distribution centers complied with the UFCW’s command, but in a bright spot of militancy the workers picketing at the Safeway-owned Vons distribution centers refused to take down their pickets, even when union representatives were sent in to persuade them otherwise. These workers sensibly contended that pickets shouldn’t have been taken down anywhere, that the strike should grow, not shrink. The UFCW, to avoid embarrassment perhaps, then modified their original order and said that picket lines would continue at the Vons distribution centers but not those owned by Kroger or Albertsons. We salute the courage of those workers who refused to take down their pickets. Unfortunately, their efforts were marginalized, and the aims of the union were still accomplished – a severe downgrading of the strike’s efficacy, a further gift to the bosses.

Around Christmas time, the grocery workers received a present of their own – strike pay was cut from $240 to $100 a week. At this point, many workers were already facing severe hardships. Some had been forced to sell their cars, while others were evicted and then forced to sleep in their cars. At the same time, top union officials continued to pull in six-figure salaries.

With the low morale of the rank and file following the defeatist tactics of the UFCW leadership, in January AFL-CIO representatives decided that the time had come to directly involve themselves in the labor dispute that was affecting tens of thousands of Southern Californian grocery workers. Their aim however was not to further energize the strike and ultimately win the battle, but to delude the workers into believing that the AFL-CIO, the national federation of regime unions, was actually interested in or capable of winning the class battle, and thus, to save face for the union which was in the process of selling its rank and file down the river. The national labor federation’s secretary-treasurer, Trumka (a known traitor, as shown by his conduct during the miners’ struggles in the 1980’s and the longshoremen lockout of 2002), would explain: “We have our work cut out for us, but I predict that three months from now, there will be a whole different attitude out there”. This prophetic statement would have an undeniable truth later on, however, not the truth implied by this bourgeois agent.

If workers at first believed that the national AFL-CIO intervention in the strike was to expand its scope, militancy, and effectiveness, these hopes were quickly smashed as the realities of the AFL-CIO “tactics” were exposed for what they really were, feeble public relation stunts meant to bring the strike to a crushing end. The AFL-CIO hoped that such an outcome would be tolerated by the demoralized workers, while maintaining their loyalty to the union which betrayed them.

The AFL-CIO did not even reach its timid goals of informing the public about the strike. In fact, union representatives made no serious effort at informing UFCW members outside of California about the struggle. The bourgeois media, meanwhile, when it wasn’t peddling lies about the strike, was concentrating on more important things such as the latest celebrity scandals. As a result, few grocery workers outside of California, UFCW members or not, even heard about the strike. Southern California workers themselves were struggling to keep informed about the strike that they were directly engaged in. The average union meeting consisted of a representative coming in, issuing a few directives, and doing little or nothing to explain them. Discussion on tactics by the rank-and-file was never placed on the agenda.

By the middle of February, even the bourgeois media, which had been spreading predictions of gloom and doom, of “violence”, with the intervention of the AFL-CIO, had to recant and proclaim the AFL-CIO involvement as completely harmless. The “pray-ins” and “letter writing campaigns” in front of, and to, certain corporate grocery executives were completely ineffective, amounting to nothing more than moralistic hand wringing and humiliating groveling at the feet of the bosses. No doubt, because of their ineffective nature, such strategies were picked as the tactic of choice by the AFL-CIO “veteran” leadership. It was this last humiliating betrayal by the AFL-CIO which led to a condition where the workers were finally too exhausted, psychologically and physically, to carry on.

In the last week of February, the UFCW leadership capitulated to the demands of the grocery cartel and reneged on almost every worker demand. The workers, after five months of striking, after the intense hardships, were told to accept a contract which was almost identical to the original offered to them in October by the bosses. Utterly demoralized, they grudgingly voted to accept the contract. The UFCW and AFL-CIO goal of forcing these proud proletarians into an acceptance of defeat had been successful.

In the midst of this bitter conclusion, now former UFCW president Dority declared the strike a victory, and proclaimed: “Now is the time for action. 2004 is the year to put health care reform on the political agenda and demand that every candidate for office commits to comprehensive, affordable health insurance for every working family”. In fact, it was no secret that the UFCW and AFL-CIO were using the strike to hitch workers to the Democratic Party’s electoral campaign, full of promises as it is to restore the decaying US welfare system. Days before the strike’s defeat, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was allowed to speak at a UFCW picket in Santa Monica, and the union leaders accorded him their blessing. This struggle, in which workers lost their homes, their health care, and were forced to the edge of survival, is to the union leaders little more than another tool for gathering proletarians under the flag of the capitalist regime that oppresses them. This government will tread the same course no matter how the cards are shuffled, because the name of this electoral card game is “Bullshit” and the deck is rigged against the working class.

The actions of the UFCW and AFL-CIO can only reinforce our analysis of the current trade unions, that of their regime nature and bourgeois utility. The defeat of the grocery strike does not present us with any surprises or new discoveries. But in these dark times, the class struggle must undergo a steep learning curve, and we communists patiently draw the old lessons out with each successive defeat.

It might be reasonably asked, if these regime unions are just tools for the bosses, why would they sanction a strike in the first place? In 1992, we said, in “The Party and the Trade Unions”: “We also predict that, when faced with strong pressure from the workers, these unions will discover the necessity of appearing to back large-scale struggles and even lead them on occasions when they have been unable to restrain, isolate, or repress their most combative elements. The regime union in these cases can carry out its function by placing itself at the head of the movement and voicing some of its demands, but only so as to be able to try and control it, circumscribe it, deflect it and bring about its defeat. The alternative – of abandoning the struggle to its own devices – could result in dire consequences for the regime”. If the UFCW had not put itself at the head of the grocery strike, they may very well have faced a massive wildcat strike. It would be better for them to sabotage the proletarian struggle from within – in fact, that is the essence of the regime union’s nature.

To call the regime unions traitorous however is not quite enough – doubtless, there are many among the union bureaucrats who genuinely believe they are defending workers’ interests. What guarantees that these unions will let their members down again and again is the fact that they are class-collaborationist and nationalist – their approach is one that expects that workers and bourgeois can prosper together under a national aegis – and that they are firmly entrenched in the capitalist regime, through politicians, through government institutions, and through the cozy relationship between their officials and the ruling class. Living conditions for workers are marginally improved by these unions only when it is convenient for the bourgeoisie. Their ideas of the aims of a union and of strikes are therefore quite different from anything relating to class struggle.

Is a strike a thing to be submitted to “the public”, to be approved by a “community” that knows no class boundaries? No – the strike is a weapon of class struggle, and at the heart of class struggle are force relations. The bourgeoisie, commanding unmatched resources for influencing the populace, has little trouble turning the general will of society against militant workers in these counter-revolutionary times. Therefore, it is necessary, if the interests of workers everywhere are to be truly defended, that those resolute enough to strike act decisively, erecting picket lines that keep facilities from running – by force, if need be, because the good will of the public is not a dependable factor. Common sense? Yes, but the power of the regime unions is such as to cloud workers’ judgment in the heat of struggle, to blur the class lines, and to make a betrayal appear as a victory.

Of course, as the Hormel strike of 1985 showed, a localized militancy is not enough to win a strike. What is also necessary is a generalization of strikes against the isolation imposed on workers by division of labor. Only when the bosses’ system of production is threatened at several points, only when the operations of the companies are shut down, and not merely inconvenienced, can the strike become more than just symbolic. Moreover, the material gains of strikes aside, it is greatly important for workers from different trades, locations, and nationalities to unite – as our Manifesto declared in 1848, “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers”. Again, the regime unions are incapable of extending strikes beyond their narrow starting points, nor of fostering real solidarity across the various divides. Those few strikes that encompass a larger territory are cut short before they can be effective.

What proletarians everywhere need are class unions, unions which are autonomous from the state and the bosses, which do not shun the class struggle, and which truly defend the workers’ interests. And defending these interests is not a matter of defending the collapsing welfare institutions offered by the bourgeois state, which are doomed to be swept aside when their reach the end of their convenience for the ruling class. Nor is it a matter of defending small wage or benefit increases which bosses make from time to time in the face of unions, but then reverse in times of difficulty. No, the real defense of proletarian interests consists in an offense against the institutions of capitalism, because capitalism inevitably sows misery among the proletariat. It is hoped that workers in the US, and workers everywhere, can take to heart the lessons which cropped up again in Southern California. They show that the existing unions are completely unsuited to the task of carrying out the class struggle, and that the class union must necessarily be constructed outside and against these unions.

It should be noted that the AFL-CIO is a federation of unions who are supposedly autonomous from the national structure. On paper, this means one cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of class unions arising within the AFL-CIO. But the fact of the matter is that, whether through organizational pressure or otherwise, the “autonomous” unions of the AFL-CIO have a funny way of all turning out to be “business unions” which take the same class-collaborationist approach. The AFL-CIO’s constitution enshrines the ideology and institutions of the US regime, and forbids officers who pursue goals of “terrorism” and “totalitarianism”, which would be quickly interpreted to forbid communist participation should the occasion arise. This, along with the entrenched, overwhelming attitude of class-collaboration in this federation means that it is highly unlikely that a real workers’ union will emerge from within the AFL-CIO, and we advise workers not to count on it.

Even more strongly, we urge workers not to place their bets on phony “rank and file” movements within the regime unions, which aim to “democratize” these unions and supposedly make them more combative and accountable to the membership. In fact these movements are distractions against the real efforts rank-and-file workers must make to break with the regime unions and stand on their own feet against the bosses. Consider the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a union reform movement that has been around for over 20 years. Not only have they nothing to show for all the years of their work, in terms of the Teamsters union becoming a more effective union, but their program has become little more than a mirror image of that of the regime union, however “democratic” their aims. A change of organizational forms means nothing when there is no content to go with it.

Furthermore, we call on workers to ignore the electoral charade, the perennial obsession of what passes for politics in bourgeois society. The centers of power in the bourgeois regime have long ago ceased to reside in the elected organs, which serve today as mere puppets and distracting propaganda tools. Kerry and Bush, and any other candidate, no matter how “independent” their populist rhetoric, are slaves to the same masters. The government of capital exists to preserve the power of the bosses and only by smashing this state machinery will the working class be able to erect a political body that serves their interests.

Workers must act truly independently, rejecting coalition with the bourgeoisie and their representatives, instead constructing the class union among themselves, whether they be members of the existing unions or outside of them. It is of course easier said than done. Clearly, though, one thing that is badly needed is constant communication between workers of every trade and locale, spreading information and facilitating solidarity, because the official unions will never promote such a development. We aren’t asking workers to leave the current unions right now in pursuit of the class union; such an action would be meaningless in the present time when no strong class union movement as yet exists. At this point, however, workers can prepare themselves to take strikes a step further when the unions cower, to raise the bar of militancy when the unions ask them to back down – in other words, to forward the class struggle whether the union sanctions such action or not. Meanwhile, workers can build networks, independent strike committees, and eventually form a union that puts class struggle back on the agenda. It is also possible that certain locals in the current unions could rebel, like the P-9 local during the Hormel strike, and then break away, joining the class union effort, but workers should be prepared to act autonomously of even the local if its militancy should waver.

And through all this, the small but faithful International Communist Party, holding aloft the true Marxist program of the working class, will always support and encourage the struggles of the class, and point enthusiastically towards the bright victory of the class union and the proletarian dictatorship, which will put the bosses and their collaborators in their place, and lead humanity out of this social cesspool called capitalism.