Letter to the editor: By Janine Edwards
Where's the strike?
Alright Edmonton, I’ll admit it. I went to get groceries yesterday. And do you know where I went? Safeway.
Why Safeway? Because they don’t need me to buy cloth hipster grocery bags. They don’t charge me for the plastic ones either. And it’s about 2 blocks from my house. (See? I’m eating local.)
When I trudged home with my arms laden with groceries, a thought came into my head. Sure, there are a bunch of distribution centre workers on strike. (I think some make ice cream?) But how are they going to rally my support?
All of them are picketing in front of some warehouse I didn’t even know existed until this strike. Sure, if they were blocking the Yellowhead I’d notice. But where are they? I don’t see them, therefore they don’t want me to care.
However, I heard this morning that Safeway hired up some Scabs. Great! Now, you can picket those Scabs… OR you can rally the city by picketing rotating Safeway locations.
If I rolled up to a Safeway and there were tons of people standing with signs, perhaps chanting… my instincts to avoid conflict would kick in, and I’d immediately consider my options for other grocery stores. I don’t want to risk walking up and getting pummeled with produce, which is what I hear usually happens when distribution workers go on strike.
Even better – they could hand out hand-drawn maps to locations of other grocery stores! That would sure show Safeway! And, because they’re out where the people are, we could see them.
Who knows? Maybe that would make us start to care about the fate of these workers.
FROM the Edmonton District Labour Council
Good Day
As most of you know, UFCW 401 has been locked out at the facilities noted above. In discussion with the union I have been asked to advise the labour movement as follows:
Picketing is taking place 24/7 at the
Safeway Distribution Centre: 139 -142 Street and Yellowhead Trail. This is the main picketing location.
Edmonton Distribution Centre Warehouse: 160 Street and 115 Avenue.
The employer is running scabs at the Yellowhead Trail site and treating them to meals. It is also requiring Safeway store managers to come to work in the Yellowhead warehouse.
In all 350 UFCW 401 members are on strike and none has crossed the line.
The union is asking people not to shop at Safeway for the duration of the dispute and to tell Safeway that you won’t shop there for the duration of the strike. UFCW 401 is not calling for an all-out boycott of Safeway at this time.
Thanks very much for the info, Dave.
That last point, the stuff about telling Safeway you won’t shop there during the strike, is what I’m hearing on Twitter too.
But I think the letter is bang-on talking about the fact people won’t be thinking of the strike without SEEING the strike. Once the news coverage dies down (and it’s starting to) it’s going to be replaced by the next story and people will forget.
I agree with people not caring unless they’re reminded. Out of 350 members who are on strike, I think 3 or 4 groups of 10 each should be sent out to various Safeway stores each day. Also, there should be different time frames for their appearances at the stores. For example, group A at Westmount Safeway from 10 am to 1 pm, group B at Manning Safeway from 3 pm to 6 pm, group C at Bonnie Doon Safeway from 8 am to 11 am, etc. They should be handing out information to the public, and encourage people to shop elsewhere for the duration of the action.
Even if the workers, from a moral perspective, are absolutely in the right, it is hard to invest energy in a cause where winning seems essentially impossible.
The province’s labour laws are unbalanced in favour of big business. The recession is providing a willing pool of replacement workers.
At some point, if the best thing is not attainable, perhaps it is logical to focus efforts on the second best thing. The leadership of the union tried to do that when it cut a deal. There was wisdom in that pragmatic approach, even though the contract certainly was imperfect. Now, I think this ends the same way as the Calgary Herald strike, or the disaster at the old Molson’s plant.
I don’t know how principled losing serves the labour movement.
See? Brent gets it. Remember those Casino workers at West Edmonton Mall? Did that strike ever end? I’m not sure, because we all stopped caring.
Thanks for getting Metric stuck in my heads guys.
I realize that this opinion isn’t exactly going to make me the most popular guy on this comment page, but speaking as someone who’s been in a couple of different unions and who was out on strike for 6 months, I think unions are just as outdated and archaic as the current labour laws are… I’ll spare you my big union rant.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no hardline supporter of Big Business; I really feel for the Safeway staff. They’ve found themselves in a pretty difficult situation, one that I don’t think will be very easily resolved. I really hope, for their sakes, that this gets resolved quickly.
Thanks Janine.
I sometimes hear people say what Derjis is saying, about unions being outdated. Without unions, we’d still be working 14 hrs a day seven days a week for a minimal wage. And worker safety wouldn’t even be thought about.
Unions lobby all levels of government on behalf of ALL workers. I’m not saying all unions always do the right thing, but ultimately we’re better off with them then we are without them.
Personally, to this day I won’t buy a Molson product, because of the way Molson-Coors handled things in Edmonton. Coors is known for using strong-arm tactics, and for getting their way no matter what. Molson-Coors was looking for a way to close Edmonton’s plant, without taking any of the blame.
On the other hand, I do believe businesses have their rights too. They can set policies and procedures, and set prices, etc, but it all has to be done while respecting their employees.
Okay, I’ll jump off the soapbox now, thanks for letting me have my say.