Stop & Shop strike: striking supermarket employees in the Northeast

More than 30,000 grocery store employees in the northeastern United States are refusing to return to work for the second day in a row.

Cashiers and deli workers in Stop & Shop supermarkets left work Thursday afternoon in 240 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, claiming that the supermarket chain is trying to cut their pay by increasing health insurance premiums and lowering the retirement benefits of new employees.

Workers have been negotiating new labor contracts with the company since January, according to their unions, which are part of the International Union of United Food and Commercial Workers. Workers want their paychecks to increase and not, they say, especially now that Stop & Shop's profits are growing faster than before.

"It's a billion dollar business because of us," said a partner on Friday, who was chatting with colleagues at a Stop & Shop in Middletown, Connecticut, in a video posted on Facebook by local. "We are here on strike and in protest to show what is right and what is right."

The company has proposed widespread wage increases, but union representatives said that higher premiums and health care franchises for employees would end up costing them more than they could get from any wage compensation. The leaders of Stop & Shop disagree, saying their latest proposal will not increase franchises and that all workers will end up with higher salaries.

Stop & Shop is the only major supermarket chain in the northeastern United States with a largely unionized workforce. It belongs to the Belgian company Ahold Delhaize, which also manages the supermarket brands Giant and Food Lion.

The company said in a statement that it was disappointed that the workers had chosen to discontinue their activities to "disrupt the service in our stores". labor costs for the chain.

"This would make our company less competitive in the New England food retail market, which is largely unorganized," writes the company in an updated summary of contract negotiations.

The company said it was ready to keep the stores open, but some closed because they do not. have enough workers. To show support for striking employees, many clients have refused to cross the picket lines.

In 24 hours, the stop of Stop & Shop has become the largest strike of the private sector for at least three years, which shows that last year's labor unrest was not an isolated phenomenon.

Teachers launched a national trade union movement

A record number of US workers went on strike or stopped working in 2018 due to labor disputes with employers, according to The data published in February by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. In total, 485,000 employees were involved in major work stoppages last year – the highest number since 1986, when flight attendants, garbage menand the steelworkers left work.

The growing number of workers involved in labor strikes suggests that average Americans do not know the "economic miracle"That President Donald Trump has described. They see the expanding economy and the profits go up, but that does not extend to their paychecks.

Frustrated teachers in West Virginia launched the first major strike of the year in January 2018. About 35,000 educators and staff left the position to protest a 1% wage increase. The shutdown eventually resulted in the closure of all state public schools for a week, the time that state lawmakers agree to grant them a 5% increase and temporarily freeze them. health insurance premiums.

Teachers from six other states soon followed and, by the end of the year, Marriott workers were picketing in four states.

Working-class Americans are no longer fed up with their employers since the 1980s, as this chart shows:

United States Department of Labor

To be clear, the 485,000 workers involved in the 2018 shutdowns were not all on strike. This number includes people who could not work because employers temporarily stopped operations during walkouts. This also includes lockouts, in which an employer refuses to let workers do their work when they are involved in a contractual conflict.

But almost every 20 major work stoppages in 2018 were marked by massive strikes, which eventually increased the wages of thousands of workers.

The trend does not slow down

The Stop & Shop strike is the last sign that the widespread concern of workers is not easing. The supermarket stop is almost as important as the strike that shut down all schools in West Virginia last year (25,000 teachers took part in the strike, compared with 31,000 grocery store employees).

Earlier this year, in January, Public School Teachers in Los Angeles ended a strike that shut down the country's second school district for more than a week.

According to Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, a union representing approximately 34,000 public school teachers, nurses, librarians and support staff in the city.

And more than 2,000 teachers in Denver it's going on strike in February for the first time in 25 years. Educators want the school district to overhaul its compensation system, which relies heavily on bonuses that fluctuate dramatically from year to year.

It's unclear when Stop & Shop employees will return to work, but they do not seem too worried. State legislators, members of Congress and presidential candidates in the Democratic presidential election of 2020, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, all promised their support to the strikers.