He has worked for Stop & Shop for 48 years. This is why he is on strike.

More than 30,000 employees of Stop & Shop grocery stores have been on strike in New England since last week in the most important work stoppage of the American private sector for three years. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union states that the company wants to increase the share of health care costs borne by employees while reducing the benefits of new employees, including the rate increased by half on Sunday.

One of the striking workers is Pete Katsigianis, 67, from Wrentham, Massachusetts. He has worked for Stop & Shop for nearly five decades. Katsigianis explained to HuffPost why he was on strike, how to organize a picket line and what is hot yogurt in his store. The interview has been condensed and modified for clarity.

You want to know how long I have been here. Are you sitting? I have been there since 1971. I work in the Dairy Department. I'm loading yogurt. This is the best-selling item in the store. It's amazing what this is an article, yoghurt. It never ends. The department is crumbling to pieces.

We picket every night. Everyone who is supposed to work shows up for the shift they would normally work. If 20 people are scheduled that day, there will be 20 people on the picket line. There are a lot of horns passing by. It's appreciated, believe me. A new pizzeria opens at the corner of the street. They ship pizzas.

Most customers do not cross the picket line. It's just a net. We have a pharmacy in our store and a bank, so people go there, but in reality there are very few. I have no idea how much product is left in the store. We do not know what the state of stores looks like.[[[[Editor's note: Teamsters members who drive trucks for Stop & Shop said they would honor pickets and not deliver goods to stores during the strike.]

If we see a truck arrive, we collect our cars and we go back to the store. But we did not see a truck. A warehouse told us that 40 trucks were out for deliveries and 40 were coming back. [still full]. They would not cross the picket line. What's crazy is that there is no one in the stores. Overnight, there is no one in the shops to open the doors and let them in. God bless them. They are rather militant, these guys.

I am 67 years old. I am a short-timer. But I am deeply concerned about the future. A serious problem of society attracts talent. With this contract here, it makes the conditions worse. We just do not think it's deserved. It's a lot of work in a supermarket – very hard work – and we do not think it's necessary.

[Workers at] Other grocery stores rely on us for a good contract so we can do it too. We are the great kahuna here.

The decline of the American middle class is about the decline of the unions.

Over the years, Stop & Shop has been a great corporate citizen. The owner is now Ahold Delhaize [a Netherlands-based company formed by the merger of Royal Ahold and Delhaize Group]. We call them a royal hole. I do not know what their game plan is, if they have one. Someone earns a lot of money, but this does not translate into the stores. I hope they have an idea of ​​what they do.

They cut wherever they can. I come home at night and the milk explodes, the juice explodes, eggs explode. So we have to do all this and then start our work. It really creates problems everywhere. In addition, the kid we have [in the back of the store] can scan the registers, so it is always called to help.

I would not want to be a child entering the business now. I just do not see the benefits. It's a pity.

Previously, night teams had six or seven full-time staff. Now, they are lucky to have four, sometimes only three. Now it's mostly part-time workers. They would like to be full time, of course. Many part-time workers have a lower pay scale, but their schedule is always 40 hours. We have a child in the night shift. He works part-time and works 40 hours a week. It happens all the time.

Most of them, especially in the product department, are mainly from Latin America. Donald Trump would come in and he would probably take them all away. But I would leave with them. They are the greatest characters on the planet.

The generation before us fought for us. They did not throw us under the bus. We have an obligation to those who stand up. But there are not many of them. The "Help Requested" sign in all stores is open all year. Very few people walk through the door. There is all this talk about automation, but they can not have anyone anyway.

On Sunday [time-and-a-half] pay, it was good for me. I worked Sunday for 25 years, working six days a week. I had a day off, Wednesday. I had to stop doing it with chemo. But people really rely on this extra income to work on weekends.

I have cancer of the bone marrow. I just got back from a chemo infusion today. And it's not cheap. It's like $ 6,000 for each week of chemo. I had about $ 70,000 of chemotherapy during the last year. The insurance company has almost everything picked up. I am so lucky in this regard. I have a defined benefit pension plan. How many people in this country still have this?

I only have another year to go. I could retire now. I have a reasonable retirement. But some of the children I work with are between 30 and 40 and they are really upset. These businesses need to understand that we are counting on them to create decent jobs so that people can get married, buy a house, pay property taxes and support local public schools. This is how you build a middle class.