Stop & Shop strike and labor’s reawakening

When union activity is low, gains in productivity and competitiveness do not reach workers. Instead of just asking, “Is this contract fair?” more and more unionized workers seem to be asking, “Are industry standards fair?”

Strikes are back in New England, as anyone who buys groceries knows by now. On Thursday afternoon, 31,000 Stop & Shop workers walked out from 243 stores after failed contract negotiations, leaving the company with an estimated $80 million in losses as of Palm Sunday.

The strike signals workers’ rejection of the company’s April 5 “final offer,” which seeks to “modernize” health care benefits and “adapt to market conditions” regarding Sunday pay (translation: double health care premiums and eliminate extra pay for working Sundays).

In the interest of becoming “competitive” in a “nonunion market,” moreover, pensions are to be phased out in favor of 401(K)s and raises in favor of bonuses. Union leaders, who have called this contract offer “an insult,” astutely argue that the company is concerned less with increasing total store revenue than with increasing owners and managers’ share of it. Todd Majors, UFCW Local 919 shop steward at store 665 in East Lyme, put it succinctly: “I am looking at it as corporate greed.”

Majors’ point holds out when we look at the numbers: the chain made $2 billion in profits last year and took home a quarter billion in tax cuts.

“It would be another thing if the company was struggling,” one worker said. “We would be willing to take the hit if it was all of us together. But it’s not.”

Workers have been taking hits for the company for three decades. The last Stop & Shop strike was in 1988 but it lasted only 6 hours. The company bled out $10 million and promptly returned to negotiate. This time around Stop & Shop is holding out, likely calculating that the long-run ability to cut workers’ wages and benefits is worth the $80 million (and counting) in short-term losses, not to mention stores full of rotten produce. They call this “investing in the company’s future.”

Workers counter that if this was about the whole company’s future, then executives would invest in infrastructure at their stores instead of funneling money into such things as executive pay, an outside firm hired to win strike negotiations, or a googly-eyed robot that spots aisles in need of cleaning and then pings the underpaid worker who has to actually clean it.

A visit to the picket lines found the mood oscillating between tense and carnivalesque. There were, of course, those customers who called the strikers morons, told them to get a job (without a trace of irony) or just plain flipped them off. The strikers’ response was always “thank you for your support” — but being ignored, disrespected, and made invisible by the belligerent customers wasn’t fun.

The belligerence was more than made up for, though, when pizzas, donuts, and deli meats poured in from local businesses, from customers, and from other unions standing in solidarity. I heard several workers tell supportive customers, “We can’t wait to see you back in the store.”

While some workers said this strike was a one-time thing aimed at one unfair contract, others connected it to a bigger picture: corporate greed, a dysfunctional health care system, the fight for $15, and all the other things that are making America so “great” right now.

So, is the stand being taken by Stop & Shop workers a sign that strikes are making a comeback in American labor-business relations? And, if so, is this a good thing?

The answer to the first question is a definite yes. After decades of union-busting, outsourcing, and policies favoring the top 1 percent, labor appears to be awakening. The year 2018 saw a significant uptick in strikes, the highest since the 1980s, and 2019 is following suit.

As to the second question, the numbers again speak loudest. Fifty years ago, there were 412 work stoppages in the United States with 30 million idle work hours. Labor’s power was soaring. Back then, when workers added a dollar of value to production, their wages rose by a dollar. Today when workers add a dollar of value to production, their wages rise by 25 cents.

The takeaway? Workers need to stand up. When union activity is low, gains in productivity and competitiveness do not reach workers. This is why, while Stop & Shop chants “industry standards” and “competitiveness” to justify its unfair contract offer, workers are asking the bigger question: are these anti-worker industry standards worth meeting in the first place?

Instead of just asking, “Is this contract fair?” more and more unionized workers seem to be asking, “Are industry standards fair?”

Asking that question promises more strikes, and resulting fairer compensation, in the years to come.