Strikers aim to keep what they’ve earned

NEW HAVEN — Kevin Hall has had jobs that paid more than Stop & Shop, where he earns between $13 and $14 an hour after five years working in seafood, the deli, meats and prepared foods.

But at age 42, after more than two decades spent mostly in the food business, “This is my first one that had benefits,” he said.

It’s a good gig on Whalley Avenue, maybe 30 hours a week, just five blocks from his house in the Edgewood Park neighborhood. He’s allowed three weeks of paid vacation, he’s in the retirement plan and he’s in the “Rising Star” program — a faster track toward management and a coveted full-time job.

It’s not enough to live in the middle class or support his four children ages 10 to 20 — the youngest two living in Enfield and Ohio — and that’s why he works as an overnight baker at the Dunkin’ Donuts just down the street.

In all, Hall is toiling about 66 hours a week, he said Monday afternoon on the picket line at the Whalley Avenue store; sometimes, more than 70 hours.

He’s been a cook at a restaurant, a manager at a KFC, which closed, and more, after graduating from Bassick High School in Bridgeport, and attending a business trade school that’s now defunct. Some of those jobs paid more than Stop & Shop, some less.

But he said, in a stiff, brisk wind amid a couple of dozen fellow strikers, “When it comes to the future, it’s better here. I want to keep that.”

The strike that started last Thursday at New England’s largest supermarket chain isn’t about subsistence wages and poverty conditions, although employees start at the minimum wage, $10.10 an hour. It’s about the fight to live a better life, usually with other jobs adding up to a living.

Some of Hall’s fellow Stop & Shop workers make more, a few make a lot more — as much as $30 an hour for the long-time, full-time employees. The supermarket chain, with a Dutch parent company would like to buy them out for $75,000, some strikers said.

That’s one of many changes the company is trying to force, notably an end to extra pay on Sundays, when longtime

workers make as much as double-time. The company also wants workers to pay a lot more for health coverage — one striker told me her premium would rise from $13 to $52 a week — and cut back on other benefits.

For Hall and others, it’s those benefits that confer dignity and a way of life they believe they’ve earned.

“Why would they want to take away something that we worked hard for? That’s all we have,” Hall told me in a quiet voice nearly drowned out by the wind and the constant blaring of horns from supporters.

There is word that strikers will get $100 a week from a union fund for picketing. For some, that will keep food on the table. Hall is not living hand-to-mouth, but he said, “I pay child support. I always do that.”

Denise Tartaglia, shop steward for Local 371, the largest bargaining unit in the Whalley store, came onboard like many here, eight years ago after Stop & Shop reopened a former Shaw’s store. She’s in the meat department, pricing, stocking and helping customers; a few years ago they stopped packaging its meat in-store. She’s been in the union for 32 years and wouldn’t say how much she makes.

“It helped me raise two kids by myself,” said Tartaglia, a Wallingford resident. She used to work at an A&P store until it closed, and when that job ended, she had to start over — losing five weeks

of paid vacation.

The Whalley Avenue store has remained closed since the strike began six days ago. Inside, it’s darkened, eerie, as three security employees and a New Haven cop watch over the cordoned-off path to the People’s United Bank branch, which remained open.

In front of every third check-out line, a bundle of mylar balloons, still flying, wish non-existent customers a Happy Easter.

Frank Douglass, the local New Haven alderman, a retired chef and building maintainer from Yale, stops by to offer food baskets that would come from local organizations.

“Aw, you don’t have to do that,” Tartaglia says. Better to wait to see whether the strike sets in for a long haul.

“We want to do it,” Douglass says

Across town, on the Woodbridge line, the other New Haven Stop & Shop, in the Amity section, remains open, but it’s no less eerie. I saw no customers in about an hour of peak shopping time, save for one or two picking up a few items.

Edward “Skip” Robinson, probably the youngest 51 I’ve ever seen, spoke proudly of his work in seafood, where he loves showing the lobsters to kids. “I brought that department up,” he says.

After 19 years, mostly in the Hamden store, the New Haven resident still makes only $13 an hour, he said, for about 24 hours a week, maybe less. But he gets some benefits — not

health; that ended for part-timers four years ago — and he loves the company.

Robinson wears a silver necklace marked clearly, “Dad.” He’s separated, and has a 10-year-old girl and two younger children. “Am I still in their life? Absolutely. Do they know where I work? Absolutely.”

He had a job at a roofing company in Rocky Hill but that ended, so now he and his children are on "state medical" — the Husky Medicaid program.

Robinson takes charge when a white, private hauler tractor-trailer rig pulls up to the store. As the strikers form a barricade, Robinson approaches the truck and climbs up to talk with the driver.

After some back-andforth, the truck moves to the loading dock without incident – not with a delivery, but to pick up two pallets of matzoh for Passover, which the store won’t now sell.

"I had to protect my peoples," Robinson declares as his fellow strikers compliment his negotiating skills.

Back at the Whalley Avenue store, Hall said he’s been able to save some money. After decades in the food business, he’d like to open his own restaurant, perhaps right in the neighborhood – which is now dominated by fast food and automotive businesses – two auto parts stores, a U-Haul, the New Haven Power Sports motorcycle outlet.

"That’s the dream," Hall said.