I've benefited from unions throughout my life. Actually, all of us have. Unions won for us the gift of the weekend, better wages, health care, vacation and overtime pay, not to mention a limit to how much abuse we must suffer at the hands of our employers. Unfortunately, unions have fallen on hard times. They have been painted as bad guys and there has been serious decline in membership and in support for unions.
Now it seems the grocery chains, many of them making record corporate profits, are pressing full-bore down on the necks of their workers. They want to snap the union and break it into bits to sweep away into the dustpan of history. They are no longer content with their old cruel tricks like constantly reducing worker hours so that most employees become part-time so that the corporation doesn't have to pay health care, meanwhile funding politicians to keep universal health care off the table. Their tricks include refusing to allow employees a stable schedule so that the employee can find another job. Many employees of grocery chains have their schedule changed week to week, so they never know in advance when they are working. Protest or miss a few days and guess what? The unemployment rate is officially 10 percent and realistically closer to 18 percent of the workforce.
The new trick is to simply reduce the employees to unlivable wage slavery, and watch them, one by one, stagger into the darker realms of poverty and hopelessness. These corporate bastards are ruthless, caring not for their employees, nor for the communities in which the employees live. Basically, the body politic is under assault by an alien entity, a predator life form that consumes human flesh and earth's resources, this artificial life form, this Frankenstein monster now loose from its laboratory, this corporate person well-armed with weapons of mass destruction, this abomination of death is seeking to enslave us. How can we fight back?
We can boycott the grocery chains that hate us and care not for anything but their own profit. If the grocery workers strike we can honor their picket lines. Cross them only once, and that is when you enter the store to deliver your letter of resignation as a customer to the manager. Let the manager know how much money you spend monthly at the store and then name the new store that will now get your business.
Encourage everyone you know to boycott the Frankensteins. Take a shift and picket the store yourself. Bring your friendship with some food to those brave souls who are standing up for us all. Let's become one big union of customers and workers together, combating those corporations that have made war on our democracy. Let this be the first shot in our revolt. If they strike, we strike!