More quality reporting on the Southern California grocery workers' strike/lockout from Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik. In this piece, Hiltzik talks to some of the employees who have been standing their ground for about four months to defend their access to decent jobs:
Rick: "The job's not as fun now as it was 20 years ago. It's not less satisfying, but less fun. Then you'd have two or three meat cutters in every store. Now it's one. When I started as a meat cutter you had a year of training. There'd be on-the-job training 40 hours a week, with a journeyman cutter standing over you. And you had a year of college-credit courses, once a week, every Monday. They'd teach you about weights, health department issues, the right temperatures, math problems, the profitability of different cuts. Then you took a written test, and if you passed, you were a journeyman. The meat would come into the store in sides, go right into the cooler, and you'd do your cuts. Now it comes what they call prefab, block-ready. Top sirloin comes in a 10-pound package; you rip off the cellophane and you cut it down."Stacie: "It's going to be different when we go back to work. I used to work so hard, right through my breaks. I won't do that anymore. I'm going to take every break I'm entitled to. Before, I'd clock out, and then see a lady over there, and just help her, take a cake order, because there wouldn't be anyone else in the bakery, even though I'd clocked out."
John: "Now they're going to have a two-tier system, and the new people won't have the same thing we had. This is corporations wanting to change society."
Rick: "I'm a realist. I know I've got so many months till retirement, and that's my goal, to work through to retirement. I got me a nice house in Los Alamitos, raised two kids and sent them to college, beautiful wife. It was primarily this job that gave us the opportunity to live this way.
"My opinion, if anyone has 15 years or less at this job, they're on a dead ship. They should get out. Whatever the companies don't get in this contract, they'll get in the future. You could see it beginning to happen in the past, but this has really broken it wide open."
The courage shown by these people is astonishing.