Picking at Scabs [Grocery Store strike]

OCWeekly ^ | 10-17-03 | Austen Swaim

[ambrose]

October 17 - 23, 2003

Picking at Scabs

by Austen Swaim

Shane Borgess sounds like a Red. Walking the picket line outside a Ralphs supermarket in Irvine, he declares, "We’re going to have our own little revolution here."

Borgess ain’t a Red, however. He’s one of 70,000 clerks striking Ralphs, Albertsons and Vons stores to protest the chains’ plan to cut benefits and introduce a two-tier pay plan–and he’s a self-described conservative Republican.

But the strike, which he describes as "almost unreal," "has taught me something."

"Am I torn?" he asks. "Sure. Do I respect the union much more now? I do." There was a time–right up to about midnight on Oct. 11–when Borgess looked down on strikers. "You’d think, ‘These clowns.’ And now you find yourself in it."

And, yeah, he gets the irony. The people driving by and giving him a supportive honk are probably Democrats. The people giving him the finger? "Well, let’s just say I’ve gotten some insight into my own kind," he says. One regular customer refused Borgess’ request to shop someplace else with a kind of vicious delight, saying, "I break strikes for a living." Still another customer couldn’t understand the strikers’ desire to preserve their medical benefits "when he has to pay $460 per month for health insurance," Borgess recalls. How’d Borgess respond? "I asked him, ‘Should we all be equally miserable?’"

Borgess says most customers have been sympathetic. He finds himself using the unionist vocabulary–calls strike-breakers "scabs" and refers fraternally to strikers as "a family."

"I’ve always had a libertarian/conservative leaning," says Borgess, who once sued his own union over the political uses of members’ dues. "But I might have had a more optimistic view of the free-market system then." Now? "I recognize how valuable the union is. We all come together, put aside our differences and stay strong. It’s our only hope."

[Fledermaus]

Can you repost that? All I got was, "WHINE, WHINE, WHINE".

[ambrose]

Remember the old cliche... 'A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged'...


Well perhaps we should now add... 'A liberal is a conservative who made poor career choices'

[GeronL]

pal, the free market system says they can't pay you and your benefits too

[ozzymandus]

So the carry-out boys in Kali get free health insurance? I seriously doubt this crybaby was ever a "conservative".

[GeronL]

if we had a free market health care system, he and the company could decide what plans were suitable at what prices...

[ambrose]

Having a co-pay should be an absolute must on any medical plan. Too many people are going to the doctor's office because they have the sniffles or some other trivial ailment Why not? Doesn't cost them a dime...

[okie01]

If one has a job requiring skills that can be readily found on the street, it behooves one not to strike.

[GeronL]

I mean a competitive healthcare system, where hospitals can even have their own plans. The insurance companies-hospitals could all be competing against each other. You a single man? We'll just cut off those coverage costs for mastectomies and pregnancy tests....

[GeronL]

totally right. Protecting jobs for those without skills is just bad for the whole economy too.

[xm177e2]

One regular customer refused Borgess’ request to shop someplace else with a kind of vicious delight, saying, "I break strikes for a living."

I think that person might be a FReeper (not just because of their ideology, but because I saw a comment very similar to that on a thread about this strike)

[Chad Fairbanks]

If they have the same contract down there, as they do here, there is a copay...

[xm177e2]

if we had a free market health care system, he and the company could decide what plans were suitable at what prices...

If we had a truly free-market health care system, the companies would have absolutely nothing to do with health plan; it would be up to employees to get their own healthcare. Losing or changing your job would then have no effect at all on your healthcare. It would be completely up to individuals to get what they wanted.

[opinionator]

Went to 'Vons' tonight. The temporary workers are pretty bad. They don't seem to come from the ranks of the permanently employed. This strike is beginning to inconvenience me and causing me to resent the strikers. The parking lot was strewn with knocked over grocery carts and the strikers were just standing there as if they didn't know who did it. The cops were arriving when I left the store.

[ambrose]

I was at a Ralphs this evening... the strikers were blocking the parking lot entrances (underground parking, only two ways in), so I parked across the street.

The replacements were able to wave the items over the scanner just as well as the regulars...

[GeronL]

I agree 1000%

I want to privatize libraries for goodness sakes.

[GeronL]

They don't have the self scans there yet??

Our local Kroger has 4 of them, watched over by a single person, and it really moves things along. Its also kinda fun. Time flies when you are busy instead of waiting...

[opinionator]

Strikers block parking lot entrance, block store entrance, and take up valuable parking spaces.

[ambrose]

nope, don't have those in SoCal..

[GeronL]

I guess liberals and unions are scared of them.

NOW.... Imagine being able to register your credit card number at the local store and just carrying things out, automatically paid for, no muss or fuss. Now that would really make them upset.