By enacting tactical blunder after tactical blunder, the UFCW has led its membership into a deep murky cesspool. The machine heads now try to validate their existence by telling the membership that they will teach them to swim.
That's what the dignity and respect crap is all about.
"Hey look Ma, I'm swimming!"
All the people who can remember what it was like to walk tall on firm ground have all been bought out or pressured into looking for a less smelly place to work. The new hires don't know any better, and that was part of the plan.
UFCW Canada Slammed
This study at page 46 gives a good account of how UFCW wheeling and dealing for members caused the crash of retail food wage rates in Canada.
quote:
Labor represents approximately 60% of the controllable costs (excluding the cost of product) in the grocery industry, so competition often takes the form of meeting a rival's labor costs. Safeway argued in British Columbia that parity with [Real Canadian SuperStore] in new hire labor costs was the only fair solution to the labor dispute. A&P converted 19 stores in Ontario to a low-cost format to take advantage of the lower-cost union contract for such stores. The mediator of the labor dispute in British Columbia was quoted after the strike as saying, 'Safeway and Overwaitea are legitimately frustrated with the substandard collective agreement in place between Real Canadian Superstore and UFCW Local 777 and that issue must be addressed.' Overall, the experience in Canada suggests that major chains will seek parity with lower labor cost competitors, if not immediately then certainly in the long run through mechanisms such as two-tiered contracts that reduce costs for new hires or changes in collective bargaining agreements.
When you read the study, you wonder whose best interests UFCW Canada was looking after.
Yes the UFCW has greatly increased revenue with it's plan, but at what cost. How does the average member benefit from size and union revenue? UFCW machine heads have seen their salaries and benefits rise exponentially, while the average member's have stagnated or gone down.
Today, the UFCW doesn't even pretend it can regain members' standards of living. It runs on a platform of attaining "respect and dignity" for members.
What I say is, if there isn't respect for the individual member, it's because there isn't respect for the member's union.
What the study fails to understand is that the Local 777 Superstore deal was a carbon copy of the Alberta Local 401 Superstore deal. Gib Whitlock and Cliff Evans brought that deal to BC. That deal was hatched by Cliff Evan's Western Canadian Executive Assistant who then went to work in an executive position with the employer.
Through an arbitration, Local 832 found that it was bound by the Alberta Superstore practice as well.
When you look at the retail grocery scene closely, you'll see that the UFCW isn't a victim, but rather a direct participant. The Power Source is the victim.
Here in B.C. we thought we hit bottom with the deal in 89 and 96. The new 2003 bargaining proposals and rhetoric behind the proposals for the grocery chain negotiations has the Power Source believing it's all uphill from here.
There are still many things the employer wants back, ato's are up for grabs and have been labeled a strike issue. (that actually appears to be the only strike issue according to a conference attendee).
What does the future hold for 1518 grocery workers? How much farther down the food chain can the machine drag us?
Read the BC Superstore Collective Agreement and you can see where you're headed.
The way Safeway and OFG look at it, if the UFCW can give such a deal to Loblaws then it had better damned well hand it over to everybody.
If the UFCW gives the deal to Safeway, Loblaws will demand and get greater cuts to their contract. The grocery giants won't stop 'till they are at the bottom.
And they know all they have to do is put a few million into CCWIPP or the Education Fund or double membership by splitting full-time jobs into part-time jobs.
It's amazing, when you have bad things you long for bad things that are better.
The Superstore agreement has a couple things ofg/Safeway juniors and clerk II's don't have right now. The first of which is applicable contract language, be it ever so poor.
I'm curious: When the UFCW did its cut rate deals with the Superstores, did UFCW leaders - and especially Cliff Evans who was the head Canadian honcho at the time - understand the race for the bottom that they were about to set off? If they knew, did they care at all?
The reason that I ask is that by the late 1980's it was clear to most of the movers and shakers in the North American labour movement that giving a break to one employer in an industry would cause all the competitors to demand the same concession - if not better. The UFCW had been stomped in the meat packing industry in the 80's because it conceded to demands for rollbacks from certain big employers.
Did the International allow Evans to do as he pleased up here in Canada? Or were visions of thousands more dues paying members dancing in everybody's heads?
Where today's UFCW slogan is "Respect and Dignity" and "Change or Get Out of the Way," in Cliff Evan's day, it was "Market Share."
Unions were in decline accross North America. Every major union needed revenue and they needed it badly. When the '60s conventional format stores started to be replaced by big-box supermarkets, the bells started to go off. Conventional stores employed less than 100 employees; big-box or "barn" stores employed many, many more.
The International unions started to take a big interest in grocery stores, so the UFCW got scared. They would do just about anything to keep the sector to themselves--and the employers knew it.
When the Teamsters started to breath down the UFCW's neck, the deals started flying. Anytime the UFCW balked, the threat of another union would be raised. Overwaitea, almost has a second union in BC, the Christian Labour Association of Canada.
I believe there was a mixture of fear, ineptness and greed that caused the mess the retail food industry is in labour wise.