Did it work?
"Settlement ends strike by Shaw’s workers" by Travis Andersen, Globe Staff | July 9, 2010
Hundreds of warehouse workers at Shaw’s Supermarkets Inc. who walked off their jobs about four months ago reached a deal yesterday with the supermarket chain over pay and health benefits.
Workers at the Shaw’s Methuen distribution center have ratified a four-year contract that effectively ends the strike that began March 8....
The workers’ union, the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 791, did not immediately return calls seeking comment late last night.
Worker's lose again.
More than 300 Methuen workers started picketing Shaw’s stores in March. Shortly afterward, the grocer, which is owned by Minnesota-based Supervalu Inc. and has about 176 stores in New England, cut off the workers’ health benefits and hired replacements in the warehouse.
As the stalemate continued, the workers gradually escalated their efforts. In March, other unions, including the Teamsters and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, joined the workers in a mobile picket, moving from store to store. The union also organized a five-day, 60-mile march in May from the distribution center in Methuen to the Shaw’s at Prudential Center.
Support for the workers also rose. In May, Senator John F. Kerry, Representative Michael Capuano, and nine other Massachusetts congressional leaders sent a letter to the chief executive of Shaw’s and Supervalu, urging them to go back to the bargaining table. And the UFCW International Union called for a national boycott of Supervalu.
So good to know that US legislooters are effective.
Now when you guys going to end the wars?
But the strike took a financial toll on many workers.
Translation: The economic "torture," if you will, worked.
Some took extra jobs to make ends meet.
Where did they find them and is that why I can not get one?
Meanwhile, the number of striking workers dwindled from the original 306 to about 240 after some workers crossed the picket line and some retired....
Translation: Shaw's BROKE the STRIKE -- which is why the corporate paper proclaimed such a political success for some people above.
Shaw’s spokeswoman Rebekah Fawcett said the company is working with the union to determine when the employees who went on strike would return to work. She said they workers will return in a “phased approach’’ that will probably begin in the next couple of weeks. She also said replacement workers would be let go in the same manner.
Stop ripping open that scab!
Better off going local anyway.
