FIGHTING INJUSTICE IN THE GROCERY ISLE AND BEYOND

Hundred of families. Thousands of mouths to feed. An entity that evidently could not care less.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

It’s a reality that the employees of dozens of large-scale grocery establishments across Oregon and Washington encountered once again, and one that affects laborers across the globe every single day.

This truth revealed itself yet again earlier this month on Sept. 23, when a state-spanning boycott hit numerous supermarket businesses, in particular Fred Meyer.

According to the worker’s union behind the organization and a major information distributor of the boycott, UFCW 555 (the United Food and Commercial Workers Union), tension between these two forces began as early as July 2018. Several incidents of employee harassment (specifically regarding union association) and unequal pay across in-store departments (often times attributed to gender variation within these departments) were also cited by UFCW 555 as concerns raised in the then-ongoing negotiations.

In a little under a week after the boycott announcement however, on Sept. 28, the union and Fred Meyer came to an agreement and the boycott was promptly called off. With a request for shopping regulars to resume their usual spending habits, the bubbling-over conflict came to a cool calm once again.

If only the rest of so many similar workplace tensions could be resolved so publicly, cleanly, and quickly.

The fact of the matter is that economic inequality in the United States, and worldwide, worsens every year. A grocery store boycott that covered so much ground still only represents a small symptom of the much larger problems we have at hand. Because of course, even larger still, the issues of climate change, widespread poverty, political instability, etc. come bobbing up from the waters with no signs of any resolution.

The battle over our jobs and economy is ongoing, meanwhile.

In a leaked 45-minute video sent by Amazon headquarters to Whole Foods team leaders (a grocery chain now owned by the mega-corporation), a strong anti-union and worker alliance initiative is pushed toward store supervisors with authority over countless low-wage laborers. It contained statements such as “We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers,” as well as “Having a union could hurt innovation, which could hurt customer obsession, which could ultimately threaten the building’s continued existence.”

This blatant anti-worker message is not only alarming, it is also false.

When union membership and growth stalls or declines, it proves to be harmful to the economy as a whole. With higher wages to spend, laborers are better able to support their local establishments and therefore those workers as well, studies have shown – thus creating a cycle of stability that is only weakened when unionizing is directly discouraged.

These conflicts should be contemplated, in the context of capitalism as we know it: Is an economy able to be destabilized easily by the financial power of others really worth trying to preserve time and time again? As more matters like the Fred Meyer boycott arise to the surface, it will become harder to miss them. Or be able to ignore them and pretend that these issues have never existed.

Currently, unionization is not exactly at its peak, in numbers or popularity. With the decline of classic industrial work in America, through which labor unions could quickly find strong support, it is no surprise that unions have not been on a steady rise for some time.

And it is of no coincidence at all that this trend parallels the rise of overall wealth inequality.

Right now, the greatest weapon we as a people have is our voice, amplified with the help of each other. During a time in which that kind of unity is exactly what we need, let us not ignore one another for any longer than we possibly can. Let us follow in the footsteps of this local yet so-widespread boycott in standing up for what we know we all deserve, with our collective strength.