Something we can agree on. Safeway was always overpriced shite. Classic high strung union shop "professionals" running around.
Sorry, but I never considered washing lettuce to be a profession. Anymore than I would a McD job.
Safeway falsely glorified what were essentially punter jobs with unsustainable pay and benefits. But they want more..
The "hero pay" was known to be a onetime pay uptick, by 2bucks an hour, for working in difficult times during a declared public emergency.
There is no longer a public emergency decree and the risks of the pandemic here have been a lot less than what was feared. So that the retailer sought to roll back the hero pay. That's what the union objects to. Seems unproductive.
I found it a bit bizarre when I read someone going on strike in these times, where a lot of people don't know where their next job will be, if one is even available.
I worked at Safeway for 10 years back in the day. I remember within the first couple years we went on strike I was a young buck then, against everything and anything right wing, corporations, etc. I would gladly eat the rich. After 2 weeks of sitting out in the parking lot rotating walking with signs in the parking lot and singing Kumbaya in the back of pickup trucks, our union heads settled for extra money for all. The problem, was that full timers went from a 40 hour week to a 38 hour week. So now they were expected to do the same work, but for less hours. Part time jobs started to disappear. Someone quit, and a replacement was never hired. So, basically a wash for the company., but all of us were back patting and congratulating each other for making the company "bend" for us. Lol. A few years later, when our contract came up again, it was rinse and repeat, this time without a strike but a threat of one. Same type of result, with full time hours reduced to 36 now, and further cuts by attrition to part time. By the time I left there, there was hardly any part time staff left, and full time seemed like a skeleton. Looking back, I was paid very well, matter of fact, one of the best part time wages in Alberta at the time, and the few years I worked full time, it certainly was decent for what I was expected to do. I think we were treated very well, in retrospect. I certainly got caught up in the "us against the world" frenzy, and was easily persuaded to go that way. By the time I left, the amount of work that was waiting for me when I came in from school on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings was nearly insurmountable, and there was a small handful of us to do it. I was completely disillusioned and disheartened, and knew I made the right choice to go to another field of work. The moral was terrible when I left. Amazing though , was how much I really enjoyed the job the first few years, all the good friends and co-workers I met, and still keep in touch with, good memories, and then it just became toxic at the end.
Hope their doing the right thing this time, but history shows, they likely won't be much farther ahead, if at all. By the time there is the give and take from both sides, people will sit back and think, why the hell did we even do this.
Just one man's experience in stuff like this.
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